Prayer, Ritual, and Water for the Birds

Years ago, I interviewed a number of women and asked them about their prayer lives. Each one told me her life's story. 

I wondered why they didn't address my question. Were their prayers too personal to share? Were their experiences indescribable? 

I considered the project a failure, but recently I realized that I'd been presuming to know what prayer is.

Maybe by telling me about their lives, they were telling me about their prayers. Maybe prayer isn't something you do while holding a siddur or while pressing your palms together. Perhaps prayer is more than the words you say to the unknowable. Maybe prayer is how you live and aspire and grow. 

Ritual doesn't need to fit into a mold either. My friend, Mary, and I had only a couple of minutes to plan our Equinox ritual today. There was just a little bit of form to frame our spontaneous celebration-- and our ritual was wonderful.

And also, for me, there's a daily, summer ritual. I'd forgotten about it until last week. I saw the first quail of the year, so I put tin, pie pans in depressions around my yard and filled them with water. Since the rims are at ground level, baby quail will be able to drink from them. 

As in other years, I fill them as soon as I wake up each morning. It's a simple ritual, and not "spiritual," but starting the habit again put me into a different consciousness.

Soon, the hummingbirds will return and I'll put out feeders for them, and for the bees and butterflies.

from pinterest.com

The Shaman

Susan Seddon Boulet

Shortly after I moved back to the States, I looked for a shaman to do soul retrieval for me. Linda lives just 15 miles from my house. When I scheduled an appointment, she asked for my permission to seek a vision of me before we met.

After sunset, I reached her home, which is on the side of a forested mountain. There is only moderate light pollution here, and even less high up in her neighborhood. Between a gap in the trees, the stars were numerous and devastating.

She told me what she had seen when she had sought information about me:

She saw me rise from the pool and look around for threats. I notice a standing stone in the distance and begin to swim toward it. I circle back to the starting point several times before I finally reach the edge of the water and climb to the standing stone. Not long after, I walk away from it, with a knife in my back.

The meaning of that was obvious. I was impressed because she didn’t know me, or anything about me. She had also done a “diagnostic journey” to see what I needed: soul retrieval and a power animal.

She tied a red bandana on my wrist, started a CD of drumming, and lay down next to me to travel in search of them. She had explained that she would recognize the fragment of my soul because it would also be wearing a red bandana.

Susan Seddon Boulet

She found three fragments, one was a composite of many different fragments broken off over the years and the others were a three-year-old child and a six-year-old child. They told her that they would help me figure things out, gain self-confidence, and give me bravery.

She found two power animals and told me to give them names and to talk with them even if I felt as if I were pretending. She suggested I ask them for help so that I'd recognize that they are real.

The second time I saw the shaman, she had seen me rising from the pool’s surface, trying to get rid of something. My feet were shackled together and I couldn’t make progress. I seemed afraid and isolated.

That time, Linda did some extractions before seeking a power animal. My power animals brought some of their offspring. I could feel the young ones playing and jumping all over me before she told me what she had seen. They intended to teach me about having fun.

(Afterward, I looked for a course in shamanism. One was starting that week, but I felt that I wasn’t quite ready to be the shaman instead of the patient.)

It seemed appropriate to see Linda again before I leave and return to Israel. Our appointment was last night. I arrived after sunset while the sky was still light. A sliver of the waxing moon shone brightly, but the whole moon was visible. It rose slowly as I waited outside until the time of our appointment.

She had travelled to a reflecting pool to get a vision of me. Here are her notes:

“Seen leaping out of pool then plunging back in. Repeat, each time not rising so high or plunging so deep as the time before, reaching equilibrium. Hot and cold about something? Elation tempered by caution? Is this about some life condition? Appears agitated. Unsure how to proceed? Then throws something, seems annoyed/angry. At end, turns back to me.”

It took a little effort, but I think I may understand that vision. I've been undecided about making aliyah for some time. Now I feel cautious, but I am going, which means turning my back to life here.

Susan Seddon Boulet

Linda put out a turtle shell, a rattle, and a few stones on a rabbit fur. She had me lie down on a Guatemalan rug and gave me a blanket. She started a CD of drumming and lay down on the floor next to me and repeated her diagnostic journey. She confirmed that I needed an extraction and a power animal retrieval.

She did many extractions, one, from the core of my body, was enormous. (Several times recently, I’ve gotten very cold, from my core out, shivering as if I were suffering from exposure and feeling mentally disoriented. Only immersing in a hot bath warms me back up. Perhaps she removed whatever has been causing that.)

Her journey to find my power animal took a long time. Later she explained that my power animal had run up to her immediately and told her its purpose, but she couldn’t believe this was the one. She had also expected many power animals to appear since I’m going on a journey. But there’s just this one wonderful animal who wants to teach me endurance.

The sky was black and the stars were vivid as I drove away. I pulled to the side of the rode, opened the moon roof, and turned off the engine. I gazed up at the stars for a long time and then my vision shifted and the tall pines around me became palm trees in an oasis.

Then I got lost on my way home. It seemed appropriate somehow.

If you are interested, The Foundation for Shamanic Studies keeps a list of shamans who have trained in their program as well as a schedule of classes.

“The Most Subversive Show on Television”

Au contraire, mes amis.

Most of us have accepted the idea that privacy is a thing of the past. Person of Interest helps us embrace the idea that this is just fine. Someone is watching out for us. We’re in good hands.

Where’s the subversion? Here: anyone who is worried about “privacy issues”—or who quotes Benjamin Franklin—is a terrorist. The real threat to our safety and privacy are the folks pulling his strings.

It’s possible that the show’s portrayal of women is subversive. (Am I being ironic or sardonic? I can never decide.) For the most part, women in Person of Interest are crazy, bloodthirsty, or both. While our culture pretends to abhor violence it is, in fact, only horrified when violence is committed by women. So maybe this “subversive” show will diminish double standards in sentencing hearings.

The writers have refined their approach to edgy, female characters. Initially, they went too far with the psychotic CIA agent, but the sociopathic assassin is just right. Having The Machine set the deranged hacker on a slightly straighter path was a good move, too.

Carter is obviously the heroine; she’s smart, tough, and beautiful, and any blood she sheds is in a righteous cause. But is there room on television for an intelligent, sophisticated, savvy role model like Zoe? Not much, apparently.

The show does blow one secret wide open: women like each other. We can be friends. And we often talk about things other than men and manicures. In this show, what we talk about is firearms…

The third season of Person of Interest is the most engaging so far. The Carter/HR story arc is exciting. We learn more about Finch when he says “if they hurt my true love, kill them all.” In one episode, Jim Caviezel is finally allowed to play something slightly more complex than a cross between Clint Eastwood and Lurch. My favorite character in the show, Fusco, played by Kevin Chapman, got one especially good scene.

Next season, I hope to see more of the mob-boss/high-school teacher who makes great marinara. (I love short, fat men.) I’m worried, however, that I may start caring about The Machine.

I do hope the producers will hire a new wardrobe manager for the fourth season. Currently, the position seems to be held by a misogynist. When three, beautiful women go out for a night of dancing and acting as serial-killer-bait, they are in dressed in nearly identical, positively hideous dresses. (And that white thing Shaw wears in another episode? Four boobs instead of two was not a good look for her.)

Home

What does "home" mean?

My memories of Israel are more vivid and real to me than this place I’ve been “living” since I returned to the States almost four years ago. Choosing where to settle down was hard. I felt a pull to live in Israel. I was also… afraid of making a mistake. So I made the sensible, safe choice.

Since then, constantly longing for Israel, I've had to remind myself again and again that all my life I dreamed of having a home. And I have one. There is a park in front and state land behind. It has a nice kitchen and space for tea parties and dinner guests. My cat and I can curl up on comfortable furniture and we go outside to watch hummingbirds, songbirds, hummingbird moths, and the occasional hawk.

Home. Inigo Montoya said, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

I thought a home was a building, but now I wonder if it means the land and people you belong to.