Remember that time in a Summer Visit to Ireland, the last one while I was still the mother of a nuclear family. I went mushroom hunting in the fields near our farm in Denore. Our farm was the third farm in from the road. On the in-between land, land belonging to the Jones, was a group of horses. I left the rutted path surrounded by trees and bushes to look for mushrooms and I found a circle of them in a slight indent on the land about ten feet diameter. I gathered those white cap mushrooms, putting them on a “traineen,” a seeded grass head. I hardly noticed the four horses coming around me, so busy was I, and before I knew it the horse was helping herself to what I thought was my own cache of mushrooms for frying in butter, for sharing with my children. I jumped up in an indignant way and said “no” to the horse and that the mushrooms, large and small, were mine. The horse, ever so slightly, acknowledged my claim, inching back a little. I waved at them and they left me to finish my gathering. I am now amazed at my unfriendliness and lack of sharing what was essentially the horses fare. I am also amazed at my lack of fear.

My dream recently, oh marvelous dream, was that I was in the field again. As I lay there, with my eyes covered and in a fetal position, in that very same indented place, I saw through my fingers the four horses again all around me, with their heads toward me, forming a cross. I could feel that big grizzled mouth and chin of the horse as she touched me. These sweet intelligent beings come to nudge me into being born into a new life, where their friendly support would carry me into their fields, no longer on the rutted paths, but off looking for the circle, where that path is pleased when poured around.

Equinox.

I was encouraged to pray and meditate on the night of the Equinox, at 3.30 in the morning. I was in Cape Charles and I meditated inside for an hour and then on that windy night as it got a little brighter, I walked in a circle singing my prayers. In that park at the top of the street, with a lovely fountain, I was splashed as I walked around, as the wind caught the drops of water and flung them my way. I walked to the left, just in case it would help me find my way better in my unconscious. My prayer was to reach balance, just as the earth and sun reached a balance just then.

The balance of taking focus upon spirit, away from the earthly things, to laugh with God, to cry with God, to praise with God and to practice with God.