I was invited or more accurately was able to go the Cape Charles, because a friend found herself there without her favorite nieces who were too busy at College. I had a great time and while there was some remnant of some storm flapping about over the water, it did not stop me finding a sheltered place and having a few dips in the not so cold bay water. The guys on the pier puled in lots of fish and the sunsets were magnificent. 

On my way to the beach I called one of my old friends so she could commiserate with me when I told her I had been reprehended about not wearing a mask. The person involved with the reprimand was only trying to keep his family safe and saw this hinging on the weakest link in the whole of life and I was becoming that person. I swallowed my uppidy pride and promised to work with them 

When I called my old friend for sympathy she told me she had not asked me to the beach with her this year because of the idea that I would not wear my mask and world not have the courtesy to be tested before going to join them. I was hurt, felt a little knife was put into me ad my stomach dropped and my heart shrivelled. 

I got two dreams, one from a book ad one f rom a client, The one from my client was descriptive of how she was walking in the chambers of Jesu’s heart, a pink place, and that there were knife wounds hear and there. I knew how he felt in that moment. The other dream related o the bleeding heart of Jesus and came from a book. 

As I was driving my car and had a number of hours ahead of me, I delved into the ins and outs of the whole mask situation. In the summer I had loosely planned to go to her house to celebrate her birthday after the fact by having tea outside but it did not happen. I asked her why. She said because of the “the mask”. She said she did not think I would wear my mask. More fodder for the big untidy haystack covering all my mask grumps. 

She did say I was her favorite outdoors person, fire maker and sharer, and outdoor painter and mandala maker. But the perception of me as an unmask wearer  – and probably not too inaccurate – got in the way. How I missed meeting with her and had no idea I was the cause. 

At the beach I continue with my chanting and meditation and found myself going over the mask conflict all again and catching myself – after the chanting had begun. I fell into a reverie of talking to her. Only this time I caught myself mid thought, emotion, feeling, and seeing how I was rooting this conflict in my guts, watering it , giving it all warmth, airing it with all my heart and burying it deep with all the other grumps of my life in my first chakra and growing a tree of life that is all raggy and might fall and kill me dead for my trouble. 

So I stopped and said: “May you be well and happy” prayer for her and hers. I followed it up with seeing the light in her, all the way down her back bone knowing she is a soul, the same as me, connected to me for some lifetimes. I truly can wish her well and not let a flimsy mask, sweat inducing, black spot growing on lip and nose, get in the way. 

Then as I went on in the chanting it came to me that I needed to see her as God’s soul, to see her soul. To see her backbone infused with a light from God. Now that felt better. It became a dimensional thing, leaving my guts and getting into the area above the heart, where the light of old shines. So what was a problem for me, a stumbling block rose me up with a stepping stone. 

Meditation is like a dream and in the last couple of months, I have glanced sideways and caught a glimpse of images within the meditation. The remembered images are an Angel at the left side of a big white marble alter. Another was of a golden clothed knee coming out of black darkness. A recent one was of a baby rolling onto the floor right in front of me, where I was meditating. And the best one of all was of a youthful version of the friend above with bangs and black hair, staring at me briefly, in my bed before she went off to the left. She made her way into a dream later as a helpful person, a Joan of Arc savior type of archetype shared in the next paragraph.  

I had a dream very recently, and there was a great tree that started to become uprooted and was shaking around to left and right of a city street I was on. It was hard to see where to go to be safe. Then I saw the young woman, running toward us with this huge tree under her arms. I could see where she had cut it down close to the bottom. It seemed that it was no trouble to her to do this work in an instant. She was the same one I saw in meditation, with bangs, young face, looked like my friend. It s always good to get help from an unexpected source.

The help came as a result of leaning into the light in meditation and trying to rearrange myself so the grumps could be cut down and they would no longer be starving the tree of life in me. I am excited that I can put myself through the wringer and get a new line of laundry, with shining flowing words: “blessings, healing, light, and love”, blowing in that wind of Spirit. Love from Rose.