Moriah knew about the rituals of scapegoating.  What started out as a ritual of putting all the blame for evil onto the head of one person and murdering them was no longer practiced. It moved into the idea that a goat could do just as well and the goat was led out into the wilderness, the bog or some such place and sacrificed in some way for the sin of others. 

• 

Moriah was certain she was blamed and then shunned for some small grains of sand. Her good friend, who had a small place at Galway Bay scapegoated her once. Moriah loved to go there. But she became uninvited for depositing little mounds of sand all over her friend’s thatched cottage.  Moriah liked to swim in the cold water and dressing and leaving the sandy beach was impossible not to bring sand on her self and in her shoes. Nothing was said to Moriah about her great catastrophic errors of the sand, but Moriah was never invited back. They remained friends, as heir house were in the same village. 

Over the years, Moriah would hear of all those invited to the place by the beach but she had to hang her head with the closing of this avenue to the beach for her. No body seemed to want to get into the sand of that dune and eke out the jewels of fractured relationship to be found there, least of all Moriah.

The reason that this all came back to her again is that this same friend came to her to tell her, Moriah, what sounded like a very positive dream. In the dream Moriah, was interpreted to represent a playful mystic to her friend. The dreamer, her friend, was told by her interpreter, that she should be more like Moriah.

The story and the sand deposits came out with the telling of the dream. For some reason Moriah had a feeling she was slapped around the mouth as she was told this “delightful dream about herself” because of all the bad feelings of exclusion and being blamed over the years because of those gains of sand.

She had been thinking about scapegoating and she wondered how this meshed in with this dream story. How was blame shifted from one to the other in order to make the other feel good and how had she managed to be cast off as the scapegoated friend, when it came to the beach?

• 

Moriah decided to bring it to Druid Bernie’s the next time they sat under the hedge and tossed up such things in the air to see where they would land.

When the class had dispersed and she had her favorite teacher and relative to herself, she gave him some lunch and told him of her feelings about scapegoating.

• 

He said that the old way was to put the blame on others. Now there is a new way and that was to love your neighbor, with your whole heart and soul and your creator also, which translates into loving the ones that blame you.

Moriah was a bit shocked at this idea of a law that brought peace and tranquilly if you could practice loving those who you felt hurt you.

“It all goes back to the idea that we are all one, and we are your brother’s keeper, and that everyone is saved in the end, and you do not have to fix anyone, except yourself. Your friend, your sister needs to move forward on the path toward love and you will not help her while you are sending her lots of angry and mad thoughts.”

Just then one of Moriah’s back teeth got stuck on her special bread and popped out. She quietly spat it out but not before Druid Bernie noticed. He thought all her complaining about everything over the years might be responsible. Moriah thought some more about that slapping around her mouth and began to wonder was it a self-inflicted slapping, due to the amount of time she had squandered thinking about others and what she perceived about being excluded. It might have been better to avoid all that teeth grinding. She would keep the tooth. Perhaps the dwarves would be able to fix it back in.

“You mean that I have to sit down and get out of my head about my friend, and in that space, I have to listen for the voice of my maker, and in that way feel a change in my heart, until I can look her way and smile and wish her the very best.”

“Yes, yes, now you are getting it. When you feel that smile coming onto your face, after sitting with the body, mind and heart in silence, after you have brought down something from above, now you have something powerful to give. When you send this blessing out to her, you are helping her through the spirit of the one who made it all. You do not have to fix her or hate her but in that sweet moment bless her. The voice of your maker can speak to you through dream or vision, through image or drawing and/or in meditation.Just turn yourself in the right direction and that shining light from above will shine into you.” 

Speaking with the Druid had calmed her and they pulled some wooden logs near the fire and sat on them and put their feet out in front, as the embers cooled. 

  

The Druid suggested they meditate for twenty minutes more or less and they sat up straight and closed their eyes and the Druid made some invocations to the Maker of it all. Moriah kept coming back to the thought of listening for the voice of her maker. She felt a distinctive movement between her head and her heart,  that moved out beyond the top of her head, that joined with her breathing in her chest. She never felt it before and knew this movement blessed her. 

She fell into a vision after a bit and saw a beautiful bird over some water, springing up through light colored pebbles. The voice of her creator for her in that moment was held in that water of life, in the flight of her soul bird to find her now.

When she looked around she saw the Druid turning the corner at the end of the lane. As his robe vanished around the corner she thought about his teaching, and bowed her head to try and catch the humility of a blessing for her friend. She would send her a card; she would make her a wreath. The end. 

This blog was updated next day to include the paragraph about the fallen out tooth.