OF SACRED JOURNEYS

When an Egyptian goose landed on my patio roof directly above my head and called out five times, I knew it was a message that change was en route.

I may have to say goodbye to one of my beloved feline family members. Having been with me for more than a decade, it’s a big deal. But then, regardless of time and age, isn’t it always?

This particular cat person is something of a master who has served so well for so long. Personally, I think he’s just had enough. Done his duty and now wants to move on, have a rest and decide on his next move. Or maybe he already has.

My other favourite left his little furry ginger boy body a few weeks ago. He was 13. But that was much easier for me as he chose to go and spend his last year, living down the road with a neighbor. For a time before then, he used to come home smelling of perfume. I eventually found out who it was and got to experience her perfume first-hand.
His teeth had gotten too inflamed to eat hard food properly before he left and he grew skinnier and skinnier in his final year. But I still delighted in frequent visits with him en route to my home and used to take walks at night to talk to him.

Around the time of the goose’s call, he came to me in a dream and we chatted at length. I think it was then he told me he was leaving. Which happened four or five days later.
I didn’t consciously know at the time, but a couple of mornings later, one of my girl cats who’d also left to live at the same neighbour, did something she’d never done since leaving a few months before the ginger. I awoke one morning to find her sitting on a wooden pedestal in my lounge – the place of feline entry/exit. It was a clear enough message and I knew she (and Sage who’d left) wanted me to know he’d gone.
Just before these two left I had two cats who'd had three litters between them totalling 16 kittens in this household. It was more like a feline farm then and I kept hearing it was the 'changing of the guards'.

It took me a further two weeks to muster up the courage to have Sage's passing confirmed by the neighbour. I somehow needed all that time to bring it to closure properly.

Life is a sacred dance, yet it never seems we are ready for it to end – either for ourselves or our beloveds. Maybe we just never feel ready for change, but change comes, anyway. Ready or not!

Meanwhile, in the interim right here there is much to learn about being fluid and flexible from our companion animals and the other animals that may surround us. I have loads of horses nearby, but also all manner of bird life with a nearby wetland and the sea just down the drag. In summer, there’s southern right whales and bottlenose dolphins in the bay, too. And some seals at a harbor nearby.

I’ve felt it more keenly in recent times – this exquisite harmony that is the nature kingdoms dance. Whether trees, flowers or the aforementioned, they really do love to celebrate the Life they are, purely in their beingness - in whichever ways are given to them to do so.

The matriarchal presence in my garden is a big, beautiful Brazilian pepper tree. Karen Danrich, in her many communications with the nature and animal kingdoms, said it was the very leaves on a tree that were like the etheric record keepers. Storing information of all the consciousnesses they experienced, and then relaying this information back to their kingdom and further afield.

Every living thing seems always to be at work, but doing so in seeming-unending joy and in service. For both their own and all other species within reach, including humans.

What a way to live and serve! No issues with efforting to love the Self more or deal with less-desirable ego elements. They just are. But yes, they are also on their own evolutionary journey...different from the human one.

I’ve really enjoyed one of the great nature poets, William Wordsworth and his take on nature. He captures her essence exquisitely and seems to have a deep spiritual awareness of her ‘inner’ workings.
I’m no poet, but here’s my own paltry contribution - inspired by an afternoon in my garden:



HONOURING NATURE

Life rushes past me, around me, through me
Like the intersection of an etheric way station

At the place of the Standing Person
In the coolth of the Brazilian Pepper tree
I feel God’s touch in the breeze rippling
Through the vibrating leaves

The frangipanes know my desire for
Their beauty and scent around me
So close that I may embrace them
Drink in the perfume of their perfection
In colours of sunset and lily white

They drop on command of my conscious
Appreciation for the Life that they are
Knowing what I like:
fresh blossoms in my hair
There they are - at my feet
As I pass by the tree

Acknowledging my presence
Even as I love and acknowledge theirs
And their gifts; their constant offering

Every tree branch seems upward -inclined
As if applauding the chorus of life eternal
From the wings of earth’s stage
In the busy-buzzy bees; the sun bird’s love call

Life rushes forth in a
Celebratory sharing of
Nature’s grand melody.

A gathering of heavenly forces made manifest
In sheer harmony.