All posts by Barbara Ocskai

Thoughts About This and That

I’m A Little Mental. Yeah.

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“Sanity is a cozy lie.”  ~ Susan Sontag

NERVES!  I’m a little mental.  Yeah.  Carrying the weight of the world.  Carrying my own weight, which is heavy enough.  I find myself dangerously wide open.  The nervous system in my body feels infinite.  As does my ancestral lineage.   And yours.  And the next persons.  Immeasurable energy that goes on and on connecting me back, back, back into the future.   Get out of my head and into my heart!  Standing in Tadasana and raise my arms straight up to greet it.  Reach it.  My nerves on fire, humming with the force of it all.  The nervous system of all of Creation.

PULL BACK!  Every cell of me snaps back.  Safe in my skin.  Heart beating.  Blood pumping.  A sly uninvited smile creeps welcome onto my face growing more broad with each passing second until it can grow no wider lest it become peals of wild nervous laughter.   I let go – howl with hysteria!!

Crazy times.  These are crazy time.  These are crazy times.  Crazy.

 “I plan to win by losing only
Every time but one”                                                                                                                                                                                   ~ Excerpt from Another Poem, Geoffrey G. O’Brien

Light the fire.  Burn the sage.  Stand back and go with your nerves they said.  I said.  You said.  Who said?  And dream a BIG little dream.  “The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades.”

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

 

Thoughts About This and That

Mute For Prayer

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Wondering mind… I follow.  I am given a vision.  A tiny spark lights the end of a thin metal rod – like a radio antenna, only bent at odd angles.  It is a very dark place, reminding me of the deep dark forest in a nursery rhyme, tangled roots and the bark of tall trees, scarcely illuminated.  I recognize it is me holding the rod, the tiny spark of a flame.  In that moment, every cell of my body was alight, feeling the Four Winds living in my family of origin.  Connecting us. The East fire burns.  The South – we are all of the earth, made of clay.  The waters of the West running through each of us, feminine energy.  My sisters and I.  Our mother, an Ancestor sitting in the North, keeping watch, guiding.  Fanning the flame.

Four Winds in the Four of Us 2

A’ho Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

 “The hurt of one is the hurt of all. The healing of one is the healing of All.”  ~  Phil Lane, Jr.

 

Ceremony, Drums, Moccasins, Workshops

A Handle On It

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How am I doing?

My front screen door has never fit well into the frame.  A few days ago, I am pulling hard, it takes an effort to close the door and snap.  In a split second, I’m on my butt with the handle broken off in my hand.  Unharmed and laughing.  I right a stack of books, toss the handle in the trash.  Then toilet won’t flush – the handle mechanism rusted through.  Hmmm.  Two broken handles in one day.  What is this telling me?

How am I doing in the practical?  How am I doing in the mystical?

NTD kitchen – No dairy.  No grains. No broccoli. No shellfish. No sugar.  No problem.  The menu and shopping list and time.  There is such abundance, we will eat well from the bounty of our Mother.  In gratitude, I offer a blessing for the water, the earth and the hands who tended the seeds, the salmon, fisherman and four-legged.  The meadow remembers the patterns of our feet dancing gratefully to give back to our Grand Mother Turtle, for her infinite generosity.  She knows we are coming.  I feel my connection.

Moccasin commission for a dance helper – completed  with the help of Osprey, Eagle, Pileated woodpecker and Dragonfly.

A drum birthing day is scheduled for the day after my return from the Night Turtle Dance ceremony.  I have prayed and prepared, hides and hoops are waiting.

The screen door handle remains broken.  The old toilet handle has been replaced with a “universal” handle.  Oddly this mundane object leaves me feeling a connection to the whole.  I feel the need to test it by reaching out, speaking – connecting the desires of my heart with the want of the mind.  How am I doing?

There’d been a chartreuse green cricket-like bug in my bathroom, I’d seen it on two consecutive nights.  This morning I found it treading water in the toilet (ironic), I scooped him out, set him free.  A juvenile Nuthatch crashed into the slider – there seemed to be a collision between him and a gray squirrel, the squirrel ran off.  I gathered up the little bird, flopping on his back, held him tenderly and singing until he flew away into the Noble fir.  And a Crane fly tangled in an abandon spider’s web, I rescued him from the stickiness and watched him fly free.  Not even noon, already three lives saved.

“…and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do – determined to save the only life you could save.”  Mary Oliver, The Journey

There’s an orphan juvenile Wood Duck on the lake, doing the only thing he can, saving himself.  How am I doing?

A’ho Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

Summer 2015 Workshop Schedule

Medicine Objects, Moccasins, Thoughts About This and That

Thick-skinned

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I’ve thought a lot about thick-skin lately.  About having it.  About not having it.

Buffalo hide is very think, making for sturdy moccasin.  Some people who come to make their moccasin lament how difficult it can be to work with.  The tools aren’t adequate they allege.   Is it true the hide is too difficult to work with?  Is it true the tools aren’t sufficient for the job?  It can be quite humbling.  I know.  And many times I’ve been told I have strong hands.  I am able to cut, punch pilot holes and sew multiple layers of the thick hide.  Ultimately they do too.   It’s a matter of determination I think.

Life isn’t always easy, neither is medicine work.  Or the Red Road.   It requires something of me, of us – a determination, a will to step into the hard stuff, gutting it out.  Perseverance.

I’m not sure how many spiders live in my bathroom these days.  Long ago I made an agreement with them – they can have the top half of the room, I’ll take the bottom.  Lately it seems that more and more, we are meeting in the middle.  While they are taking liberties, I allow.  I am reminded of what Eleanor Roosevelt said, and I paraphrase, “…we teach people how to treat us….”.  I guess this goes for spiders too.  It takes thick-skin to be in relationship, to be in the world where it is seldom nice for long.  What am I allowing?  Where do I draw the line?  Pull back?  Retreat?  Internally my skin so thin it tears to shreds even though I wear the toughness of thick hide for the world to see.  How do I stand right in there, stake a claim and assert my will or idea of it?  Truly having thick-skin or at least the back of a duck for it (whatever) to roll off.

What does self-love need today (besides oatmeal with molasses)?What sweetness and salve do I apply to soothe the tears, to bring about the thickening of the scar tissue to become impervious to the harshness of life?  Life still goes on, clashes occur, children are starving, the land raped.  The delta between understanding and being understood can be so wide, too wide to cross.  800lb. gorilla are often in the room or swept under the carpet.  The scars of life and comforting balm of self-love makes me tougher while age will thin my skin.  Interesting how this happens if I allow for it.

It’s a practice and it’s process.  So too is crafting moccasin.  Step by step, stitch by stitch – no matter how thick the hide.  It gets easier.

A’ho Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

August 29 & 30 will be the next moccasin crafting workshop at Soul Proprietor.  Join in, test out the thickness of your skin.  And of course I am happy to sew for you.   A full listing of Summer 2015 workshop offerings can be found here.

Ceremony, Drums, Moccasins, Thoughts About This and That

Parched

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The BC fires smoke has me feeling pinned here at the lake.  The sky is matte gray, slightly moist.  The water is flat save for the circles created by dragonflies touching the glass.  The trees that ring Echo Lake are still brilliant green against reflection and sky, yet I feel thirst.  The lake level is quickly receding.

Each day I bless the water.  This has been my practice since the past spring equinox.  There is only one Water.  It flows in all forms.  You. Me.  The big water – Grand Mother Ocean.  Rivers.  Snow.  Blessing the water is blessing myself, blessing us and our Mother. Our unique, as we know it , planet blesses us with fresh water.  Our home, our Mother, gives us life.  Water. Is. Life.

On my circle walks, I find the Timothy grass waving in the breeze, it is taller than I am now.  Some of the Bracken fern are too, a few out stretch the grasses. The look strong like their ancestors the beginning of time.  Why didn’t I pick those fiddleheads?  (missed opportunity) The orchard  grass is chest high, blooming, beautiful.  I find the Horsetail is petering out already, weeks early.  Out my kitchen window are giant fireweed, perhaps 12 feet tall.  They number fewer than a dozen of  plants.  How old I wonder?  It looks as though it will be a banner year for blackberries, the bushes laden with hard green berry buds.  But will it?   I’ve seen a lot of shriveled berries too, petrified ornaments among the withered canes.  Lack of water.  I think of the bears.  What is the high country like?  Down here it is parched.

I was very disappointed Inslee didn’t call for conservation measures NOW when he declared draught in Washington.  I am doing my best now to conserve.  Join me?

I think I was 16 when I had a vision of myself as an old women.  I was in the desert, wind chimes all around (ha!).  Will the patterns persist?  Is the desert coming to me?  What does the future hold for us?  The Polar Pioneer en route.  Bought and paid for politicians.  Stupid Humans.

“Every day brings more news that Shell’s 2012 near-catastrophes weren’t a fluke,” said Travis Nichols of Greenpeace, which organized protests while Polar Pioneer was berthed at Terminal 5 at the Port of Seattle.

“Last week we learned Shell will only be able to drill one well at a time because they deliberately ignored the Obama administration’s regulations to protect walruses.  This week we learn the company can’t keep its fleet in working order even before it reaches the Arctic.” ~

Off my soapbox now but still banging the drum.  I’ve got moccasin patterns to sew, happily.  The blue full moon and ceremony is coming soon.  Wopila Grand Mother Turtle for your generosity!

A mother Northern Flicker is feeding her juvenile son at the suet now as I write.  It’s a good day to be alive.  A good day to be still, be silent, open to the countless gifts that surround me.   I’m breathing and finding balance.  Making an offering.   Over and out.

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

Ceremony, Drums, Medicine Objects, Moccasins, Thoughts About This and That

And Ye shall Receive

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Who said, ” Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.”?

In my ties for the Tree the first year I went to the Dance, my overarching prayer was to truly know and integrate self-love.  I’d been dancing around the notion for a several years unable to really connect my head and my heart.  In the year that followed, an unexpected initiation brought an answer to this prayer.  My second dance, how do I multiply abundance was a concern I took to the Tree.  A subtle shift of perception opened the way forward, again answering my pray.

Leading with my heart and managing my mind/ego, among other things, came through the day I left for the Dance.  I’d thought I had procrastinated my ties.  Instead, I realized that unconsciously I had waited.  Waited until I could get out of the way allowing for what was really needed to come though.  I had waited for my ego to get out of the way.

The Dance was a hard one in many ways and still I felt cradled in exactly the best way possible.  Incredible lightning and thunder, a downpour.  Intense heat.  Dust.  Confrontations with myself.  Uninterrupted connectivity to the Tree.  A full moon.  The drum.  Songs.  Opportunities to listen.  Hearing the sound of my flesh being cut from my body, incredibly loud in my ears, like stormy ocean waves crashing to the beach.   The fullness of my prayers.  Babies.  Catching my ego flare.  Ravens on the wing, their voices evoking joy in my body and calling my attention to them over and over.  Raven, who’s medicine supports my going into the darkness of my mind to bring out the light of understanding as loving kindness to illuminate my heart.

I came away from the Dance with more questions than answers.  My landing, or re-entry as some folks call it, was immediate and intense.  Day one, I laid low, oddly baking a peach pie in 90+ degree heat.  I avoided the festivities of the Fourth of July.  I found it a BS celebration.   Freedom and independence really a bore that pissed me off.  Freedom and independence my ass!  Not for the Indigenous Peoples, nor the African Peoples, or even the exploited Chinese.  How can I possible celebrate when this truth lay beneath the colorful noise of fireworks?  Sometime during this day was the first time I got a message about how the prayers in this years ties would be answered.  Then again the next day, the same message and a tool for guidance.  Medicine that has waited for the right time to come forward, augment my work.  I admit, I’m afraid.  I turn in, I laugh in the face of my fear – for on the other side of darkness is light, liberation, a happy heart.   Isn’t this what I prayed for?  Yes, and still, I wasn’t ready for shadow work.  It’s time though.  No more dipping my toes into the dark waters.  Time to dive in.  Having medicine for my personal work, having medicine be my work in the world, I shall receive.  My willing heart will lead me into the scary crevasses of my mind.  The medicine and self-love will illuminate the darkness.  Everything I want is on the other side of fear.

These ways are “not old ways, they are alive and we are living them today”, said an Elder.  Just like the dust in my moccasin, the Tree and the Dance are alive in me.  Answering my prayers.

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

 

 

 

 

Ceremony, Drums, Medicine Objects, Moccasins

The Dance

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I’ve felt the tree calling for months.

I’m packed.  I have a lot for one person. The creäture comforts of being human .  The outdoor plants, watered and moved to the shade on the West of the house, to spare the precious water in the predicted heat.  Water. Is. Life.

I procrastinated my prayers until this morning, feeling the importance.

What is before?  What am I moving towards?  Gratitude for where I’ve been.  Who I’ve become.  It’s hard work showing up to myself.  I undertake it gladly.  The past is behind me.

Prayers for my fractured family.  Grosbeak medicine coming early this morning.

Ina Maka.

To move from the heart.  Trusting my head will stay out-of-the-way long enough for grace to move through me.

Prayers for the human family.  Worth.  Healing.  Enough.

The bones of my Ancestors.   My feet dancing patterns in the dust, on the bones of my Ancestors.

In gratitude.  For. All. Who. Will. Dance.  Prayers of blessings and protection.  In. Gratitude.

The Mystery.

All into the ties.  The robe.

From my heart.  For the collective.  For All My Relations.

A’ho Mitakuye Oyasin

 

Rattles, Thoughts About This and That, Workshops, Yoga

Kurmasana

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“Your body is a spiritual tool. Appreciate the miracle that it is.”                     ~  Swami Radha

My body found its way into Kurmasana in this mornings practice, one of my favorite poses.  As I rounded my spine, folding forward to become the tortoise my mind flashed back to my teachers Swami Radhakrishnananda, then Deborah and then Charles.  The beginning of consciousness and spiritual awakening – studying myself through yoga.

Settling into the asana, hips release.  Noticing the depth and ease of my breath.  Lengthening the curve of my spine, soles together, chest nearly touching the floor, forehead rests against heels, arms extending until my hands become flippers.  I am at rest, buoyant on the water of our Mother.  Tears fill my eyes.  Water is life, it courses through me.  I feel deep connection.  No separation.   The wisdom of the tortoise allows me to see myself from above through her eyes – see myself as Light, as Water.  I am both star stuff and from the earth’s molten core.  I am the water.  I send up a blessing for the Water – protection and restored health, for its purity.

I relax even more into the pose.  My breath slows.  I can feel my heart beating, the electromagnetic force of love.  My mind moves gently, tracing the path to this moment.  Eastern philosophy comes full circle to Turtle Island.  Grandmother Turtle, my home.  I am at home within my skin.  My shell (home) a place to pull into and a place to extend out from.  Safe.

I survey my entire body.  Can I relax further?  Can I deepen still?  Can I know myself as the wise tortoise, as the Mother, not only in this moment but into every moment?  I’d like to stay this way forever.  I allow myself a few more minutes – breathing, at peace, mind still knowing I am in the right place.  Precious silence.

Regretfully I must move.  Thankfully I am moving towards medicine crafting.  Buffalo awaits, a client soon to arrive, new rattles are coming forward.  More gifts from our Mother, from our brethren.  I feel incredibly supported, connected and free.  In gratitude.  Om…

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations