When you feel ready.... by Deva Daricha

Dear Daricha,

 

Thank you for sharing with me in our brief phone conversation three weeks ago tonight. I glimpsed a world broken, bare, numb, scorched and deeply imprinted with death and devastation.  I heard a distant whisper of your grief but I sensed such depth of pain it left me silent.

 

I am sorry that I had no words then to express empathy for your immediate life challenges.  My daily challenges as a single mother to my chronically ill son feel temporarily small in contrast to your loss.

 

My parents still carry the scars of the Lara Bushfires of forty years ago, even though their house remained unscathed. 

 

After hearing your words I reflected upon fire:  the fire of creation and the fire of destruction. 

 

I cannot see, sense or smell the charred remains of your home and physical dwelling place.  Where I am I see the spark of awareness and consciousness that you have ignited, nourished and reflected in those whom have crossed your path, entered your training and come into your life.  That too appears to me as a fire: a wild fire; of a very different kind.

 

I might have only met you and spoken to you on less than a half dozen of occasions in my life.  Yet I am certain that I would not enjoy the vitality, strength, courage and health I have at this point in my life without your work and your labor of love.

 

In 1994 I sat within the Shaman's Circle, two or three times. 

 

I recall you telling us of the unconscious shamanic initiation adolescents often experience.

 

As a thirteen year old, whilst painting an owl in the art room at school I became so immersed in the painting that I did not notice that a fellow student had removed my chair from behind me.  After a lengthy time standing I made to sit.  There was nothing beneath me.  I remember looking left with my eyes and the horror upon my teacher's face as I fell in slow motion (or so it felt to me) to the floor.  At the point of hitting the floor I felt such acceptance and gratitude because it occurred to me that I would become a cripple and in one of my favourite books as a child "What Katy Did", Katy became crippled by an accident.  Of course being crippled was not the point....after years of suffering and inflicting suffering upon others Katy became a better person after modelling herself on Cousin Helen and changing what she could.  Thus as I lay immediately paralysed upon the floor I felt a calm acceptance and joy of my opportunity to "better myself".  The paralysis lasted six weeks throughout which time I enjoyed much solitude.

 

About two years ago now, as I parked my car beside a tree on a suburban nature strip, at 11am on a Sunday near a friend's house.  My son was with me.  As I opened his door to unharness him a Boobook owl flew from the tree, dragging its claws through my hair.  It was the same owl I painted as an adolescent.

 

My son has undergone ten lifesaving operations to date. 

 

Thoughout his birth and for three of those operations I have felt him hover between life and death. 

 

Surrender has not been something that has always come easily to me in this life time. But surrendering to the potential death of my only son, I have much practised. 

 

And I have found such deep peace when I have been with "death" in those times when he is so near.

 

A couple of months ago, we attended a CD launch for a friend's band.  As he is so often ill and hospitalized we rarely have such opportunities. Although I had not danced since I became pregnant with him, the music entered my veins and I began to move with the rhythm within.  Very soon my son seemed completely liberated as he began moving with the pulse of the music.  I had never seen him so joyous and exhuberant.  It was like he was possessed and no one looking upon him would have known he was lame.  He danced with me as I always yearned for a male to dance with me...with complete abandonment......and the joy within each of us and between us grew and suddenly I felt the depth and intimacy of our connection.....as I have only ever experienced in those moments before when he is close to death.....and it was the same, Daricha.....at the centre.....it was the same.

 

I cannot write more now.....so many responsibilities and work to complete.

 

When you are ready.......we are here.

 

For I believe that you can help us in a way that no other can.

 

Peace and Love

 

Astariah