It has been said that the difference between a shaman and a “crazy” person is that whereas a shaman is able to act in ecstasy, able to journey and bring something back of value to the client and/or community, a “crazy” person is “locked in irons” like a sailboat bound in place by an ill wind going round and round unable to complete a journey.

A couple of weeks ago i was honored to be asked to be a witness in a friend’s soul retrieval. The presiding shaman asked me if i had ever performed a soul retrieval myself? hmmm. This was not the time for prolonged reflection on my part. i extracted what i took to be the contextual essence of the question: had i done a soul retrieval within the context of the tradition being practiced by the client and the shaman? “No,” was my simple answer.

However, the question clung to me weaving a web of deep inquiry. Ultimately the beast with the multi-faceted gaze, crept up on me and injected me with a venom which was also an antidote. And i awoke as if from a coma hissing, “YESYESYESSS.” Hissing with a recognition that work i do – interwoven writing, art, music – is species of soul retrieval. i retrieve wisps, bits an pieces, of a collective soul. i have to admit, it was a relief to realize i’m not just a crazed scribbler on cave walls. oh, wait – that’s exactly what i am:)

Reblogged from Sounds of Stonehenge:

My story is to a great degree in the lack of a story. My mother’s people wandered back and forth across the borders of what is now Canada and the Midwest. They were fur trappers Scottish and Québécois. They worked up and down the Fox river.

When times demanded, they settled in upper peninsula Michigan and Wisconsin. Bohemian and Norwegian flavors were added to the mix. They ran an ice house. We have some photos of them harvesting the ice from the river in winter.

In 1976 my mom, Sarah, brothers, Malcolm and Thomas, and i were clearing out the house of my grandmother Rose and Grandfather Malcolm in De Pere Wisconsin. In the attic I came across a small box. Inside the box were some shells, small stones and dried heather. Along with these was a scrap of paper containing a scribbled a note: “To Martha MacGregor upon her leaving Scotland, 1864.”

I cried thinking about how much Martha must have loved and been loved by her people and place. I also found a pair of beautifully beaded baby moccasins. My mother told me that they were a gift to the first baby born in Fort Howard, who was one of my ancestors. She never said more about it.

Concerning my dad’s side I know even less. About my dad’s mom, i know nothing. My dad’s dad was a union man with a temper. Irish. Family hailed from county Cork. Through the generations worked their way from east to west ending up in Decatur Ill.

I myself was born in Glen Cove, Long Island. Moved to Houston. Wandered many places as a young woman, California, Arizona, Soviet Union, England… Finally, in 1990 my handfasted companion and i found our home in the shores of the Salish Sea.

Love this place. Finally feel home. Never leaving. If there’s reincarnation, never ever leaving.

Coming Out, Going Deep
An Emerging Transcultural Identity

“I knew I was different from a very young age.”

“I never felt at home in my skin.”

“I would look into the mirror and see a stranger.”

Again and and again these are the sort of quotes I would hear describing the painful experience of growing up transgender within a cultural matrix which refused to accept the true self. It suddenly struck me why it is that I have always had such tender empathy with transgender people. I myself had the experience of having been born into the wrong cultural container for my spirit.

When I was four years old we moved from the place of my birth in the northeast to a completely unfamiliar gulf coast region. I felt disconnected and alone. I was four. I followed my instinct like rain follows thunder. My instinct was to disappear into the furthest corner of the backyard, gather stones put them in a circle and build a fire. Then I lit the fire and as I watched the smoke rise I lifted my hands, danced and sent my prayers up in the smoke and out into the four directions.

I still remember this so vividly, because the feeling has never left me that at that moment my heart sprouting wings. In the space between breaths I had traveled all that vast distance touched home, and home had touched me. All my love and longing had been received and I felt reconnected to the ground of my birth, as well as having been gifted a connection this new ground. From then on, that place was my safe place. I could always take refuge in those pines. Of course, my mom quickly discovered my fire making. My mom had an amazing nose. She told me I could pray any way I liked, but I was too young to play with fire.

When I was seven some kids at the bus stop asked me if I believed in god. I thought, what an interesting question and answered that it depended upon what they meant by god They started listing religions in descending order of acceptability baptist being first, catholic being a marginal middle and jewish being an infamous last. When I shook my head in the negative to each in turn and they reached the end of the list, I could tell by the frightened, appalled-angry expressions on their faces that I had somehow moved beyond the pale without taking a single step. They looked at me like i was some sort of ghoul.

I spent the afternoon perched on the brick wall in the backyard trying to imagine what god might look like. Suddenly, the sun dropped out of the sky and came to reset on the edge of the rooftop. And bobbed there weightless as wood on water. I was amazed that I could be so close to this blazing orb of golden-white light, looking straight into such a fiery eye, and not be blinded and burned to a crisp. Even when the sun went back up into the sky a little piece stayed inside me. I was so grateful and happy. I tended my little flame on the sly keeping the experience to myself. I had learned.

When I was around nine I sat back against the wall, eyes in the evergreens and tried to find the words for myself to describe just how it was that i was different. Maybe then I could figure out how I fit into things. I could find my place in school, with my peers, in the world of work. The words came to me. I belong to the earth. The earth does not belong to me. I was so relieved to have the understanding. Although right on the heels of that understanding came the recognition that I was not going to fit in – every mark of success I had seen had been rooted in domination of one sort or another. I did not want to have dominion over anything. I did not even believe in “things”. Every pebble, person, and puddle was alive in my experience.

I had some dreams in my twenties that told which ways to go and not go and who to go with and so forth. I never stopped being a dreamer. But outside my cloistered thicket of indigo recognitions, the worlds of cracked concrete and rusting iron I encountered did not seem to have much use for me. And I didn’t have much use for those worlds. I sort of became a wandering ghost in my own life. This led to a crisis, in my thirties. Either live fully as myself, or die fully. I did both. I had to let parts of me die, in order that parts of me could come to the fore. I had to let a willingness to live in fear pass away writhing in agony, bitten by a river snake big as a cedar’s dreams are deep.

I am much older now and long ago realized I am not that unique. I am hard to place for most people I meet and as such tend to be perceived as either trivial or threatening or most interestingly not perceived at all. However, I no longer interpret myself as a failed dominant culture person. I am something altogether different. Something emergent. I am a transcultural person. This is the way the spirits made me, and this is good. We are all individuals and parts of communities. We are all human beings. I just put one foot in front of the other and trust the ground.

Recently I went to a gathering in the shores of the Salish Sea. The Sprits with me had me drum for the Sprits in the dancers, feed the Spirits in the Sound and sing freely riding the waves of the essence of awareness in my Elk-Alder curragh. Afterwards, after I left the location of ceremony, a slight feeling of vulnerability did a bit of a dance macabre at flickering edges of my consciousness. That night a Spirit person came to me and let me know that it was all right to show my “true skin” now. That I “would not burn up”. I awoke awakened, in an old new way.