October 2008

Well, I'm holding my belly today, having just arrived home from an unexpected appendectomy.

Life in my surgery ward was full of scenes and characters from a Dickens’ novel, mixed with the fast pace of a hospital drama. Everyone was scared, yet at the same time being brave and resilient. The woman in the bed on one side of me had been told that her pancreatic cancer had moved to her liver, so I massaged her feet as we talked into the night about life and death, and she read from her farm Bible stained and worn like a cookbook. The next morning she was whisked away into isolation.

There were more poignant stories in the beds on the other side of me. The halls were dark and poorly lit, and all of us were hoping we could get home where it was possible to actually rest throughout the night and begin to recoup. Some of us were not going to make it home. I was one of the fortunate ones. 

I am very grateful for the excellent care I received and the healing dreams I had while there. At one point I realized how I had been on a genuine healing journey in the last few months, and one very strong thread through it all was birth and re-birth. As I lay there in the semi-dark listening to nurses doing their rounds, I became aware again that everything has meaning, and that even this odd experience had meaning.

I let my mind relax and remembered that the Mayan Calendar divides our lives into four cycles of thirteen years. At our 52nd birthday we begin the cycles again, only as a wise person. Thirteen days before, I had turned 52, and was now being rebirthed as a wise child.  It suddenly  seemed so significant that the lyposcopic surgery procedure, performed by entering my umbilical chord, my birth chord, had swelled my belly with air, like I was pregnant, and had then removed my appendix, an organ which had meaning in the past, but which now no longer serves me. This healing crisis  was a release. No doubt there is more to this that will be revealed.

It is autumnal equinox as I write this, and we are bathed in the balance of  equal days and nights. I walked a beautiful ‘chakra’ labyrinth on a neighbour’s land and spent the time thinking about how health is about balance and proportion, both within the world and within our bodies. I am using probiotics to return the balance of friendly bacteria to my intestines – an important step because the antibiotics tend to wipe out all the bacteria in the body, good and bad. I’m also taking arnica (for tissue trauma) and hypericum to assist the healing, along with good nourishing vitamins.

The world likewise is having parts of its system removed that no longer serve it (the financial markets made of false numbers), and bringing in healthier relationships with investments that serve the whole system. The old makes way for the new. We are all certainly ready for the rebirth of the world into one where we humans are co-operative rather than  controlling.

After walking the labyrinth, I was honoured to be present with a native friend as she smoked their new sacred pipe for the first  time. It was also about balance. The bowl represents the feminine, the womb. The stem represents the masculine, the action of the prayers. The pipe itself brings heaven and earth together through the smoke of our prayers. As we gave thanks individually, we acknowledged the wisdom of the ancestors and the stories they have brought, as well as the inspirational light that represents the new stories we are to co-create; the gifts and blessing of the living nature all around us, and the new honouring  and healthy relationships with nature we will in turn nurture.  We felt deep gratitude. The stress of my hospital stay drifted away with the pipe smoke as my separation from everything around me vanished.

Well it’s time for me to get some rest, but I would like to share with you information about a concert in Toronto coming up this fall that is a celebration of this very thing. Battenberg will be playing guitar, Steve Raiman the piano and Debbie Danbrook is a Master Shakuhachi Flautist (www.healingmusic.com -  See concerts for details). Their autumn trilogy concerts’ purpose is to align the listener with the rhythms of nature through the vibration of  the Universe.

“We as human beings are not separate from the rest of creation. Our voices and music and vibrations are a part of the whole of creation. Let us participate in the great symphony with respect and concern for all the other participants”

Email Kim at spirit@algonquintea.com