Digesting the Journey part 2 (part 1)

The last time I was in the Nashville/Knoxville area was on the ecclesiastical Whitsun weekend 2019. My dear friend Elisabeth Swisher went with me to bring her gifts of music, & to be the primary driver. We left Chicago on June 5^th, made our way to Fox Hollow farm & the botanic gardens near Louisville Kentucky, & then brought my Rose Cross program to Nashville.

While we were doing eurythmy during the festival, I felt the presence of Don Brakebill, who was born on a ranch in the Rockford/Maryville area, our next stop on the tour. I spoke it out to the group that Don was smiling, close to the Threshold, but with us. Later, we heard from Charlotte that Don her husband was not doing well. We arrived in Knoxville to do the Festival on ecclesiastical Whitsunday June 9^th 2019. Early that morning Don Crossed the Threshold. We dedicated the program to him, & carried Charlotte & his spirit strongly as a group on that auspicious day.   

After the AGM in Atlanta in October this year, I brought my All Souls workshop to Asheville NC; which was a wild ride, opening my psyche to some intense encounters with the Spirit of that Place. I knew it was important to also take it to my friends in Nashville & Knoxville in the light of Don’s passing, especially as Charlotte & I were in conversation around research into the life between death & rebirth.

I could not find a local friend to be my co-pilot on the journey. My husband & daughter had come with me on a previous occasion, but the timing was off – Was I to travel alone this time?

Then Angela Foster, our amazing host for the recent AGM in Atlanta, contacted me saying ‘I feel we were working together in the night’, she shared an image of a blue circle.

I shared a dream I had that same night inspired by my time in the mountains of Asheville: ‘A circle of women were on the mountain. So many shooting stars. We watched a meteor – a burning streak – hit the ground in the center where were standing, creating a steaming ditch in the red earth.

The sun rose, & I was alone. I walked over to the ditch & something pushed me in. I stepped on the still hot cosmic iron with my bare feet & my left foot starting bleeding; but then the red blood turned into clear fresh water & I knew it was feeding the earth. I awoke to wild winds, & went to the lake to watch the sun rise.

This mixing of the blue & the red was something that has lived in Angela & me since I talked about it in my ‘Cain & Abel’ presentation on the 2 streams for the AGM in New Orleans.

Angela said, why don’t you fly into Atlanta & I will be the driver for the tour!

She was pondering the question & idea that MLK was born & did so much of his work in Atlanta, but he chose to die in Memphis. This needed to be a stop on the road-trip.

We took the idea into our sleep for 3 nights, & it became clear –

YES, we must take this journey, stopping also at the birthplace of Helen Keller, & offering the program in Auburn Alabama for Helena Burkart & her many friends, as well as exploring Muscle Shoals, located alongside the Tennessee River, the unlikely sacred ground for some of America’s most creative & defiant music, born under the spiritual influence of the ‘Singing River‘ as Native Americans called it.

Feeling the call to out-picture the ‘3 sisters’ which resonates so strongly for us, Angela suggested we reach out to our dear friend Deb Abrahams-Dematte, Director of Development for the Anthroposophical Society in America, who was so present at the recent AGM. And so the ball was rolling for our All Souls Southern Tour…

stay tuned as the journey continues…

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POD (Poem Of the Day)

~ I meet the angel guarding the gate
The broken bulk of her wing I bear across my shoulders
Hot is the searing of her sigil in my brow
I roam in my vigil breathing darkly
Annealed in sacred light
Seeking the seal of her cloak
~hag

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22 November 2019 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Venus & Jupiter meet low in the southwest during twilight. On Saturday & Sunday evenings they’ll appear even closer. Right after it’s fully dark, Vega is the brightest star, higher in the west. Its little constellation Lyra extends to its left or lower left. Farther in the same direction, about a fist and a half at arm’s length from Vega, is Albireo, the beak of Cygnus. Farther on in the same direction are Tarazed, & just past it, Altair.

November 22 is the 326th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. 39 days remain until the end of the year. In the ancient astrology, it is the cusp day between Scorpio & Sagittarius. In some years it is Sagittarius, but others Scorpio.

 Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day 

 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Feast Day of Saint Cecilia patroness of musicians.

1744 – Birthday of Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, 2nd First Lady of the United States

1819 – Birthday of Mary Ann Evans known by her pen name George Eliot, an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator & one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Throughout her career, Eliot wrote with a politically astute pen, presenting the cases of social outsiders, small-town persecution & depictions of rural society. Much of the material for her prose was drawn from her own experience. She shared with Wordsworth the belief that there was much value & beauty to be found in the mundane details of ordinary country life.

1963 – Deathday of President John F. Kennedy, assassinated by the CIA.

1963 – Birthday of C. S. Lewis, British writer, critic & Christian apologist – one of the ‘Inklings’, some of whom were academics at Oxford University: Owen Barfield, J. A. W. Bennett, J. R. R. Tolkien, Percy Bates…

1968 – The Beatles release The White Album.

1999 – Birthday of Ultra-Violet Archer, born 11.22.99 butt 1^st on the Full Moon 9:44 pm.

A Poem for your 20^th natal return:

You, who is making the withered tracery sing
Ensouling tress with your haloed heart
Golden in the choral glow.
Linger dear one
Over the calyx of a rose
& listen.
Then ask.
Watch your fingers creasing the lucent strings of rain
The graceful vibrato condensing in a modern mist of sound
A lacework stroking & cloaking your senses
Do you see how the soaked lily inclines
So reverently in the grist of your holy ground?
~hag

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