(Written in August 2005)<\/p>\n
I was thinking about the line from Mary Oliver: \u201cwhat will you do with your one wild and precious life?\u201d and how it always makes me feel bad, like I have wasted mine.\u00a0 Well, have I wasted it?\u00a0 I think she\u2019s talking to people who\u2019ve lived small conventional lives, lives of denial.\u00a0 And what about lives of greed and power and cruelty?\u00a0 If my life has been narrow, if I\u2019ve failed to live as wide and wild and courageous and generous and creative a life as I would have liked to, and as I think I had the talent and capacity for, it\u2019s not because I was weak and cowardly but because I was up against major damage I couldn\u2019t even see.\u00a0 And I have taken a stand for truth, for justice, for peace, I have fought against oppression, I have spoken out for the disadvantaged.\u00a0 I have devoted money time and energy to good causes.\u00a0 I have supported friends, sometimes at cost to myself.\u00a0 I have done my best to love unconditionally and to live with integrity.<\/p>\n
Thinking again how in these times, when there are no recognized shamans and shamanic teachers in our culture, some of us who were to be shamans were initiated by the ordeal of being abused as children.\u00a0 Unfortunately, that meant for some of us, that we never got to step into our full power.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s not important, maybe kindness and humility and working for healing are more important.<\/p>\n
\u201cShamans know that those wounds are not their own but the world\u2019s.\u201d (Matthew Fox)<\/p>\n
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(Written in August 2005) I was thinking about the line from Mary Oliver: \u201cwhat will you do with your one wild and precious life?\u201d and how it always makes me feel bad, like I have wasted mine.\u00a0 Well, have I … Continue reading