A Homecoming Long Overdue

This is the longest I’ve gone between entries and I’m sure I’ve lost some of you along the way. Sorry, a lot has happened. In the last entry, I was sitting in New Orleans (NOLA) awaiting the Day of the Dead celebration with Saumya and Drew.

I was moved sharing the experience of Vodou with my friend and fellow priest Drew at such a major holiday. The ceremony packed people within the peristyle (temple) and out into the adjoining alley. Once the initial celebration ended, we capped it off with our annual walk and offerings at the cemetery.

This trip to NOLA was directly preceding a major surgery we hoped to avoid. The surgery came two weeks later – and being a major one – we holed up and worked on her recovery. This was my first impediment to ignoring my blog. There were times, moments I could have written. Others where Zelda: Skyward Sword consumed Saum’s recovery while I supported her by remembering where things were in the game. I may have spent a few hours playing myself.

For several months leading up to this, we had planned on returning to India. In The Ascetic, the Therapist, the Priest and the Possessed, you’ll recall I said it had been 10 years of ongoing surgeries since they began. It had been 10 years since I had last been in India, where this whole period started. It has been roughly 9 years for Saum herself. Way too long for both of us to be away.

Right before the surgery, I started laying the foundation for our return trip to India.

The Ascetic, the Therapist, the Priest and the Possessed

What these people have in common is they’re all healers in a way. I’ve promised to write about the energy work I do, and I’ve been hesitating on either writing about it, or in some cases doing it. Part of my dilemma is I want to take it slow, the other is I’m still trying to make sense out of it. How does one write about such an important and huge topic and still sound genuine, when one doesn’t fully comprehend it oneself?

I’ve been truly blessed in my recent years to make the acquaintance of people who practice the healing arts. Genuine people. They hesitate to call themselves healers directly and I’m beginning to understand why. I agree with their choices for doing so. Their choice in some ways is my own. Why? In some respect, the practices I’ve been doing aren’t solely my own. In other ways, it takes two: a cooperative experience. It’s not something I do to someone, but rather something I do with someone. It’s also highly individualistic, what I do for one person would not work for another, but rather there would be a process of discovery to determine what the correct course of action would be.

Pilgrimage

This is always a powerful time of year for me. I often feel like I’ve gone insane with deep revelations that seem to penetrate my head. I can walk around in a daze for days, sometimes weeks.

I also feel my power grow at this time of year. Maybe that’s just me being a December child with my birthday and zodiac coming round, but I think it’s more than that. Living in the country feels like it gives me a tighter bond to nature. There is so much happening at this time of year, trees change color, leaves fall, sunlight and temperatures decrease their abundance – our part of Earth fades into sleep.

I’d like to say I had a plan, but I really didn’t. Our annual trip to New Orleans for Anba Dlo, Halloween and Day of the Dead fell apart. I suddenly was without a destination, not that that’s a bad thing. Without much planning at all, I hopped into the Red Barron and headed north.