Welcome To the Cedar Grove

I am the womb
of every hope
I am the fire
of every season
I am the queen
of every hive
I am the tomb
of every life

I am a drop
of morning dew
I am a star
in the evening sky
I am the light
by which you read
I am a word
in this very book

--Welsh bardic incantations

By looking. Looking everywhere, looking at each moment. She has never left us; we have never left her. She is here in this precious moment as surely as she has ever been.

At the moment I feel lost. I've just been sitting here for ten or fifteen minutes, thinking back over the day, over the moments where I could have believed that spark of divinity - that spark of what makes me who I was, (who I am, still, somewhere inside), where was it evident...? When did I show it? And I so stuck inside myself that I can't see outside to that single, simple truth that would bring me back to where I need to be to find the path to find myself again?

I know right now I'm sitting in the middle of a downward spiral of feeling sorry for myself, and that I need to give myself a kick up the pants and stop that. It's not helping. But I'm human, I recognise that. However, I need to find that strength again - I thought I'd begun to make my way once more. Evidently not enough - so I will keep trying, working with the Goddess in these meditations. Improve all those things I need to. I will give my true self to the world again.

Today has been hard. Caught between the knowledge of letting down the most important person in my life - and not being able to help, but from a distance and that not being good enough has done little for my self esteem - which god knows as insecure and needy as I appreciate that I am, isn't helpful.

Our little Zelenka is sick and hurting, the infection on his face got to be so big that now the vet has cleaned it out, the wound is very deep - he practically has no face on the one side, and a flap of dead skin he keeps disturbing when he washes. I've been trying to send him distance healing. Have turned a tube I have into a 'representation' that I can hold in my hands and send little burst of healing energy... little and often... send my thoughts and prayers out into the universe so that he can get well again... Her presence in that, perhaps. I will continue to do this... little burst every hour or so every day as often as I can. I want him to get well.

This morning, I'd been asleep for only a few hours, when the phone rang. Before I opened my eyes, I knew it was Mir - and when I looked at the phone and saw her name on the phone, I knew she was calling to tell me about Patches.

I couldn't say much on the phone, because I was very upset - more upset than I thought I would be - after my boy, I didn't think I could be as upset again. But I am.

It's odd... I know rats are short lived... compared to say, a cat, or a dog, but I've never been prepared for the death of any of the ones I've known personally or gotten close to.

Click was the first. She was an amazing little rat. She waited for me to come 'home' and be there with her before she died. There was something very touching in that. Amazing... really. I still miss her. I look at her picture that is on my classroom wall - the one that Mir uses as her icon, and I talk to her often, when I need a 'girl's' perspsective on something.

The one I talk to the most, though, is Flash. He's on my classroom wall - he's my boy, even though he's gone. He would talk to me on the telephone, chittering, whoofling, making those little happy sounds... and telling me, "Mummy, my ear hurts." He had trouble with his ears. He waited for me as well... in fact he hung on like /crazy/ right until the end, and we were holding him when he finally let go. My sweet boy. I miss him.

And now Patches... one of the five boys that Flash made with Zip - one of the three we kept. So smart, and so cute... you could say to them, "Come on Boyz..." and they'd come running, and Patches would usually be one of the first to reach you - well at least with me. And you'd tell them "Kiss Kiss," and they'd do just that, then run away cutely. Then he got sick...

No one knows what happened, whether he had a cerebral even, or whether a tumour or something was pressing against his brain, but suddenly she couldn't do things any more, and then he didn't know which way was up. I spent a lot of time with him when I went home last... holding him and feeding him, and talking to him, telling him what a good boy he was, and watching him rustling around in his pentepus when it was time to hold his brothers and sisters. I felt very close to him. I still do, except that now he's gone.

I'm going to miss his sweet face, his little kisses, the intelligent way he would figure out how to get the fruit out of the baskets or take a treat and keep it to himself... I loved him very much.

He's with his daddy now.