The Farm Where I Grew Up

Sometimes going on a journey to the past is painful, sometimes joyful and sometimes shocking. Mine was a little bit of all of that. Last weekend I went to where I grew up. The purpose of the journey was that I was asked to do the Internment ceremony for my sister who died last year. But I also wanted to show my niece the place where I grew up and where she spent the first 2 years of her life. The farm was bought when my father retired and was never lived in since then. That would be almost 25 years ago. Now what was once a beautiful big house is a hollowed out shell that is so run down we almost expected the gale wind to blow it over.

Lots of memories came flooding back to me. Happy family gatherings, the farm kitchen table with all the farm hands sitting around it at harvest, and some of the not so fun memories of physical and emotional abuse I experienced at the hands of my father and older brother. I was amazed at how large the evergreen trees that I planted when I was a child had become! But as we made our way back to the car, which we parked in the second driveway and walked in from, I couldn't help but feel as hollow and empty as the house and the old barn that was almost falling over. This is a phase of my life that is completely over. I let the memories go, good and bad, and allow them to blow away with the wind of that day.

I am also amazed and proud of the people that we have become since then. By this I am referring to both myself and my niece. We have, despite some of the abuse and neglect that we experienced in our early lives, become strong and dynamic individuals who are creative and intelligent and full of promise. This can be taken away by no one. This is the medicine we will pass down to our children so that they, too, will become strong and amazing individuals. It really doesn't matter where we grew up, or who brought us up. What matters is what we do with the experiences and how we transmute the negatives into powerful medicines with which we can walk through the rest of our lives.

Blessed Be
Trent
www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

Reflections

It is always important to remember that throughout our lives we will find many people, some of whom we like and some of whom we do not, who are all reflections of ourselves.  We get all caught up in the human drama of who we like and who we don't and why and so on and so on.  The thing is we all need love.  Sometimes those that we dislike the most are giving us our largest lessons, even when we least expect it.

So the next time we find ourselves saying out loud or in our heads things like "I can't stand that guy" or "I just hate that person's energy" or some such thing, let's take a time out and look at what that person is reflecting back to us.  Perhaps we are also just a little bit like that one. Maybe, even though we don't want to admit it, we are sometimes as dark or devious for different reasons.  And it just may be that this person is here to help us acknowledge just how far we have come from the antics that this person is still trapped in.

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

Patchwork Quilt

The Prairies are quite beautiful from up in an airplane.  When we went to Montreal two weekends ago, it was the very first time in all my years that I had ever flown in an airplane.  I travel a lot by land and water, but not by air unless you count astral projection and bi-location.  Those two aspects are a lot faster.  It is much like the blink of an eye and poof you are there.  There is also no turbulance! This airplane stuff seemed to take forever to get from point A to point B.  Good thing that they have movies and such to watch.
Now and then I would look out the window and see a scene like this one.  I couldn't help but snap a photo because most of the trip was either covered in clouds or above the clouds and there isn't much to see at those times.  I love looking at the earth from high up.  It does make me wonder though how significant we really are in the eyes of Spirit?
From way up there I could not seem to even grasp a hint of concern for whatever was going on below.  Perhaps that is just my humanness in action.  But then I thought to myself, "If I don't care about what goes on down there, then how does Spirit manage to do so?"  Imagine seeing all the goings on from up on a star somewhere or from a whole other dimension!  Why should Spirit even give a rat's ass?
I decided that Spirit has much more conscious awareness than do I.  This perspective beats the heck out of the alternative, which is that we are just arrogant enough to even consider that Spirit has the time of day for us.

Blessed Be
Trent
http://youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

That's Just the Beginning!

I think my favorite part of my weekend trip to Montreal last weekend was watching the children around the fountain at the Desjardins Shopping Centre. You see, the fountain had several different patterns to the water flow. In this photo it is doing what I call the "Eight Sisters" pattern. But right after this pattern there would be a shot of water that would reach about three stories up in the middle. This would be immediately followed by a second shot that would go six stories up and almost touch the inside of the domed skylight! It was thrilling to watch as an adult, but the most fun was seeing the reactions of the children watching it. They would squeal and dance and jump for joy when it shot up! What fun. I sat and had my morning coffee in a cafe that was open to the Centre and laughed out loud at some of the reactions in the children. Some of the adults were hardened to such delights. One little girl's grandma was insisting that they didn't have time to watch any longer and, much to my delight, the girl was able to convince her to sit down on a bench and wait for one more gusher shot. It was quite the entertainment.

Blessed Be
Trent
www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com