REMINDER from Mano:
I am wanting Barbara and YOU MY READERS to identify areas in your life where you take action that can be identified and named as SOUL SERVICE.
REMARKS from Barbara:
To identify and name certain actions as Soul Service touches my heart with pleasure
when I remember the consistent Prayer I have held for over 30 years to get a “soul infused personality.”
REMEMBERING Mary Jane:
I smile when I remember Mary Jane’s pleasure telling people that she was working for a Gnome, to write his Blog. It felt like a “call” to her. I will name it a Soul Service. I live in gratitude for her humor and willingness to take on that job. It was the gentle entry for me to take over when Mary Jane died.
Soul Service
Blog #157
A few years ago Dawn, my caregiver, was walking the land when she saw a burned fallen tree, left from the CZU fire in 2020. She noticed it looked like the profile of a woman with an elongated neck and gazing downward to the earth. It represented the many women hung and burned at the stake and she thought of the book I wrote when I first came to the land, The Burned Woman. Dawn’s inner heart connected and she heard the words, “Come do Ceremony with me.”
To honor this request and the many women, healers, Community Wise Women, with tractor and truck we moved the Burned Woman’s body to the heart of the Amphitheater and created a Ceremonial gathering to honor the millions of women burned over a 300-year period in our sad history.
Yesterday I met a man who had cried when he witnessed my DVD, Healing Burned Woman. He said he often thinks of that time in our history and finds himself crying. I told him, “I think you are doing a SOUL SERVICE when you have that experience.”
As those words, “Soul Service,” came out of my mouth, the thought came that I too was doing Soul Service that morning so long ago when I woke up hearing the words, “There once was a time a horrible time, there once was a time a horrible time, there once was a time a horrible time” …on and on… until I said, “WAIT A MINUTE BARBARA, SOMETHING IS GOING ON HERE.”
With that awareness I got up, got my computer, and word by word TRANSCRIBED the story of a woman who had been the community healer and was burned by her community when they became frightened by the propaganda and threats of the priests in the nearby city church.
She didn’t die, she was removed from the tree and taken to her home in the forest to heal. As I wrote this story, I saw paintings I had painted 30 years earlier that illustrated this story. First, I created a book, then a DVD to illustrate the story so I could present workshops to bring healing to women in our community. I presented eight workshops in the next few years.
As the man finished his story I had named “Soul Service” and I realized my creation of The Burned Woman was also Soul Service, two friends came saying, “we have a gift for you.” It was a beautiful black gemstone pendulum. I use a pendulum almost daily to discern soul communication and guidance. Later that day my daughter Donna Theresa and a friend took me to a wholesale shoe outlet in a neighboring town. I had heard they carried Birkenstock shoes. All of mine burned in the fire that took my home a few years ago. Birkenstocks have always been special to me.
I bought my first pair before they were available in commercial stores. I had just completed a one-week residential workshop with Kay Ortmens in her Center in the heart of the Ben Lomond redwood forest. I was fascinated with Kay’s Birkenstock sandals. I had never seen anything like them, so sturdy yet open with toes free. I thought of European, Bohemian artists and my heart yearned for such a life.
That afternoon Kay said there was a man in Santa Cruz who had a stock of Birkenstock sandals for sale. I was thrilled to leave the week I had been immersed in Kay’s workshop enveloped in color, movement to classical music in the forest daily for a week. Now I would be going home wearing my very own Birkenstocks. (I just had to laugh at myself, it is now 6 am and I have been telling you stories of yesterday’s ‘sentimental journey.’ Actually, it was a big Soul Infused Day of ah ha’s and revelation. And it is not over yet.)
In the shoe shop today, I asked if they had Birkenstocks to fit me. There were three. The first two were very sturdy hard leather which I didn’t like. The last was a soft black leather with fake fur lining. I love them! They are so warm and comfortable. As I wear them it feels like they love me.
As I went to bed, I realized both gifts are black, both came today after the awareness and naming the years after recording Burned Woman’s Story as my “Soul Service,” and that today’s black pendulum and black Birkenstocks feel like soul gifts from the burned woman.