by Florence Ondré
For years I made a formal burning bowl ceremony for all my New Year’s Eve gatherings and have had slips of paper for everyone to write their release wishes on and slips of paper to write what they would like their angels to help bring to them in the new year and an envelope to but their names and addresses on, so nearing the end of the coming year I could send them to them &/or give them to them at the next year’s New Year’s Eve gathering as we shared a feast at my home.
Even a tin foil pan large enough to accommodate safe fire-releasing was done outside in any weather…snow was present many times as we bundled up and trudged through the winter white to each take our sacred turn.
At each New Year we could share what we’d wished for and then, with the help of our dear friends, find that even if we thought we didn’t get what we wanted in the ways we’d written down, we found that angels had heard us and answered in ways, many times, better than we could have imagined.
Through tears and revelations; with a little help from our sharing, caring friends, we healed in addition to being included in a tradition of closeness, caring, kindness, compassion and enfolding in the hearts of each other.
No one was excluded and tables and chairs got added when needed….even one year when I had no heat in my house due to a heating system break, and an insurance company overlong refusal time for fixing what coverage had been paid for years, we few friends and people invited to join, who had no place to go; bundled up, sat on the living room floor, ate from a communal pot of of chilli and paper plates of salad and shared round a few candles, how we’d experienced the past year and what miracles we’d seen in any of it… the burning bowl tradition was started…in our modern day version of a long ago time in a manger, with people who knew and had never known each other; simple gifts of honoring and finding peace and joy for going forward with hope in our hearts, because we had come together. That was the first year with many to follow; each with more delight and sharing of food and friendship and holiday spirit enriched. How we all looked forward to that every year now traditions filled tradition.
There came a time when illness took that ability to be the open house of my open heart and a couple of people stepped up to step in and host the annual togetherness from the warmth of their abodes; a joy in tradition taking turns.
Differences showed up. The in-house-ness became..go to restaurant then perhaps back to someone’s house to play games & have dessert…or gather at a friend’s lovely bachelor pad, everyone bringing a dish to continue to enjoy another tradition of my instituting; gathering around the piano and singing together.
Since Hurricane Sandy demolished my home and swept away that sacred gathering open house, more things and people went out with the tide too.
The piano which sat in my lovely warm living room; where we all sang amidst freshly hung fresh, front door, pine-coned, red-ribboned wreaths, fir roping across the mantel and mistletoe in the hallway; pine scent wafting heavenly amidst aromas of home cooking & happiness… these were the visions and memories in my sad and numbed mind, as that, now sodden with sea, bay and sewage water piano got hauled to the curb and the contents and possessions of my home and life became garbage in dumpsters and high heaps of ripped and bagged, barely recognizable, wreckage.
Photos of family green and growing and all the wonderful gatherings blurred in waterlogged albums turned to mush.
Every letting go tore my heart out and yet reminded me of so much good over the years for so many.
I think when they took the piano out to the curb and a sanitation worker; spotting the broken musical instrument got down off his bulldozer, pried the lid off the keys and stood over it to play a tune, was one of the most poignant times for all of us present in surviving the biggest national disaster in the history of our east coast of our country in over a hundred years.
We were, bereft and broken & grieving & stunned into silence as our next door neighbor’s piano joined ours at the curb and the music stopped and the gatherings without kitchens and warm shelter and holidays and burning bowls stopped.
Survivors who were the open and welcoming, warm hosts for many years got left out of inclusion in the last two years.
Connection has dwindled down to a rare returned call or a call-in just for caring and connection.
Last year friends of ours who were always at our gatherings, went out to dinner and didn’t even manage to invite us to join them at a local restaurant minutes from our shelter.
That ripped my heartstrings and severed my illusions.
This year, a call to wish me a Happy Thanksgiving turned into a crabbing about how upset this woman was at my recent in-communication, as she wanted to vent her frustrations on my ever bearing ears…yet it never occurred to her that I might be depressed and ill, these 2 yrs later still displaced without hope of my still gutted to the studs house, cold and emptier than her own totally rebuilt arm abode.
The next disappointment was from someone I’d thought of for over 25 yrs, calling the nanosecond before Thanksgiving to cheerfully wish a happy holiday…this from one who has dimmed her closeness down from daily visits and sharing cheesecake, tea, cocoa and confidences and phone calls several times a day, just to share a laugh or something we see funny; like good girlfriends of close heart who went with tears and trials to the Blessed Mother statue on the beach to sit together in sacredness and closeness like sisters to gather hope and just to be happy in each other’s company… now boiled down to barely ever calling and avoidance of connection with rare returned calls in days or weeks.
And another who I introduced to my own friends who went on to make my connections her own, only to exclude me and still post happy pics of her with my friends, sans my mate & I…phone calls reaching in, which did not ever say ‘would you like to join us?’
Even if one knows you might be under the weather, it is still nice to be invited….but I only heard the whispered, ‘oh’ dear, so want to hear what is going on with you’ instead.
It sounded so unrealizing, or was it hoping i wouldn’t be aware that it had no feel of real concerned because there hadn’t been any regular connection or caring for a long while; knowing sadly that it was as it had been before… just to get the dirt and gossip about it later with my ‘old friends’ so she could say, ‘aww poor them’ and look into her own mirror to say, ‘see I’m a good friend. I called.’
Becoming aware that these calls were, strings attached; more about and for the callers than simple expressions of unconditional love for me, silenced me more than the pneumonia with which I’d just been diagnosed. No one took my quiet or silence for sacred time for me or possible illness or loss of voice or hope. Sadly, these supposed friends rife with promises of get togethers which never happened, just got crabby, angry and dismissive that they didn’t get their wanted on their schedules, self-centered results.
I got referred to this past week as ‘fussy’ and my expression of hurt spoken of as,’rants’ and dismissed with self serving anger from those who hurt me, judged and tried to ‘fix’ me, dismissed me and forgot the heart of the warmth and caring of years of sharing home and heart.
On this planet, my path has been varied leading ultimately to becoming a teacher of Spirit, an Angelic Channel and Reiki Master Teacher. Yet, after seeing firsthand, the tsunami sized waves cover the world and plunge it into darkness and devastation with no essentials left standing for human survival which devolved into anarchy and streets under armed guns, Marshall law, drove me to my knees. I lost myself and my beliefs; feeling a failed healer. Aspirtual person bereft of spirt or connection to spirit.
It is a long walk home in more ways than one. Yet, I am remembering. I am a sensitive, I can feel the real emotions under the facades from afar. There are those who forget that about me and count on me forgetting too or sweeping the dirt under a forgiving heart; forgetting, being and staying less than I was.
Years ago a spiritual mentor, once seeing my good and forgiving, generous heart getting tromped on, gave me this reminder, “My dear, you must remember that Jesus said, ‘I am the door’ …not the door mat!”
Until reading this lovely piece, I was so sad and in grief and mourning; wondering in all the let downs, what my life had been for, if anything, that I almost forgot that the tradition I started does not have to die along with the self centeredness of today or the friends who I now move into acquaintance areas of past as I let go of deeper layers of losing so much.
I am homeless in another level and, yet on the porch of my shelter/little off-site storage unit, there is a tiny terrace. I have a tin pan and scrap paper upon which my love and I can write what we want to release. We are still paddling together the rough seas of a recovery which is no where near recovered and healing only becoming apparent as bones are laid bare as my house bones.
Relationships may have gotten washed away. It continues to become apparent as facades crack and truth outs; so I place my energy to surviving and helping the storm homeless and hungry like myself that people don’t want to hear about.
Even though now outsider, treated as an inconvenient truth, I remember including all in my home and in my heart.
I am reprioritizing the minuscule energy and health and time on earth that I have left….
And thanking the Conscious Shift Community and Lauren Mclaughlin for reminding me that I can stand on a different ceremony which is familiar and soothing and honoring, which no one can take from me.
I can take the sadness, hurt, loss, grief, unfair treatment and selfish, compassionless, unkind, treatment, heart sobbing and write these things down on paper to step out onto the terrace of cold air and put match to make ashes of my heart lift up to the heavens to be taken by angels away to leave me again lighter and ready for better than I can imagine to show up in ways I can’t imagine at this time….
Free to be grateful and appreciative for all that I become awake and aware to…
To remember that I am a spiritual being in an earth suit having human experiences with a most wonderful angel at my side always, my dear Tom, a sensitive spiritual teacher too, who holds the burning bowl up for me and stands beside me though it all with unwavering light, love and honoring.
Standing on ceremony indeed, dear ones, standing in good company and honoring.
in light & love, enjoy reading : http://consciousshiftcommunity.com/standing-on-ceremony/
eFlorence 