"When you are stuck in quicksand, you stop struggling. The more you wiggle, the more you try to get out, the deeper you sink, the quicker you smother, if you ground, you breathe, you meditate, eventually someone will come along and help you out. "
Sometimes, even I feel like I am stuck in quicksand. At Mabon, I was sitting at a table with Elders and I heard this from one of them. This totally goes against my natural instincts. I am a mover, a shaker, a thinker, a runner. I move, I swim through space, I burn bright! Of course this means, when hit with pain like grief, betrayal, or loss I do not ever stop and let it process I just keep on going. Which means one day I wake up and I am in a huge pot of quicksand.
I was never told when I was being taught to be Clergy that you will have days where you feel like yelling at your Gods. So let me say. There will be days, when you feel like cussing out your Gods. I have had many of those days; but not until recently did I finally do something about it. I got in my car, I drove up the road and I yelled a string of obscenities that would make birds fall from the sky. I shook my fist, and stomped my foot. I screamed, I yelped, I howled my grief, I cried so hard I did not think I would stop hiccuping. I did not ask for reasons for going on, I demanded them. I did not understand why the Gods would call you to do something and make life so hard. It seemed to me they could choose someone else to torture or to "make feel extreme suffering" other than their Clergy; and on this day at this time I was threatening to hang up my robe and move on. I was struggling in the quicksand and it was taking me down.
I felt guilty once I calmed down about yelling, and stomping my foot alone, and screaming and crying. I had to drive off to do it because being a composed mom, and wife seemed important at the time. I was worn out after that episode so I started to get back on the main road. I could not, a Truck without a load had pulled up beside me and started honking. I was so irritated, all I wanted to do was to get back on the road and finish my day. Yet, I rolled down the window to a smiling truck driver. Yes? I said rather forcefully. He said..."Your sticker said Honk, if you love Isis!" It took me a moment, and then I remembered he was right one of my members had given me that bumper sticker and this stranger was reminding me of that fact. I smiled at him, "Thank you" I said. He drove off. I pulled down the mirror to clean my face, and laughed. I stuck my tongue out at myself. Isis had just duped me, she had lightened me up, she had very quickly responded to my silly horrible outburst with gentle teasing....She had honked at me. She heard me.
I stopped struggling and decided to just float. I related this story to my Elder Clergy Rev. Terry Michael Riley. He laughed at me. Just howled. I said, why are you laughing? He said, "yeah well I do that myself sometimes....you know you cannot bargain with the Gods, but thank goodness you can tell them when you are pissed off". I said, "so then that is not a bad thing to do?" He says, "well no Mera this is how they know we need help sometimes. Notice how Isis immediately sent that man to honk at you?" I said, "Yes". This means, "hang in there, Mera, she heard you now things will start getting better". I was doubtful, but I held on to hope.
Sometimes things get worse before they get better. Being human, I expected an immediate rescue! I wanted a wand that would be waved and my life would just be easier; and that did not happen. A baby was lost in our community, there was no logical explanation. The founder of the ATC my personal Hero Pete Pathfinder died, and though he was elderly I feel his loss like all of us do for we looked to him for constant thumbs up, and pats on the back...he was our coach. Though, Bella had already took the helm and was great at it, his passing made us sad. People in our church come and go, I am sad when they leave and wish them well...but still I grieve.
I got a job working part time two days a week so that I could help out my community financially better and my family through the Holidays. I started to listen to others, I started to find myself again the person before "Merhamet Miller HPS Co-founder of the Temple of the Sacred Gift". I realized I was funny, funky, light hearted, loved people, and really really loved people! Apparently this is why I became Clergy I loved people, and really wanted to help them!
The old house on Estridge Drive is being cleared out and what remnants are left they are being sold in a garage sale. A short sale will be done on the home. I could not feasibly afford it, and this was an easy though humbling solution. I promised myself never again, would I let myself get in a financial bind but I concentrated so hard on the Temple and the community that I did let myself get in a financial bind...I took care of others so much, that I had expended myself.
We are the ebb and we are the flow, we are the weavers, we are the Web. I went to Weavers. After losing one of my best friends, my mother in law, learning to let go of people in my life that come and go...I was so ready for a women's retreat. I got to lead the Veiled Isis mystery. Isis, Dark Isis, the one that you cannot see or will not receive you unless you are bent, broken, lost, have experienced grief, pain or sorrow. I followed a thread in my mind of sitting at an Old Crone's Table where she would not let me leave her side until I admitted that I had to embrace Dark Isis. She gave me The Sea Priestess by Doreen Virtue. I listened to her, but I wanted to concentrate on the beautiful Sun Aspect of Isis it seemed so much more safe. Of course, I had read the book a million times...and now the time was here; I would finally "pierce her veil".
Ankh if you love Isis After all of the women had gone through the mystery finally I, myself, got to go through the mystery. They way we did this is that Angela, who had been the priestess played my part and was the oracle, and I got to take off my costume and walk through the mystery like a complete stranger to her mysteries. I walked through the first veil, I saw the golden wings spread out, and I looked forward to see the veiled Dark Goddess sitting there....and I saw a beautiful woman with every color of hair so luminous she shocked me...I said without thinking (tears flowing down my face) "She is a real woman!" Angela, broke me from the trance and said..."of course, she is" I smiled. I sat down, and raised the veil and I did not see broken fractures of myself at all (this is what I expected like everyone else I was ready for my fear manifested) What I saw was every woman that I had come to love, and know, whether they had come in my life for a reason a season or a lifetime. I sighed, and I looked over my shoulder for my friend Michele I felt her laughing at me. I sighed, and I looked over my shoulder for that Old Crone, I heard her laughter. Angela sat down on the bench next to me, her hand on my shoulder. We laughed.
A hand came down and pulled me out of the quicksand it was Isis, it was all the women that had come into my life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. She was real.....Well of course she was.
