When Expecting Grief

My family and I are going through a difficult time. And it's not going to get any better for now. It's a fact of life; and it's a fact of non-life. It's a time where a person sits with themselves--and with others--realizing that all the objectivity, tangibles, and situations in life are beyond their control despite sacrifice, science, and hope. It is during these times when the objective is unwilling to compromise that people reach out to the intangibles, be it a god, mindfulness, self-reliance, acceptance, etc. For my mother, it is God and gathering. For my aunt, prayer. For my father, keeping busy. For me, acceptance.

Despite my upbringing, spirituality, and imagination, I am not a religious person. But that does not mean that I'm not searching for something beyond me to hold on to or believe. I believe in science, the earth's movement, the universe's emptiness and brilliance, the seasons, and the animals's amazing instincts and capacity for adaptation.

When I was a teenager, my amazing mother, unbeknownst to me, randomly ordered me a box of books that came in the mail. I only remember one of the books--a book on palmistry. I was very appreciative toward my mother, but scowled at the book of palmistry. Who actually believes that the topography of one's hands can foretell anything? Other than a worker's hands looking like a worker's hands or a guitarists hands looking like a guitarists hands, etc., I wasn't having it. My friend Tasha was there at the time and she got a kick out of my damning of all things mystical.

Now it's about fifteen years later and part of me wants to reach out toward the mystical but in a way that makes sense to me--through metaphor and imagination. We cannot see metaphor and thoughts; they are ideas that drive the way we make decisions and experience our objective world. A Tarot reader, when laying down the cards, is not laying down the truth. The Tarot reader is laying down a possible path, or guidance, and depending on the animal inside you, it may or may not mean something or come to fruition.

On a whim, I purchased for myself a set of Tarot cards today. I know nothing about Tarot cards except that there are way too many types, that they're pretty, and that there are many ways to use them. I have always been fascinated by symbology so I think this will be an interesting endeavor. Why not use a set of cards to determine how I approach the world from time-to-time? People have done crazier things. I may not follow its doctrines and I may be damned by witches, but I don't need to believe in their damning. I'm in the process of grieving, so if laying down a pattern of beautifully illustrated cardstock becomes a pastime for me, so be it. Let me be.

And when I get my definition of "good" at it, I hope to provide monthly "horoscopes" here on my blog. It's just for fun.

Because fun is important.

#personal #tarot