Kissed by a Fox: And Other Stories of Friendship in Nature by Priscilla Stuckey

Author:Priscilla Stuckey [Stuckey, Priscilla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BODY; MIND & SPIRIT, Nature Therapy, Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Religion, Spirituality
ISBN: 9781619021266
Google: Od0REAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2012-09-01T23:39:10.856519+00:00

THINGS CHANGED RAPIDLY for me after that second ceremony with Chuck. My life soon filled with a new circle of friends, and I began enjoying hikes and poetry readings in the company of others. By Thanksgiving I was writing the final paragraphs on my dissertation—sooner than I’d expected—and the defense was to take place just after the New Year.

I continued driving to Chuck’s house and attending ceremonies every week or two. Learning to live in the present, without dipping into that old valley of despair, turned out to be an ongoing practice. I certainly felt better day to day, like I’d suddenly been handed a brand-new well of reserves, but the work of forging new habits was ongoing. Each time I found my mood slipping, Chuck would repeat that I had gone again into the past, and he would do another ceremony, and I would wear another ribbon on my head and look forward to—or dread—the intense dreams and feelings that began to surface during those four nights.

Ceremony fed me. It soothed me to ask for holy help from the friends I was cultivating in the rest of my life: animals, water, land. In ceremony I could dwell for a time in dreams and visions, savoring connections between the outer world of nature and the deep inner places, drinking of the fresh springs feeding both. Once in a great while I could even feel the air in Chuck’s room displaced by wings of helper spirits and hear the whoosh-whoosh of their beats. In ceremony the pictures of my heart could be seen clearly without my having to speak much about them, and I sighed with relief at being deeply known.

Most of all, ceremony was a time of being still, of opening to Earth and asking, “What now?” It was the other side of the healing coin: in therapy I was talking; in ceremony I was deeply listening.

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