30 Blogs Later

On Friday the 13th, Barbara and I were back at her dining table talking about our respective journeys and how they related to what the blog is to become. We were remembering our first planning conversation at this table, nearly two years ago, and Barbara exclaimed: 30 blogs later! Let’s call Andrea to take another picture. (Andrea Boone lives on Barbara’s land and took a similar picture for the first blog, published April 22, 2013). We are feeling pretty chipper about this endeavor. We have some readers—some “preaching to the choir” readers and some more unlikely ones. And we are having fun.

I was recently in Hilo, Hawaii and found myself telling my niece (she’s one of our readers) about how interesting the blog-writing process has been for me. What I love, and find unusual, is how the collaboration of Mano, Barbara, and Mary Jane has developed through the months. Barbara talks with Mano by writing back-and-forth on her laptop, and I do the same in a sort of minor octave (I say that because I wrote to Mano only once in January and because so far our conversations have informed me personally but have directed the blog only peripherally or by way of building a context with him and the elemental world).

The month’s blog often begins with an idea from Barbara’s notebooks (her communications with Mano, the Council of Gnomes, and other elementals) or from a conversation she and I have had, or perhaps with some experience of mine that gets me started. I write a draft and send it to Barbara at least a week before the blog is to go out on the first of the month. This gives her some time to add stories and thoughts. The process for her, she says, is requiring quite a lot of energy and encouraging her to gather in and review all that she has learned and now knows. So, rather than the bulk of the information coming primarily from past communications with the nature spirits—as it did when we started—it has begun to be more current. This means that Barbara is often consulting with Mano or the Council of Gnomes to see if what we have is accurate, or if the timing is right (if it’s “cooked” enough yet). I begin to understand that whereas I am generally ready to follow the interesting story as it appears, Barbara has learned to go slowly, check back with her guides, ask questions, clarify. Consequently, our blog writing is beginning to feel like an active collaboration, alert to the new, honoring of the old.

The next part, the feedback from Barbara, is particularly dear to me. She rarely says anything about the draft’s nuts and bolts, trusting my years of editing with that. What she does, with complete lack of judgment and charge, is to call me to myself. “Did you write this from your heart?” she will say, or “I got lost here,” or “This feels very impersonal as you share. I would like more story, their story, your story, my story. Something to make it more personal.” She can sense the hurried places (the “let’s just get this done” energy), the parts lacking courage (“my story isn’t important and surely no one wants to hear it”), the points where I slide by with some nice words that don’t penetrate to an essence. In my experience, this kind of feedback is rare, because it’s not willing to settle, and it is willing, in its honesty, to probe and gently challenge. A treasure indeed.

Next, of course, comes the revising, and this is how it usually happens. First I push it off a bit. I used to call this procrastination but now I think it’s something else, more like gestation and a remembering of what to do—provided that I don’t take it far enough to become true avoidance. Even that, however, can be part of the process; it has to do with listening and becoming ready to receive. I have to remember, before I go to sleep, to ask for help, from my high-self, from Mano (whoever I’m feeling most connected with at the moment; Mano says if you pray to your angel and he, Mano, is a more appropriate respondent, the angel will pass it on to him). Then when I wake up, normally as I’m doing my exercises and meditations, a few sentences flit through my head. I take a deep breath and say, “OK. That’s it.” It’s best if I write them down immediately, because they carry a particular rightness of energy that I’d rather not try and recapture later. With (mostly) clear concentration, I make the changes, and send them off. Barbara always sees the shift, and that is always a relief. “Oh, what a difference,” she’ll say.

Now then, as Barbara and I contemplate how, how much, and whether to stretch out to other teachers and exercises, we are doing it in communication with Mano. He is encouraging in this direction and also clear that the blog is still to wrap around him—remain under his direction and stay true to its original impetus. One of its major goals, as Barbara says, is “to give one woman’s personal experience of interacting with an earth spirit, in this case a gnome.” This question of being true to our roots came up when I included in the draft for this blog some comments about using the pendulum and other similar “tools for verification” like muscle testing or hand movements. The response the Council of Gnomes gave to Barbara: “We want the blog to always be authentic from your experience. It is important that you never give information just to give information; it must have been experienced by you and/or Mary Jane before giving it in the blog.”

What a lovely invitation, encouragement, and kick in the pants! Get down to it, I hear, and see what the experience of the tools is personally—as I run each practice through everything I know about making connection. This means, however, that I must practice, and practice, and practice. Well yes, of course, and I have been on the beginner’s block a number of times with some of these tools, like the pendulum. For a will-of-the-wisp sanguine like me, however, the practice can be illusive in its continuity, easily thrown off (as it has been recently) by a trip to Hawaii, say, or a stint in the Bay Area with dear friends. And yet, all of my adventures, if experienced attentively, illuminate pieces of life’s puzzle, and with patience (and a little memory) will find their place. That’s a wonderful thing about aging—the pieces and their purposes begin to settle into a whole-picture meaning.

As for Barbara, it seems to me these questions, this constant discovery of what the blog is and is to be, are a special exercise in knitting together her very particular life path, appreciating its gifts, and understanding its purpose.