And all at once everything is different. Close friends materialize. Bowls of food are placed before you. Gentle hugs encircle. Prayers ensue. For my dear friends and family who were not privy to the information within this missive, please forgive this roughhewn arrival. With so much to process and so many details to be sorted while significant others were going through their own rising life tides, my presence online and otherwise toggled to automated. It was the only way as I escaped into a blanket fort with the few who had the muscles and clear-eyed fierce love that could even make space to put their first eyes to my own. I needed quiet with Source. There was no energy or time for anything more. I couldn’t even talk with my mother, siblings, or kids about it, so you understand. The week before last, I peered hard into the eye of my mortality. Try as we may to cheat death or delay it, for 99.9 % of us physical death is the eventual bridge from this world’s amusement park to the soul’s everlasting template. The pandemic has left many in a heartachey limbo, too, so more than usual many of us have already been musing how, when, and under what circumstances we want to transition. Yet, this for me was radically different. Future was suddenly obscured. Past seemed ill-suited to help here, too, and after dissolving against the new parameters of what might be, I was smacked hard onto the ground of Now. Speaking of now, let me put you at ease right away. The world’s been stressful enough, so I’m not going to shellac extra drama into this revelation because this isn’t a movie. Straight up – I’m okay. I’m more than okay, but the upshot is that a word was tossed onto the doctor’s table of possibilities that was rare, fast-moving, and statistically near hopeless. My research librarian roots took a deep dive into intel. Sometimes we make a hard stop and push big news away as ridiculous or insignificant, as I initially did because God/Source/Creator’s got this always, but later – could be hours, could be days – that which we compartmentalize without fully processing can rise from half-sleep and begin screeching like a banshee. And it did. Then, the old monkey mind hooked into my doctor’s dire word and began banging it like a tin cup full of red paint and throwing it across every thought so completely I could see little else. The research bore worse than I’d thought. Usually my heart-mind leads the way to the all-good, but because I could see, touch, and feel a painful mark of the fragility of this life literally rise quickly from over my heart and daily grow it wasn’t as easy. I’d like to wax poetic and say it was like fragrant, weeping resin from a fantastic treasure tree, but it wasn’t that pretty. Instead, monkey girl dragged out the unruly comedy toolbox and we tried to laugh it off as a third nipple but without the fun, (TMI?) Comedy is the cosmic language that helps gather breaths and turn it all into new rhythms of music, but truthfully, I burst into a million fragments of Source tears considering my options. Despite the expertise of good, medically astute friends who assured me that it could possibly be NOT that word, more words were thrown onto the table that nobody needs to hear – no, not you either, so thanks for not asking for more details, friend – and from a procedure on Monday to a rushed-to-the-schedule surgery on the doctor’s already double-booked Friday, between all those little pieces of eek, just last night we found out that I am okay. More than okay! I don’t have that scary word, but something did happen, I do have protocol for prudence because we always have much work to do here. When you see me next time, and the bandages come off you won’t see any comedy bits looking for a tingle, but instead you will see a diagonal scar over my Raggedy Jane chest. It’s fine. Life! Every scar tells a story and this one is of love no matter how long I get, how soft I become, how quiet or strong or tender my journey because we are on this sacred human/divine reUnion path together. Blessedly. A decade ago, when I toured with Braco and we arrived in Las Vegas, the land where everyone believes in miracles, he succumbed to a debilitating migraine. I was distressed to see him in such pain and when he asked me to press my hands to his head, with great confusion I asked why he didn’t use his gift to heal himself. He groaned at my inane suggestion of, “…perhaps an Advil, then?” and rolled over on his side. Sometimes we need a different “cure,” or a different modality. Sometimes we need the soothing hands of a trusted friend or the quiet space to cry out for support to feel better. It remains a huge lesson for me in compassion for this journey and grace to understand that very, very few on this planet -no matter how gifted – are above human pain or suffering. Sometimes we succeed without a thought and sometimes we succumb. Sometimes we have the answers to everything in our sphere and sometimes we are quite human preschoolers. Humbling, but gracious compassion for every bit. Many of you are looking at the world with hard lens again, too, rather than our usual rose-colored glasses. Together, we have many friends in the south without electricity, water, homes, and the infrastructure to live or function easily. My prayers go to everyone touched by the intensity of Hurricane Ida and though our friends in the south likely won’t be able to read this because we hear it may be weeks before electricity might be restored what with all that needs to be cleaned up to access the downed lines and transformers, we will enfold and engage you all to send them flotillas of love, protection, and support. Here, in Northern California, the fires continue to be brutal. The devastation of flora and fauna, not to mention the homes of wildlife and wild-seeking two-leggeds alike has been tremendous. Today, the fire maps are showing that the wide swath of forestlands and Desolation Wilderness, including the place of our tiny, ancient, blended family cabin wasn’t just evacuated, but that spot fires have already reached its shores as it makes it way to South Lake Tahoe and to the thousands of Pura Vida playgrounds like Heavenly Valley, Kirkwood, and clear through to Nevada as the dynamic winds build their own weather, too. Our cabin was built by my step-great-grandmother and step-grandmother as “a place to get away from the men” after the last fire swept through the wilderness over a hundred years ago. It’s so rustic you can see through the simple slats to the bazillion starry sky and only stay there in the summer or fall, but the cabinet pulls are made from found twigs, the fireplace was set from gathered granite hauled up from the shore by our dock on the lake, and it’s been sheltering dreams since Nan-Nan and Marjorie first pitched their tent while saving up to build it with their own hands by working at the lodge at the end of the lake just after the turn of the last century. It’s held many metaphors and memories of my life. I’ve ritually baked bread in its kitchen and had communion with the holy mountain water. Before I had a family of my own, my girlfriends and I would slip in with journals, cut-offs, and laughter and hike to the waterfalls for pre-wedding skinny dipping cleansing. While Mom loved the sleepy house, I prefer sleeping near the embers in the main cabin where I could nurse and read by the glow. I’ve bathed all my babies in the kitchen sink, but this cabin has also baptized wishes. Here, more than a few of us over four generations have had first kisses, first cannonballs into the glacial lake, first screenplays, gone-crawdadding, made s’mores, watched the bears come too close or just close enough, made, accepted, or denied wedding proposals (I was #3 on this list) on “The Dock of Truth,” been married, been celebrated, turned ankles, made wildflower bouquets, fallen apart and fallen in love with a simpler, sweeter life. as bigger cabin/houses/McMansions sprung up on neighboring plots, we stayed simple. We finally got a phone, but there’s still no internet there. And we’ve loved it. Still do. As we watch the fire maps morph and grow, just like watching the third nipple grow, we’re not sure how this story is going to turn out. But all we can do now, is to get quiet and listen to Source for guidance. So, with all that… would you like to join me this weekend to hunker down and meditate with Source? This, like our last spontaneous invitation, isn’t a typical Jane’s Dancing Hands Circle. My doctor has asked that I keep my wings close to my heart for three and a half more weeks while my scar heals, like a little T-Rex dinosaur of love, so it’ll be a sit down, gentle flow. The voice within, the Language of Love, called it a Source ReUnion Circle since the toolbox knew Labor Day was a nice day to celebrate our original union. If you would like to join us, bring your intentions, but then let them go to the best and highest good and together we’ll dance from all our healing, hoping, hearty souls of light. May your light shine bright through these times and always. Thank you for being here in love.

Blessings, Love, and Blue Skies,

Jane