Death

It is a subject that has kept cropping up this last week and last night, a beautiful old lady died at the age of 110.  Maybe my blog was late because I needed her words to inspire me.  Who knows.

The one thing certain in life is that you are going to die.  Morbid? Not really, it is a reality. I have found this last year, I have been very conscious of my own mortality and are times when I constantly think about me dying and what I'm leaving behind.  It's not constructive or healthy but it is natural considering I am going through the grieving process.

I lost my estranged brother to cancer last March. I also lost my ex-best friend Lorna to a heart attack. I lost a brother Knight Ghyll to cancer. I lost a friend and colleague Gail to a bike crash. The one year old boy called Ryan who I'd been sending healing to, died of the same cancer my brother did and another biker mate Tom died of pneumonia. All within a couple of months.  By July, I was a total mess. I was laying on the table at my osteopaths (he is also a reiki master and acupuncturist and clairvoyant) and he was sorting out my knees with acupuncture and talking about why I was upset.  He asked me why it was that I believed in the after life and spirit contact but was upset about death.  I replied that it wasn't the dying, it was what I left behind that upset me.  What would happen to my son, my home, my possessions, my cats... what would people say at the funeral, to my son, who'd raise him, would me cats be put in homes .... you get the idea. The thought of all of this ate me up inside.

As time has gone on, this fear has eased off but it's still there. Depression amplifies this fear and I'm up and down with that due to my current physical state. I'm due to have general anaesthetic next month for an operation on my knees. I have been sedated before but not totally under, that deep sleep could be a wonderful thing where I travel or it could be the death of me. I think it's the thought of the needles that's doing me in the most and the loss of control over my body.  So now getting my Will in order and going to do a video telling people what I want/don't want at my funeral.  In a non-morbid way, I've been planning my funeral music for years... music is such a big part of my life and when I've been to others funerals, the music played at them represented who they were.

I think it would be a good idea to make sure your family and friends know what you want to happen with your remains, the sort of funeral you want and what you represent. I've been to too many where the funeral was the last thing that person would have wanted and it was more what their family wanted. That's not right.

Yesterday the oldest survivor of the concentration camps died aged 110.  You may have seen her on documentaries about people living active lifestyles well past their 100th year. Alice was the lady who played the piano. Her music kept the spirits up in those retched places and gave some hope to those who had none. She continued to play until the day she died. It will be easier for me to copy and paste the news article about her life. It's worth sharing.

"I think I am in my last days but it does not really matter because I have had such a beautiful life.

"And life is beautiful, love is beautiful, nature and music are beautiful. Everything we experience is a gift, a present we should cherish and pass on to those we love."

Ms Herz-Sommer recalled "always laughing" during her time in Terezin, where she and other inmates put on occasional concerts.

She said the joy of making music had kept their spirits up.

"These concerts, the people are sitting there, old people, desolate and ill, and they came to the concerts and this music was for them our food. Music was our food. Through making music we were kept alive."

Life IS beautiful. Love IS beautiful. Nature and music ARE beautiful. She never lost sight of this and this resonates with me hugely.  I see the beauty in everything around me... even when I'm low.  So thank you Alice for reminding me that inspite of the horrors you face, life can be good.  What an inspirational, beautiful person.  Rest in peace, you've earned it x

Naked trees

Bare blue skies

Last years leaves

Litter the ground

Cold winds blow

A mighty chill

Rain turns to snow

The sun climbs higher

Daffodils and crocus

Snowdrops and catkins

Life has burst thru

The cold hard earth

Life is imminent

It's waiting to bloom

Green shoots and colours

Birds return home

Colder weather will come

Life still breaks thru

Defying frozen death

Under frost and snow

New life breaks thru

Winters death begins to wane

Sunny days and blue skies

Wake us up within

New life in Springtime

The lambing season not far

Cold winds may blow

Spring has been announced

written by me =o))

Edited to add that, life is about death. As a pagan, you observe the season changes.. when the world is reborn (spring), when it feeds us (summer) when we harvest (autumn) and when the world dies (winter). It's all about life and death cycles.  For some, death is just the next big adventure. Every culture, faith and religion in all corners of the world has their own version of what happens when you die, where you go and what you do.  As a medium, I know spirit goes on... death is only a transition. But by gods, it's a painful one, especially for those left behind.  As a healer, I try to make the transition as peaceful as possible but that's another story.  Thanks for reading x

C is for Clairvoyance

Minsden Chapel

I was in bed, trying to get to sleep but you know how your mind spins and you try and clear your mind but nope, it's not going to let you get to sleep. Then I started coughing. How annoying, especially as I didn't have a cough before I tried to get to sleep.  So I got up and got a note pad with the intention of writing my thoughts down.  I wrote three lines. Then I thought 'I know, I'll make a video blog' and got my son's tablet, which then turned out, didn't have a video function. So I made it using my iPhone, not at all flattering and the picture quality is pants but you can hear me. Incidentally, the cough went as soon as I'd finished. Hmmm!

I realised afterwards that I'd gotten some dates wrong. I don't know what it is about me and time but when I try and recall things and the date they happened, I can't.  Usually I try and gauge how old my son was when it happened and that usually gives me a good idea what year it was. Seriously! Lorna fell out with me prior to 2002, so I can't have gone with her to Wales in 2003-4.  Luckily I take lots of photographs and I can check the dates, only the Anglesey pics were pre-digital camera, so without going through hundreds of negatives, I can only approximate the dates to when I was still living in my flat, so 1999-2001. How pants is that?! The Petre Ifan trip with my first visit to Stonehenge and Silbury Hill was in 2004 but just me and my son visiting our friend Red in Tenby.

That is the result from a lot of personal trauma that has blocked out so much good information. I remember all the bad but only get flashbacks of normal things I did as a kid or teenager or pre 2002.  You don't need to know the ins and outs of it but it defined me for a time, I think 12 years on, I'm finally working my way through it all.   Anyway, the video is about 40 mins of me having an honest chat about my beginnings with finding my clairvoyance abilities and the person who was a very important part of that. It's also a look at how hurt can create hate and what a waste of time that is.  I do regret that Lorna and I never made amends before she died, but I do believe she has since, as I describe in the video. So here's me, saying thanks Lorna. I still remember the hurt but I now remember so much more of our time together as friends. RIP.

Lorna Summer 2000

B is for - Blue Crow

What I'm about to share with you now is very personal. It is about my spiritual path and how I was given the name Blue Crow. I'm a bit wary expressing it as it goes but I think it's time.

Back in the day of forums, we had to invent a user name. Remember those? Lots of well known goddesses and the such were used.  I used to be IckleSlaine after my tattoo of an ickle Slaine McRoth (2000ad geek n proud). This was circa 2002. I then shortened it to Slaine, which I used for a few years.

Ickle Slaine

I went to work for the MOD in 2004 at RAF Henlow and outside my window was the Hunter gate guardian and some chestnut trees that these two crows used to sit in. I always did stare out of windows as a kid and not much has really changed.  I'd just started discovering my spiritual path. I had been down the spiritualist route and was the Secretary of the SNU church in Letchworth GC.  By 2004, I had discovered that what I was had a name and that was 'pagan'.  Everyone had their paths and discussed these at length and of course, people had their 'spirit' names. Usually these had some mystical creature in them and they often assumed a whole new personality (online) to match their character name. Yes, I went there, character name.  It is too easy to get caught up in playgan roleplaying... yes I went there too! Aren't I naughty lol ! I think what I'm saying is that a fair few of these people were full of shit really.  They did it because it was fashionable and because the big kids on the forum did it too and looked cool and knowledgeable. Fair enough, it's easy to get caught up in it all.

The point is, at the time, I didn't really know what path I was on. I had been told by three shamans (proper ones, not like the latest fad of wannabes DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THAT FFS) that I was a shaman. I had no idea what that was, other than the American Indian sort.  I did some research and found an excellent book called Shamans through time - 500 years. It was a big fat book of written accounts by anthropologists, missionaries and that ilk who'd gone into the world to study/explore/convert and had found shamans in near enough every culture. Their accounts vary from Christian bias to those who went to live with the tribe for a month and learn how the shaman works in their community healing the sick etc.  The original term of shaman was used for a tribe in Siberia but it has since become a generic term throughout the world. Not that the know-it-alls on the forum cared, if you weren't from that tribe in Siberia you weren't a shaman and you were a fake. 20 posts per page, 15 pages later... I'm still being flayed for daring to 'come out' as someone who'd been told I was a shaman but didn't know what that meant.  Oh My Gods, it was horrendous.  Nearly a decade has gone by and it still haunts me... and that's why I get wary sharing! Nice way to help someone on their path isn't it? So much for peace and love! Don't get me started....

View outside my office window on a foggy day

Anyway, I digress!
One of the many lunchtimes gazing out the window, I was daydreaming (also normal) and I wondered what my spirit name was. The crows were out front, playing about, looking for food, chasing off the magpie (usual stuff for them) and I got the name 'Blue Crow'.  It was just there, in my head. I asked why and what it meant and I received no reply.  It was about two years later that I was told what it meant.

I was writing a lot of poetry at this time and here is one I penned about my friends the crows at work. My friend Cliff Carr turned it into a song and has performed it at Avebury, which is a bit surreal hearing your words being turned into music.

Crow he calls

Oh how he calls to me

‘Pick up your ears and listen

For I have much to say!’

Can you not hear the call?

Can you not understand?

You can see crow everywhere

You can hear his calls

Loudly he cries his message

Over and over again

I pick up my ears and listen

To what he’s trying to say

‘Come follow me!

Go deep within yourself

Close your eyes and slow your breath

Spread your wings and fly’

‘Fly above it all and survey the land

Call out what you see

Feel the earth and skies unite

Ride the updraft of the breath of life’

This is the path of Sacred Law

This is the call of crow

These are the words that reach my ears

Crows call penetrates my soul

December 2004

Time flies and roll on December 2007 and I had that 'aha!' moment and then it made sense.. for a short time because you're not supposed to make sense of your life, only the lessons passing through it at that time.

Blue is the sky

That envelopes us all

Blue is the healing rays

Blue is the deepest seas & skies

Crow is the Keeper of Sacred Law

Truth of Time kept

Blue Crow is the Keeper of what covers us all

The whole world

All times

I hold it all

I cannot unlock these secrets I keep

Only Time will reveal them 

when they need to be

So there you have it. How I got my name and what I was told it means. It's hard to believe it's been six years since all that happened.  I will probably write more about it when I get to the letter S on the blog project. Blimey, just thought, that will be nearly at the end of this year... who knows what will happen til then. 

That last paragraph of the last poem may need some explaining. All I can say for now is - it's a past life thing.

B is for bloody Facebook, Bipolar & Bitchcraft (kinda)

Yes... bloody Facebook!

It's now Monday, my blogs have until now, been promptly done by Friday, usually in the very early hours.  I don't know what happened this time but I blame Facebook for sucking me into it's virtual world of friends, groups, managing pages and just being addicted to the interactions.  Yep, my name is Naomi and I'm a addicted to Facebook.  And now it's Tuesday. I was in mid blog when I was reminded via my phone alert, that it was my moot tonight.  How pants am I?!  Forgot what bloody day it was, sheesh!

Where was I? Oh yes... bloody Facebook. Before it was Myspace and forums and now it's Facebook. Not really got the Google+ thing, yet, although I have a profile, never used it.

My life seems to revolve around the cyberworld. I spend far too much time networking for the people I work for to get their deeds out there into cyberland.  99% of this is on Facebook.  You have the best intentions of 'just checking a page' and then before you know it, 6 hours have gone by.  I'm addicted to the interaction from faraway friends.  People I knew off forums from the last decade, people on the other side of the world whom I've never met, people I have never met but who are in my 'circles'. I spent so much time on the forums, which is where some of you may know me from. It's been 3 years or so since I went on the pagan forums, can't be bothered with the Bitchcraft. Funnily enough, that was another B I was going to blog about.  I think the Arsehole blog from week one from a fellow Pagan Blog Project summed it up without me having to add anything really, well I could but there'd be lots of swearing. Read it, it's good!

Whilst it's great to connect with my friends and have a laugh at the stupid shit people post up, it's not the same as getting into the real world. And when we do, what do we do? That's right, we take a picture of it and upload it to......... Facebook! We check in to places, we tag our friends in pictures and whilst we are all doing that, we aren't really where we really are - THE REAL WORLD.

The Matrix is on the tv behind me... bit ironic really.

I'm a nightowl, always have been. It's 3am as I type this. Yesterday I had a mad clean til 5am, which meant I woke up at lunch time, which means I missed a lot of daylight.  It doesn't help that I do not have paid employment at the moment and I don't HAVE to get up, other than to make sure my 16 year old son is up for school and out the door on time.  At least then, I get to see the sunrise but that's only cos it's winter and that happens at 7.30-8am.  The night time is a magical place, I live in the countryside, so there's only owl hoots and the occasional lorry rumbling past.  But it sucks missing the day, really does. On the plus side in the summer, I get to watch the world get lighter, the explosion of bird song and the sunrise, it's usually then I say 'bugger it's daytime' and go to bed.

I live right next to the River Derwent with loads of lovely walks around me. What do I do all day? Nothing. All that has to change.  I cannot and will not be an internet pagan!  How can I talk about being part of the earth when I stay indoors all the time... what's that about? A rhetorical question. Of course it doesn't help having depression (not a constant state) and the fact I have to have an op soon because I've been diagnosed with arthritis in my knees. This last year has seen me going from being active (but still addicted to FB) to being in quite a lot of pain and some days not being able to climb the stairs.  I'm only 37, it's depressing!  But I am not my illness and I refuse to let it consume me, obviously I'm having a good day today.

Originally I was going to blog about Bipolar.  How is that pagan, you ask? Well with my big network of friends in all walks of pagan life, it occurred to me that there are loads who all suffer from varying degrees of Bipolar Disorder or manic depression as it used to be called.  I have wondered if there is a connection, is it just that they are pagan AND have BPD? Or is it they are more spiritually aware because of their intense down/high times?  Is it cos they walk between the lines of mortality when they are so low they want to end it all?   I'm not sure and I don't know enough to really write about it. No offence is meant of course, just me thinking out loud really.  I've been described as being 'a bit Bipolar' - how can you be a bit Bipolar? I can see it though, I do have extreme ups and downs but most of the time I bounce along.  I would be interested to hear your views on it though.  Not that anyone reads my blog, let alone comments on it!

A lovely FB friend of mine (never met him and not even sure how he came to be on my friends list but he is a talented model and very positive person, with lots of great uplifting status') has just modeled for the MIND calendar.  You may recognise him from Celebrity Juice where he was standing on the desk in front of Danny Dyer - naked.  That fella's been working out.. obviously the link goes to the YouTube clip and Mr Dyer says f*ck a lot and Mark gets naked ... enjoy!

Google is your friend or Bing.. but it's all there at your fingertips - most people when they are in the throes of depression won't reach out or say anything but there is a world of info and help out there. Use it.

Help is out there in internet land for all sorts of disorders, alas nothing for Facebook addiction.

Friday's blog will be on time and about something that I AM.

Peace y'all /|\

If the text is in orange, it's a link - in this blog to MIND website etc