RISING WATERS- PART 2

RISING WATERS- PART 2…..

When I got to The Ranch I had to see my Spirit House. I had Spirit House created as the centerpiece for the community of The Ranch. I wanted a special place to honor the courage and intent that reclaiming our lives from the insanity of this world requires. The watermark was about 4.5 feet up on the outside wall. I knew the floor had cracked, Rusty the manager of my Cattle company had gone inside in the middle of the night on Saturday when the water receded and had called me to tell me it was really bad. I was not looking forward to seeing the damage. Inside were three Incan quipoos, the string books that the people of the Incan world used to record information and send messages to one another. Quipoo’s are multi- dimensional communication tools, for real. My good friend Jorge Luis Delgado had given me five quipoos when I was in Peru on my first trip and had told me they were to be brought back to the Ranch and I would know what to do with them. He said they were a bridge between the worlds and I was a bridge person and was supposed to have these keys to the Andean world. When we finished the Spirit House I had the quipos framed in shadow boxes and hung them in the entrance foyer. You could feel them when you walked in the door.

In the back room, the big meeting room, there were also large oil paintings of the four Arch Angels, Miguel, Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel that I’d bought from a great street artist in Cuzco. On another wall was a golden mask of the Buddha and across form him was an original oil of the Christ painted by the pastor of the Pinewood Baptist Church, which he had given the Ranch as a gift. On the table beneath the Christ was a statue of Tonantzin, The Virgin of Guadalupe that had been in our home when we were living in Mexico. She had traveled from the beaches of Sayulita, Nayarit, Mexico to Tennessee to bless our Spirit House.

As I walked in the door I was numb, like I was watching me walk in through a scene in a Movie. Straight ahead were the 500-year-old quipo’s hanging like nothing had happened. They were not touched, not wet, nothing. Immediately I looked through the doorway to the back wall of the meeting room and the paintings of the angels were also on the wall, perfect. I was standing in the midst of a building of wrecked furniture covered in mud 6 inches deep and these two sets of art were hanging in their places by grace. Walking through the door into the meeting room on my right the Buddha mask was also in place untouched as was the painting of Jesus and still standing on the table beneath the Christ was the statue of Guadalupe Tonantzin, the Mother. The floor beneath my feet was blown up, cracked and lifted 7 or 8 inches from the pressure of the waters that blew through the concrete slab to get into the building. Everything was a total wreck and these symbols of faith and consciousness were all still holding their places in our Spirit House. My deep sadness was overwhelmed by the sense of a greater knowing that our Dreaming Heaven on Earth will be held above the rising water, faith is not a belief but a relationship with the mystery, the Unknown and this was how the mystery works. I smiled and knew this was something more than I would understand anytime soon.

My next stop was our little house in the back of the property. It was just a double wide, a double wide that Mee and I had moved into 8 years ago when I decided to turn our beautiful Ranch home into an eating disorders program house. We were living in L.A. half the time anyway and the women that came to The Ranch suffering from Eating Disorders needed their own space and program for healing so the decision was an easy one. The double wide was the last house on The Ranch available and it wasn’t big or nice enough for a client house so we hooked it up with oriental rugs and antiques and my favorite western art. For sure we had the coolest double wide in Hickman County. I used to kid Mee about her moving from Hollywood to a trailer in the Holler…That little house had been home though. Bella had known it all her 7 years and Lola loved her “ranch house” as she called it. Their room had been hand painted with Buddha’s and butterflies, fairies and sunflowers. It was a little girl’s wonderland. My greatest sadness was my girls losing their “ranch house”. I had lost my farm home when I was a kid and never realized that that sadness was still there deep inside and now it was coming to visit my girls.

The water had been to the ridge cap on the roof of the Double wide, 7 ft. of water twice in 24 hours. Trailers don’t mix well with floods. It was totally trashed. Again as I climbed over the wreckage I made my way into our bedroom and was stopped dead in my tracks. Our big king sized bed was sitting in the middle of wrecked furniture perfect like nothing had happened. The white bedspread was perfect, the pillows all still in place and not a speck of mud or water showing. It was spooky weird. There was also a Native American Church prayer fan hanging over the bed that was not even wet and it was below the water line, which was a 6’6”. Climbing out of our room I went to the girls room and Bella’s bed was the same, perfect. Her stuffed animals were all in place on her bed. I lost it. It felt like this mess was saying, “don’t worry, this is your home, this land, this dream and you are fine”. I made my way back outside and sat down on the twisted deck and looked up at the clear blue sky and felt like I was surrounded by light and life and the truth that for all our best attempts to hold onto the things of this world we really hold only what we give that comes through us and all the rest is the sweetness of living and loving being human.

Some where during this time of entering the spaces washed through by the flood I fell through the floor of this world into the under world, a place deep inside our selves that is where all our legacies and human history, our unresolved issues and attachments and also the place where the masters of the Underworld offer the greatest lessons of awareness and truth. I fell deep and only yesterday felt myself moving back into this plane of being. For two weeks I wandered through the depths of the underworld as I went to work and talked with my wife, told friends what was going on and directed the clean up and reconnections that would keep The Ranch program operating. All that time I was fully aware I was dwelling in that space of darkness and deep reflection. Interesting enough my x-wife called and we talked for the first time in several years and my old high school girl friend found me on facebook. Then another friend told me she had just spoken to another very close friend from high school days that I had lost contact with. It was like old passions of my heart had been shook loose and floated up to the surface. As the volunteers came out to help and the amazing people who make up the staff of The Ranch all came together to lift the work and the Dream of The Ranch above the mess I was moving through this world but dwelling deep in a space that I can’t really explain.

This is a brief reflection of living this last two weeks and today I saw clearly that by the 4th of July we will have a RE-CREATION PARTY for our little magical world on the edge of the Piney River in the middle of the Tennessee Hills…so stay tuned and come join us…Blessings to you all and may Peace be With You…

Rising Water- part 1

I flew home from Vegas on Friday evening. The weekend before I led a workshop with my friend Dawn Zurlinden for 18 therapists at The Ranch.We closed on Saturday evening after walking the labriynth in the pouring rain. Then Sunday evening I flew to L.A. to work on our documentary DREAMING HEAVEN on Monday and Tuesday then an evening flight to Vegas for a conference which got me home on Friday night.

When I woke up Saturday morning I was tired, it was the first Saturday in May and the Kentucky Derby was happening that afternoon, so, after winning money on my friend Gary Seidlers horse in the Oaks race the day before I thought I'd relax and see what the Derby brought. Of course I had put my winnings on a hot prospect in the derby. That's when the rain started. This was rain like the sky was pouring out all the waters of an eternity of watching the Earth live in drought. It poured and poured and I sat looking out the window , tired and glad to be home with my family.

At 1pm I got a call that the river was up and the workshop that was on that weekend at The Ranch had been called off due to the weather. No big deal...ok..rain is normal...rain is normal.At 5pm I got a call that the water was up to the offices and close to our little house. I knew something was coming then..another hour passed and the next call was that our house and all the buildings at The Ranch compound were standing in 6 feet of water. The River had merged with the creek and all our buildings and equipment at the Cattle company were also under water, none of these places had ever been flooded before. I wanted to drive out but couldn't get there, the roads were under water. The next twenty four hours were all about the water.

It rose, flooded, dropped and then rose again on Sunday afternoon higher than before. I was still stuck in Nashville , at home, feeling like I was losing the place I had lived to create for the last 20 years. One moment I would be sad, then detached, then amused at the power and surprise of the Mother and her weather, then sad. I wanted to be there and couldn't get there so I would close my eyes and dream myself above those waters looking down on the roof tops.

On Tuesday I made it to The Ranch and my heart broke. The Dream that had been so sweet and alive for eleven years of healing and recovery had been ripped open by the waters. The Spirit House , the Shed offices and the old Ranch managers home that had become the medical offices were blown open by 6 feet of flowing tides of fresh water. Everything was covered in mud and silt. Our little double wide home was destroyed. As I sat feeling like a child who had lost their comfort and safe place I looked up into a beautiful blue sky and felt all the reality of how we own nothing in this world beyond our experience here.I didn't love the river any less, or the Ranch or the presence that life fills all this world with and yes I was very sad.There was work to do, where to start was a challenge, everything was a wreck. Looking out across the river bottom I said to the spirit world , to the river, to the Mother, I love you and my heart is broken and we must recreate our Dream now and I know you will be with me as you have been always and I cried.......to be continued