Retreading

Greetings all,

Well now we're most of the way through the holidays.  Anyone out of breath yet?  This month has been not just a whirlwind but a hurricane of activity.  I'm late again with all the things going on here, but I remain committed to keeping up with my blog, YouTube channel, and ceremonies.

In these past few weeks it seems as though I have been retreading old tracks.  Old friends have reappeared, missed opportunities have gotten a second chance.  Emotional patterns have resurfaced either to be cleansed or examined for their purpose.  I found myself on the road the day after Christmas quite unexpectedly.  It wasn't a certainty until a day or so before after the weather forecast turned out clear.  I'm not one to travel widely in winter, but sometimes you have to take the journey when the paths are singing.

I drove to Gatlinburg a place I haven't been for seven years.  I hadn't been in Tennessee at all since 2007.  Although I used to go there quite frequently.  Family ties brought me back again and again, but now most of my family that lived there has passed onto the next life or they have moved.  I drove down once familiar roads seeing the rock formations I'd look for on each drive through the mountains.  I had an odd mix of familiarity and disorientation.  Roads do change, detours appear.  So what summoned me to the Smoky Mountains?  A contact I had made years back when I was a work-study student at a craft school (lower case c crafts means arts as opposed to Crafts which are only taught at Hogwarts).  I had made friends with the woman who ran the book store/ supply store at the school.  I found out that I made quite an impression.  That is how I came to have work in a gallery down in Gatlinburg.

I am often surprised at how people remember me.  I don't generally know the impact I have upon people.  I think the first time I ever realized people were even paying attention was about two years ago when I went to a seminar.  Someone came up to me and said, "You're Thomas Mooneagle,  I love Thomas Mooneagle!"  They knew me from my YouTube channel, it was the first and only time that has happened in public.  It was and continues to be strange as people connect with me via Facebook or email to hear how I have affected them.  It's not something I am always comfortable with, and I don't think that I am alone in that.  While it is good to contemplate our choices and how they affect ourselves and others, we simply cannot fathom the impact of small everyday actions.  At least we can't all the time, on occasion a general reflection on our overall actions is a good thing.  Just so long as we don't continually second guess our everything we do.

So this past connection drew me back to a place that had been quite meaningful to me.  As if that wasn't enough of a retreading of the sands of time, I had another contact from a past era.  This year I have expanded my social circle quite a bit (I pruned it too but you have to now and then), and it was through a random meeting that I found that someone new to me was friends with someone I used to chat with quite a bit, but had lost track of.  Well just this weekend we finally got a chance to sit down at a party and talk face to face.  You might say that was coincidence, but I have the third instance the one that proves the pattern.  For years I have had an internet/phone buddy I met on a forum in the long ago.  Never met in person, but we've talked for years.  They even helped me beta test a few things for my healing practice.  Well on my impromptu trip down to the mountains I finally had my chance to meet this friend.  He even put me up for the night so I didn't need to get a hotel (the Mooneagle always appreciates this as he finds hotels hard to sleep in).  Odd thing never having met and yet we just chatted on like we've done on the phone.  No awkwardness.

Now not all this recycling of the past has been hearts and rainbows.  I've noticed in myself old hurts and resentments rising to the surface.  I've found myself thinking down old dead end streets of self inflicted wounds.  I've wondered sheesh will this pattern never die?  How many times must I kill you?  It's like a Friday the 13th or Halloween movie you just can't get rid of the monster.  So what is all that about?

Our past lives in us and only us.  If you think it is shared ask a family member about a particular event from years back, one that was emotionally charged.  Everyone remembers it differently especially on matters of who started something, or what so and so said to your mother.  You get the picture.  Your past is yours and yours alone.  The lens in which we view it has a lot to do with whether it is a burden or a blessing.  Take a good memory, it can lend you strength or be a source of contentment in hard times.  It can also be a source of loss for something whose time is no longer.  Goodbye is a hard word with teeth and talons.  Yet it is part of the human experience.  It is central to the human experience, in every hello there is an eventual goodbye.  Still it can be a good farewell or a bad one.  Some of my most satisfying experiences have been wishing someone goodbye and showing them the door.  See I just retread a memory right there in front of you.  Were you paying attention?

So how about you?  What has arisen from the past?  Is it giving you an opportunity?  Is it wishing you goodbye?  Is it pointing out something that still lives in you that needs to be reborn or is it something that needs to die?  Who keeps popping up from the long ago?  How are you different in your relation to them?  Are you different?  Are you really, or are you just wearing different clothes?  Are you wearing clothes?  So much to contemplate before the year counts down and a brand shiny new one takes it place.  It is time to walk again the paths we know or think we know and discover anything precious we may have dropped along the way, and perhaps empty our pockets of that which we no longer need carry.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle


p.s.  The gallery where my work is being sold (officially made several sales hurrah!) is called Dragonfly Art Dimensions located in Gatlinburg, TN.  If you are in the Smokies definitely check them out.