Tarot card of the day: Four of Wands
I love how Tarot images open the reader to so many different possibilities, sometimes too many. When I pulled the Four of Wands, upright, my first response was: this is not how I feel today (although I will say every day I pull a card for this exercise, I’m not specifically asking for myself, but rather “what is”). I do not feel like celebrating with community, and in fact I felt rather the opposite. But I sat with it for a few moments and realized this card was rather teaching me a lesson of failure of self-recognition. As I face my own challenges of community, I am reminded of where I let me mind dwell. And the more we attend to the things that are good….the more we dwell in the space of gratitude and appreciation, and take time to even recognize when something happens that ought to be celebrated… the more we live that. We become what we think.
In the midst of raw emotions, I found Dean Young’s poem “Spring Reign” instructive. He begins:
“Thank you whoever tuned the radio
to rain, thank you who spilled
the strong-willed wine for no
being me so I’m not to blame. I’m glad
I’m not that broken tree although
it looks sublime.”
He’s captured the edge of gratitude, when sometimes all you can do is thank something negative or wrong for it not being you or not happening to you. So with that, I would like to say:
Thank you for flipping the record to the B-side
of snow and muffled absence.
What I’m failing to see is how crooked
streets lead me to places I never knew
existed and somehow whole worlds carry on
before and after, all made of thoughts bent
on following a will to be.
Thank you to the birds who shed their feathers
and so that I could make my own bent wings.
Bibliography:
Young, Dean. “Spring Reign.” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55295/spring-reign