In Alaska, it is well known that the summer solstice is spent in daylight.  Summer knows no darkness.  But as the warm season wanes, darkness prevails, and the population lives in the shadow time.  My teacher Bob told me once that the people up there welcome the darkness, for it is a time of reflection and inner growth. Right now I seem to be way up North myself.  geesh!  According to the Celtic way of seeing, the direction of the North is the place of adversity and challenge-a place of lessons, growth and reflection in shadow times.

Things had been on the up and up lately and I was riding high on the waves of a beautiful soul retrieval.  The water was nice and I was feeling pretty nifty-Perhaps even a little too nifty. 

Ahh Sweet North.  How I need the lessons you hold.  How I cringe at the thought of going your way.  As I write this my husband is fixing the lower ball joint on his 1988 jalopy pick-em-up truck.  He sports a broken nose, broken in two places in a work accident Friday. 

Steel bar: One.  Tim's nose: Big Zero.   Those are his lessons and while we are having a shared experience, he is in his own place of learning in all of this.

I got a knock-em-down-drag-em out migraine complete with vomiting the day after he broke his nose.  Perhaps holding all of the stress of seeing my love injured wasn't such a great idea.  Seems like I've been feeling a little like I was able to leap tall buildings with a single bound and I needed to slow down a bit.  Time to rest my feet on the solid ground and perhaps acknowledge I am not ten feet tall.  The week before I had fallen playing around on rocks at Bernheim Forest.  I wasn't looking too good laying on the couch with swollen knee joints and skinned knees.  Someone needed to pay attention to their walk.

Add to the recipe some interpersonal frustration that mirrored my own shadow self, that inner child work that seems forever ongoing, and you have the recipe for Dark Time in the battlefields of the North. 

Tim and I walk the Shaman Path together and Sunday was his circle.  I go with him and we spend the day together with the wonderful Bob Teets of Thunder Valley Drums (www.naturalshamandrums.com), who is my teacher and my friend.  One thing I have learned in my walk is the harder it gets, the stronger you press onward.  It is not uncommon  for things to happen before healing ceremonies and today was no different.  I knew the only way for us to work through this was to drag our battered and broken middle aged bodies to circle and press forward.  I needed a good learning experience and we both needed a good healing.  I can only imagine what we looked like getting out of the car.  I can say I was extremely joyful to be embraced by Bob and Diana's open arms.  It's nice being loved in spite of one's own folly.

Bob spoke about humbleness, how we need to return to spirit and how we all need to be reminded of our own walk.  Our place as healers is that of a channel, of a place for spirit to move through and work with the client.  Sometimes people get lost and forget.  As a healer, there is such a fine line between owning our divinity and our beauty and remembering that we are simple humans in a great universe. Humble is an ongoing concept that I am needing to spend time with to be with fully.  Time to slow down and take it all in.   

It's easy to get overwhelmed by it all...the place of the shadow self, the place of battle.  It's definitely hard to explain the many layers of lessons going on here.  I am human.  I get apple pie and and sunrises.  I also get lessons.  

In this place that I am, I am reminded of the words from the Mumford and Sons Song "Below My Feet:" 

Keep the earth below my feet, for all my sweat my blood runs weak.  Let me learn from where I have been.  Keep my eyes  to serve my hands to learn. 

I am working hard to learn the things I came here to learn and at the same time to honor Spirit's call to be of service to others.

There is much to digest from the last two weeks.  I am still lying low and working to figure it all out.  That is the way up here, things take time to work out.  The direction of the North is not for the faint of heart, but it's wisdom is priceless.  It is a place of Battle and a place of Letting Go.  When you come out of the North for a time, you are that much closer to the beauty of your authentic self.  But everything has its own season and the time will come again to return to the Dark Time.  It's good to know, though, that we are not alone in this walk.

Tim and I got our healing at shaman circle that day and physically we are feeling much better for it.  It doesn't mean we are out of the North yet.  Nope.  Sure doesn't.  It appears we have set up camp. I had better light a fire,  it's going to be awhile.  However, the truck is fixed and I'm in excellent company.  Tim has a handsome new crook in his nose.  My mom made a helluva good batch of macaroni and cheese last night, so life is still good while we are trying to make sense of it all.  And you know what?  I am that much closer to The Light Time.