Honoring My Mother

When I started this blog, I invited my mother to write a guest piece to share her experiences with Spirit. The following is her description of the experience that set her on the path to spiritual self discovery.

"I am writing to tell you of an initiation of sorts that I experienced over 40 years ago, 44 years to be exact in the winter of 1966.  Never forgetting this remarkable occurrence on the top of Mount Tamalpias it was brought into focus as a Shamanic event when reading The Reluctant Shaman.  Nature, animals, humans, and the Full Moon. My friends and I were living in idyllic Mill Valley and one full moon night hiked up the slopes of Mt. Tam, the guardian mother of the Miwoks living  there in pre-columbian time. Were they with us then? They called her the Sleeping Maiden.  This night, She lived as we came upon a circle of deer standing on a knoll.  There seemed in my memory to be an equal number of deer and young people.  We slowly encircled the deer who unafraid stood their ground watching us.  The beauty of those few moments as we stood  with each other was timeless and preternatural - we all felt the young Humans and the Deer as One. The Holy manuscript of nature the only book that can enlighten the reader. A time of peace and unity, which I accepted and integrated this initiation into my world view. Perhaps the deer ever alert and paying attention at that moment trusting the gentle truce of human interaction have been my teachers as a connection to nature and the divine even to this moment."

I share this with you because it illustrates my mother's unique sense of the world. This story also illustrates how Deer was a messenger of Spirit, allowing my mother and her friends to experience its gentle, innocent nature, giving them a sense of magic, of hope, of connection to the world.
I invite anyone who would like to share their experience with Spirit to submit their stories to the Magic of Spirit's Facebook page.