Alissa
I had this moment last week, one of those "Oh! THAT's what the card means!" realizations that hit you upside the head when you least expect it.
The setup:
I live on a mountaintop, outside a big urban NM city. I have a National Forest for a backyard. We use the woodstove for our primary heat source, and I often find myself clearing deadwood from the yard to use as kindling for the woodstove. This isn't Alissa's Walden pond experience, but it *is* a modern life where antiquated tasks such as gathering and splitting wood occurs.
The RWS card:
The 10 of wands. Our lovely little fellow has his back bowed with the load he carries, 10 wands stacked in his arms, which is struggles with. Traditional meanings we all know... feeling tasked by life, overburdened, stretched thin. Feel free to add your own synonyms.
Reality:
This week, the weather has been unseasonably warm, and I've spent a lot of time in the yard with the boys. I gather dead wood for the winter, while they play.
And as I find myself gathering up these lonnnnng thin dead limbs that have long since fallen off the trees, I struggle. They're not all straight, like the RWS illustration, they're different sizes and lengths. They're light when picked up one by one, but as a bundle of wood they are heavy. They tip when you hold them all. When you bend over to pick up another? One more slips out. You pick that up and another slips out. Walking along, the longest ones catch the limbs of the trees, and get tugged on, making your bundle slip and move in your arms as you struggle to keep a hold of them all.
"Alissa," I tell myself. "Make more trips with less sticks. Or, go find the wagon to haul these, do something. This is too much at once to handle."
My epiphany:
And the Observer who lives inside my head sees me struggling, with an armful of long sticks, and I see Pamela's illustration in my head. The Observer says quietly, "This is the essence of the 10 of wands. This is how the 10 of wands feels. A bit harried, a bit off balance. The 10 of wands isn't about 'picking your battles,' it's more like feeling like you're keeping all the plates spinning without letting them drop."
The 10 of wands says, "Can you keep up with all of it? Or should you let a few of these go? Make more trips? Find help, either a person to carry sticks too, or a wagon to help you with the task? Or you can be stubborn and get it done your way, but it isn't an easy task to tackle the way you're doing it."
It crystallized in my head, and I had this ackward moment of realizing that the task of gathering sticks, something more accustomed to life gone by than today's times, was more than just a metaphor Pixie used.
It was a necessary task, being done in a way that was impractical but not impossible. And I realized I now understood the 10 of wands in a wholly new and very personal way.
Blessings....
The setup:
I live on a mountaintop, outside a big urban NM city. I have a National Forest for a backyard. We use the woodstove for our primary heat source, and I often find myself clearing deadwood from the yard to use as kindling for the woodstove. This isn't Alissa's Walden pond experience, but it *is* a modern life where antiquated tasks such as gathering and splitting wood occurs.
The RWS card:
The 10 of wands. Our lovely little fellow has his back bowed with the load he carries, 10 wands stacked in his arms, which is struggles with. Traditional meanings we all know... feeling tasked by life, overburdened, stretched thin. Feel free to add your own synonyms.
Reality:
This week, the weather has been unseasonably warm, and I've spent a lot of time in the yard with the boys. I gather dead wood for the winter, while they play.
And as I find myself gathering up these lonnnnng thin dead limbs that have long since fallen off the trees, I struggle. They're not all straight, like the RWS illustration, they're different sizes and lengths. They're light when picked up one by one, but as a bundle of wood they are heavy. They tip when you hold them all. When you bend over to pick up another? One more slips out. You pick that up and another slips out. Walking along, the longest ones catch the limbs of the trees, and get tugged on, making your bundle slip and move in your arms as you struggle to keep a hold of them all.
"Alissa," I tell myself. "Make more trips with less sticks. Or, go find the wagon to haul these, do something. This is too much at once to handle."
My epiphany:
And the Observer who lives inside my head sees me struggling, with an armful of long sticks, and I see Pamela's illustration in my head. The Observer says quietly, "This is the essence of the 10 of wands. This is how the 10 of wands feels. A bit harried, a bit off balance. The 10 of wands isn't about 'picking your battles,' it's more like feeling like you're keeping all the plates spinning without letting them drop."
The 10 of wands says, "Can you keep up with all of it? Or should you let a few of these go? Make more trips? Find help, either a person to carry sticks too, or a wagon to help you with the task? Or you can be stubborn and get it done your way, but it isn't an easy task to tackle the way you're doing it."
It crystallized in my head, and I had this ackward moment of realizing that the task of gathering sticks, something more accustomed to life gone by than today's times, was more than just a metaphor Pixie used.
It was a necessary task, being done in a way that was impractical but not impossible. And I realized I now understood the 10 of wands in a wholly new and very personal way.
Blessings....
In the end, it was good exercise for me and practical magic, that's for sure.
