The News
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- Written by John Michael Thornton
- Category: We Are Moving
We are moving.
We finally brought the cats to the new house. Maya, our fifteen year old, skinny, black kitty, the one we were most worried about, took the move easiest. She wandered around a bit, found a soft spot to lay and relaxed. Stanley, who is brave, brash and only four years old, is a mess. She yowled like it was the end of the world and found a tiny corner where she could hide.
It’s been a few days now and they are slowly acclimating, but super affectionate. We have set up our living room in the furnished basement of the new house and are keeping the cats downstairs while we continue to settle in, move and unpack. At first, they were both perfectly happy to just stay in their space and try to figure out this new home, but Stanley now has other plans. She has started sitting at the top of the stairs waiting for the door to open. She hasn’t tried to escape into the rest of the house, but she knows there is more to this new home… and she hates closed doors.
Maya on the other paw, has found a chair to make her own and she is hard to pry out of it once she is settled. It’s already acquiring a smattering of black fur.
“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.”
― Jean Cocteau
- Details
- Written by John Michael Thornton
- Category: We Are Moving
We are moving.
I haven’t talked about it much to anyone by family and close friends because people always ask the question, “Are you sure you want to move?” My answer is always the same, “Not really, but we are moving just the same.”
We are moving in with my father in law, to help him and help keep him in the best health possible. It was a family decision that we have been discussing for over a year, but two months ago it changed from a discussion to a plan and from a plan into action – action that has involved an awful lot of paint, spackle and cardboard boxes.
Two months of Joe and I having unexpected health problems (mine are all grounding and first chakra related), two months of trips to Goodwill and the dump, two months of unending visits to the hardware store, two months of plumbing problems and toilets that won’t flush, mowers that don’t mow, and two months of trying to envision what our new home will look like at the end of all this work.
Oh, and two months of me trying to let go of my home of fourteen years. The place where I built a successful business and we founded a non-profit, the place I planned and planted gardens – some that thrived and some that failed, the place I fell in love with my Husband, the place I never expected to stay more than five years in but crept into my soul.
The place where I feel safe.
Over my kitchen door, the one I go in and out of dozens of times a day, is written, “You are safe.” I always have been safe in this house, and it’s not that I haven’t gotten bad news of had problems here, but I have always been safe, even from myself.
I spent a lot of energy making myself feel safe here, for months I would walk nightly circles around the property with blessed water, incense, prayers and energy. I talked to the local faeries and elementals, connected with the spirits of the land and gave this ground all the love I had my heart – sometimes that didn’t feel like very much, but it was all I had to give.
This land gave me back beauty, security, food and my lovely dog Dart – who came to me on a dark and stormy summer night. My time on this land helped me find the person I thought I had lost under anger, disappointment, loss and loneliness. I relearned how to love here and how to offer acceptance, I learned lessons on nonjudgement and forgiveness and grounding and gratitude and I keep learning them over and over – each time I get closer to understanding what those words really mean.
I spent hours mowing and digging, giving my mind the space it needed to ruminate and meander. Space I rarely give myself with some project to work on – this land and this house was my project.
Terry Pratchett wrote (more or less) that people tell the land what it is and the land makes them who they are, I called this land home.
- Details
- Written by John Michael Thornton
- Category: Growing Pains
I’ve been thinking a lot about reincarnation recently. I think what started the thought process was reading an article on climate change and thinking, “Wow, the next time around is going suck.”
My first past life memory was one of cataclysm and destruction. I was running through the streets of a city that was crumbling from earthquakes and rising waters, clutching the hand of a companion. The memory ended when she was attacked, I don’t know if we made it to docks and escaped. I was fourteen when I remembered those few brief moments and spent years wracked with guilt, convinced I could have done more to save her and get us to safety. Hundreds, if not thousands, of years later and I am still trying to forgive myself for those last moments.
I’ve remembered snippets of other lives since then, I’ve even remembered dying, but nothing shook me to the core like that first memory. For years after recalling that life I was obsessed with never coming back. I learned what I could about reincarnation and even bought a book, from the humor section, called “101 Ways to Avoid Reincarnation.” I studied it obsessively.
Around the same time I read the book Starborn, by John Nelson, in which one character asked the question, “how could I possibly leave everyone I care about without helping them move on as well?” It was that question that catalyzed the soul growth and evolution of the character. It also deeply resonated with me, but at the time I just wanted to get out and never come back.
Twenty Seven years as a psychic has changed my perspective a bit, and I know my thinking will continue to evolve. This still often feels like a harsh and challenging planet to live on, but I’m no longer obsessed with making this my last life.
For many people the idea that this is your last lifetime on Earth is almost a boast, a moment of ego. The idea is they have evolved beyond this planet, and maybe they have, but to me there still seems like so much to do here on this lovely blue green planet. There are so many things to learn, so many souls to help, and so many gardens to tend (and trash to be picked up).
That doesn't mean I don’t read the news and think, “stop the world, I want to get off.” I wonder how I can exist, let alone grow as a sensitive soul amid so much ugliness. I remember that first past life memory and the horror I felt as we ran for our lives and the conviction I felt that this time, this life, I would do better. I would be better.
So, I know I’m not done. This will not be my last time around. When I feel tired and overwhelmed by the ugliness, fear and hatred I see in the world I will remind myself that my job is to make myself and the world a little bit better and if I fail today, there will be another day, another lifetime, another chance to be better.
- Details
- Written by John Michael Thornton
- Category: In Memorium
Monday morning our beloved dog Dart passed away at home. Joe and I were with him and he was held and loved as he passed, he had been with us twelve and a half years.
It was a dark and stormy night when I found Dart lying huddled in the rain next to my driveway. The headlights from the car illuminating a skinny, wet dog with big brown eyes and floppy ears. I did not want a dog, but I dried him off and gave him some fresh water and a place to sleep on the porch resolving to find his owners in the morning. 
He was full grown when his showed up with a blue collar and no tags. I started asking the neighbors and my dog loving mail carrier, Mary, checked her whole route, trying to find his owners. When I would tell him, “Go home!” he would just look at me. After a few days of him living on my porch, not inside because I did not want (and could not afford) a dog, Mary said, “I think you have a dog, you should get him to a vet.”
My parents and my friend Sherry helped me out with a few bucks for the Vet and suddenly I had a dog, a very quick dog, who happily responded to Dart – Dartanian when I was feeling pretentious.
He wasn’t very well trained at first, but he learned fast, except he kept peeing on the potted tree in my bedroom. So one day I hid in the closet so I could jump out and catch him in the act. He never peed in the house again.
I quickly came to believe Dart was sent to me to be my protector, maybe my familiar, but he was definitely a faerie dog. The strange spirits that would float through the neighborhood dispersed when he was around, nervous clients quickly calmed and the groundhogs stayed out of the garden. He even helped a few friends who were afraid of dogs, especially big dogs, past their fears. It was rare for him to dislike someone, but I always listened when he did.
Over the last few years he started slowing down, but he could still disappear when he wanted to, and he still tried to patrol the boundaries of the yard. Around Christmas we started carrying him up and down the stairs as he grew weaker, unless he darted around us and got to the stairs first.
Monday morning he was gone. He was my first dog and the very best Dart in the world.
