What Mellisandra The Rainbow Serpent Is Teaching Me...

"One of the most important dragons of creation mythology is the Australian Rainbow Serpent, its symbol being the rainbow bridging Heaven and Earth. Given the Dreamtime is connected to our world, the creation story of the Ancestors and their mythical past is simultaneously the creation of the present and our future. According to Aboriginal cosmology the link must be maintained if our future is to be made manifest."

~ Susanne Iles, The Dragon & Creation ~

I have been trying to figure out how to write this blog entry and not intrude on the sacred space that I am in but it is a tale worth telling, one that shocked me, surprised me, made my heart hurt and then opened my heart so wide that the air around me was as filled with luminous colors, just like Mellisandra, the Rainbow Serpent who lay in my lap while I worked feverishly to finish her for a show that she would never be in. Let me go back a little bit...

In a recent blog entry I spoke about the fiber show that I was going to be in. I was thrilled to have been included and very excited, but as the deadline grew near I was in a panic. On a Monday I found out that she had to be delivered on Saturday and there was no way in heaven I thought I could make that deadline, but I was determined and made a valiant effort to finish her and finish her in time I did, but what is meant to be is meant to be, and what is not is not. 

Mellisandra was not meant to go in the show, and as I've often said, "If you don't pay attention to the signs the Universe is giving you, you will get a big walloping HELLO, LISTEN HERE!" that will finally stop you in your tracks. I wish I'd listened to my first instinct. No, I don't, because of the lessons that I have learned, the unbelievable experience I wouldn't have had any other way. It turned out to be a shamanic journey, a sacred pilgrimage into unknown territory, and I was blessed with a vision that shook me to my core. I, myself, entered The Dreamtime, and during that experience the seeds of my future were planted and are now being made manifest. 

I can barely talk about this...

So it was Monday and the deadline was looming ahead. I worked in a time out of time kind of place, twelve to fifteen hours a day, barely getting 3-4 hours sleep before the dogs woke me to go out. Mid-afternoon I would collapse for a little nap, get up and make tea and keep working through the night until 4 a.m. the next morning.  By Saturday I was so close that I e-mailed the woman in charge and asked if I could have one more day and bring her in on Sunday and she said yes if I could get her there at a specified time, only a 1/2 hour window of time because the show was being hung that day. Determined to finish her I worked all the way through the night from Saturday into Sunday and was still working feverishly as the sun rose, putting the finishing touches on my beautiful serpent. 

Somewhere around 5 a.m. I didn't think I could make it. I could barely hold my eyes open and I was literally in that place when you are running on empty and still keep going, this time with no sleep at all, but I was being propelled through a dark tunnel into a blinding light, all the colors of the rainbow flashed around me and I was in a meditative state, prayerful, a state of grace, and then it happened. I cannot speak here of all of the details because it is too private but let me say this... I had a vision and it was as real as this computer sitting on my lap. I whispered to myself, "I can't go on..." and all of a sudden I was surrounded by all of the spirits and angels and everything I hold sacred and they spoke to me. "Keep going, keep going, let Mellisandra lead the way. Ask her why she came into your life, what she came to teach you." 

For a few moments I sat in a daze and then I reached down and lifted her head up. It was on the floor well in front of the ottoman my legs were stretched out on as she was now seven feet long. I looked into the eyes I had finished somewhere through the night and I knew, on some subconscious level, that she had come to teach me far more than I was prepared to learn, but learn it I must. We communed in silence but the message cut deep. Fathoms deep. A flood tide of emotion and my whole life passed before my sleepless eyes heading past me and on into the future. 

It is hard to speak about this...

Something else was happening at the same time that had made the week far more difficult than it would have been, even past the long hours and barely getting any sleep. Somewhere through the week I tore a ligament in my knee. The pain got worse until it became excruciating and I worked through the night with my knee bandaged, with ice packs continually on it, and it made my whole body ache, like the athlete who had injured herself but makes it to the finish line not knowing how bad it is until she stops. Friday night was terrible. Saturday even worse. I followed doctors orders with the leg up and iced and staying off my feet, slathering my leg with arnica gel before re-bandaging and putting a fresh ice pack on but I kept on going. By 6 a.m. I knew that I would have her finished but there was no way I could drive to get her there, I could barely walk, and the show was in the downtown area where it is impossible, most of the time, to even get a parking spot and you may have to walk two blocks to your destination. If I had been able to drive at all and park right in front of the building I wouldn't have been able to walk to carry her in. I sent an e-mail to my daughter Rachel asking if she could pick up this beautiful serpent and deliver her in time. 

My daughter always does e-mail early in the morning but I didn't hear from her. By 10 a.m. I was writing the woman in charge to say that the piece was finished and I was trying to reach my daughter to deliver her. I kept trying to call but I couldn't reach her for hours and the deadline came and went. Finally she called me to say that they had gone out of town the night before and she had just gotten my messages, and the only other person in town, my dear friend, was also out of town. I wrote and asked if there was any way that I could bring her in on Monday. The show didn't start until Tuesday, but I didn't hear back. Rachel said she could take her on Monday, but by Sunday afternoon I knew in my gut that it wasn't to be. I was heartbroken, I was hurting badly, but then... then the clouds parted and the rainbow appeared. Suddenly I was absolutely at peace. I let go. I knew that the whole purpose in making Mellisandra was not the show but the journey I would go on and it was far more powerful an experience than I could ever have imagined. 

Rachel showed up Monday but by then there was a brief e-mail saying, "The show is already hung, sorry it didn't work out." At that point I think I was just relieved. I was so exhausted I could barely see straight, the lessons, what had been shown to me during that sleepless night, told me so much about what my work ahead was supposed to be that it was exhilarating. My daughter and I talked about it and she said what I already knew inside. I had never done a show, I was terrified, but I committed to do it and did indeed finish the piece. I tried hard to get this amazing Rainbow Serpent to the show but it didn't happen. It wasn't meant to happen. It's like the quote, "It's not the end that matters but the journey that matters in the end." The journey I had been on was deeply profound and nothing was more important than what I had gone through. 

When I started working on Mellisandra I knew, just knew, that she was supposed to be at least ten feet long, but I made a piece that was seven feet long and finished her by the deadline. The thing is, she wasn't really finished, not like she was supposed to be. Now I could take up where I left off and keep going. By Monday night I gently picked her up again and again there was a deeply profound spiritual experience where even more than I could quite comprehend at the time was revealed. I have spent the last week continuing to work on her and now I know that she will be far more than ten feet because I realized what needed to be done. I am going to continue to work on her for the next year, and chart the journey in a book, a spiritual journey that parallels the lifetime I have spent on this earth to date, and the life that I have ahead.

As in the quote at the top of this page Mellisandra came into my life in the present to take me into the future, that slide down the other side of the rainbow. I have been struggling with my work for some time and all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, working feverishly and in pain to finish the serpent that lay in my lap over my knee, iced and aching, my angels and spirit guides, God, and the magic of the Dreamtime lifted me out of one reality and into the next. I am forever changed and filled with gratitude. The link, the lesson, what I learned, will hold me steady on my course and my future will unfold before me and be made manifest. A long depression and fear lifted from me, and though I was in pain I felt better, happier, more at peace than I have in a long time. 

I have experienced a miracle. I am in awe, I am richly blessed, I am filled with gratitude. 

Just this morning, over coffee, I was rereading one of my favorite writers, Sue Bender. It was from her first book, Plain and Simple, about the incredible year that she left her chaotic life and went to live with an Amish family. At the end of the book she wrote, "Miracles happen after a lot of hard work." And so they do.

It is past 2 a.m. as I write this. I am not sleeping well because whatever position I shift into causes too much pain so I flip and flop and shift around all night long, stuffing a pillow under my knee for support, but it's all okay. The knee injury was part of a wake-up call I needed too. A lesson in living mindfully, in paying attention, in living awake and alive in the present moment and not floating about with my head in the clouds as I am wont to do. It will not be a quick recovery but I have Mellisandra to see me through and even as I write this, my knee propped up on ice, I am surround by boxes and bags of handspun yarns, and now I will be spinning a lot more yarn as I continue to ride the serpent's back toward my future. Just as a snake sheds it's skin I have shed much in these last two weeks and come to a clearer space than I have ever been before, and I am open and listening carefully to the lessons that Mellisandra is teaching me. God is speaking through her and the room is filled with benevolent presences as I write and work on this Rainbow Serpent. Maybe she will be 100 feet long. It's not for me to say, or to know at this point. It's my job to keep working and listen to that still small voice within. I am listening. There is much to do and a road ahead I must traverse, following a beautiful, iridescent, Rainbow Serpent who came to help me through a dark night of the soul, and is leading me on the path I was meant to take. 

I am listening Mellisandra, and I am following...

P.S. I wish I could have taken pictures to include here but Mellisandra is very long and unwieldy and I am not steady with my bad knee, but I will be photographing her for upcoming entries when I can manage to get around better!