The night sweats that come with my age are one thing. Dripping perspiration while going through customs and having one’s bags searched, however, is a whole other kettle of fish.  My family and I are used to being `randomly` searched – it’s something to do, I imagine, with a mid-eastern-looking skin colour and our foreign-sounding name…. I seem to have also been placed these days in another category that I should probably have expected – the potential religious fanatic…

“That?  Oh, that’s just my buffalo-horn rattle…and those are deer hooves…and yes, that’s tobacco in the turtle shell…. Just a moment, and I`ll get those selenite wands out of my drum for you….”

They are always polite…VERY polite. And then they swipe everything I own with that little swab that checks for explosives….

As I said…NOT the time to start sweating….

My, what a trip this has been…. I set out with a clear intention to be in Rome for Palm Sunday, to be in Jerusalem for the Venus Transit on June 6, and in between to go to the area of southern France that is linked with the Magdalene energies and possibly the Orkney islands.  I made it to Rome….

The work instead lead me mostly through the now-familiar region of Lago di Bolsena and Pitigliano (picking up a lost thread in the Magdalene story there), to Paris a couple of times (thank you, Beth and Mikiel!) and to Amsterdam in time to do a blessing for the planting of Agnes’ beautiful medicine wheel garden and to once again cross paths with sister Judith. I went to London where I did my first workshop and a film interview (cheers, Andy!), to Stonehenge for sunrise at Wesak (thank you, Catherine!), then to the Martinsell Centre for rest and recovery (bless you, Nicola + Kelly!). Catherine then drove us up through England to Edinburgh, where I stayed much longer than expected (warm thanks to Alfredo + The Meadows staff). I ended up, after flight mix-ups and a car break-down, in Firenze for the Venus Transit, healing what felt like a dozen past lives in one swoop. Then off to Pitigliano for a day and a half (ancora grazie, Selma!) and Paris for another day and a half (merci encore, Pierre!). I’m writing as I sit in the Charles-de-Gaulle Airport, awaiting my flight back to Montreal….

This has been a voyage through unspeakable pain and heart-rending beauty. I’ve touched bodies holding stories that I could not ever bear to repeat, and am grateful for the opportunity to have done so. I’ve witnessed in wonderment the most spectacular creative brilliance, moulding the Knowledge of the Old Ways into beacons along a new path for humanity. The Old World is sprouting new wings – of Spirit, of community, and of an honouring of the Land.

My own path this time was formed of stone and wood and gold and Light, and  illuminated only by intuition and faith.  I left with almost no money in my pocket, and I return the same way, more or less….When I had no funds for travelling, I knew I had work to do where I’d stopped…

I return with the awareness of many issues to be settled, with not the foggiest idea how they will be, and with the faith that I don’t really need to know how. All that could have seemed disastrous has simply put me exactly where I’ve needed to be – where I could do the work I feel I am here to do.

There are Israeli soldiers with machine guns at the entrance to the El-Al plane next to ours – I send  love and peace to their hearts as I walk past them, boarding the Air Canada jet that will miraculously get me to Montreal one hour later than take-off time..! When lunch arrives, it is fettucine con carciofi e pomodori secchi – my heart begins to hurt. Turning inward to savour memories, I am startled back to alertness with an urgent intuition to open the window blinds – when I do, I see that we are directly above the Magdalene Islands, and not long after, we fly over Heartroot Farm. It is the first time that I have really noticed the shifting personality of the land from this perspective… The deep green forests fade into stripped brown cultivation. The Atlantic reaches its sparkling blue deep into the continent and becomes La Fleuve – the St.Lawrence Seaway.  All around the Island of Montreal, the water has turned a military green, sickly colour…. I feel shaken (not stirred!)….

It seems that I’m returning to a Printemps d’Érable in Montreal that is heating up for the summer. The Earth and the human lives that are part of her are continuing to shake and shift – the image comes of a phoenix emerging wet and still unsure from the shell of a dinosaur….

I set the intention that however this all works out, it will be better than I could ever imagine….

Blessings and Love,

Dawn