Two Thursday’s ago, in the low, monastic candle-lit room here in the hobbit house in the canyon wall, I prepared wordlessly for an important initiation. Not that of an ancient rite or mysterious sect.  To all appearances, in fact, it was little more than a scholastic necessity.  I prepared to drive to Santa Barbara, to take and pass my clinical oral exams as a counseling depth psychologist.

I made my rounds about my sweet space, in and out in measured scurry.  Returning to my front door from my compost out under the deck, I stopped in an almost trip, fell into immediate silence, and pause.  Beetle was at my entry.  Sacred Scarab.

What a harbinger this was, and my body knew it, the way it responded deep in my blood.  A subtle entrancement, the kind that comes from awareness–in a daily, cultivated way, of reverence for a deeper appreciation of life and its meaningful ways.

Should we choose this deeper awareness, this open and ongoing relationship with all things, it is always there to engage us.

Perhaps this alone is the women’s work.  A reverent, open-hearted awareness, cultivated, of the multitude of depths and meaning to behold in this mysterious place.  With the passing of the exams, a knitting together came for me.  All those life moments that have led me here, to California where I’ve surrendered to my calling.  Of studies of the women’s psyche and soul, of the meanings and passings of this being human thing, of the nature of Nature.  All the things I said goodbye too, an accounting of each and every loss, and simultaneous blessing that resulted, on the journey that led me to the Rite of passing those exams.

Sacred Scarab, who represents the end of an old way of being.

She showed up last night, again. I’ve had no previous experiences with her until these last two weeks.  Buzzing around my head as soon as I turned the light off in my bed.  I am touched by what the significance of her timing today means. In deep and worshipful awe, arms open heart wide, I am willing to say YES.  And to also embrace the necessary, accompanying goodbyes.