Tag Archives: meaning

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Big Love: Jupiter in Cancer

No matter what sign Jupiter is in, its question is always the same: “How are you underestimating yourself? What leap of faith do you need to make in order to expand your horizons?” On 6/26/13, Jupiter moved into the sign of Cancer, the Great Mother.  The message is, “Trust what you feel. Let the wisdom of your heart show you the way. Seek the comfort of those with whom you feel safe. Those tribal members who are at your side when you hurt.” Like a flower in bud, you’re trembling with the impulse to open. You need others to help you do so. There are helping hands reaching out now to find yours. Clasp them gently and joyously and allow the happy tears of celebration to flow down your cheeks. Then, as you dive deeply into the waters of intimacy, Jupiter rewards your faith with the great gift of vulnerability.

With an open heart,

Joyce

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Making Connections

A few years ago, my sweetheart and I were sitting by an ambitious little river in Northern Thailand watching oxen grazing on the opposite bank. Hesitantly, a thirsty calf strayed to the lip of the river. In the same moment, with a series of wildly joyous yips, a golden retriever threw itself into the currents.

Hastily, the calf retreated, legs buckling like soft green bamboo. Its firm but encouraging mother nuzzled it back to the river. It slid first one hoof, then the other, into the water and began to drink. The patient mother stood by her calf’s side until it had finished. Meanwhile, the retriever seemed to watch with quiet pride. We were strangely and powerfully moved by this sweet and simple scenario. Such is the unspoken mood of the town we couldn’t leave. It is the kind of place that you could drive right through if you weren’t paying attention.

This is a town that refuses to put on makeup. It whispers and bellows and laughs and chatters. It’s an amblin’ town, not efforting to make anything happen. Because of that, things do. It hasn’t outgrown its sense of community. Connections still happen, and they don’t have anything to do with business networking.

One morning a 6-week-old puppy, Vodka (so named because his person owns a bar), was hit by a truck. Everyone within earshot stopped to see if they could help. Two locals who practice Reiki (Ray-KEE) a form of energy work used for healing, scooped the squealing puppy into their arms and started giving him this channeled energy of universal love. After a couple of hours, Vodka began to squirm so they put him down. He danced off on four fat legs, whirligigging his tail in gratitude.

Certainly, the energy work helped. However, what was most striking was the obvious fact that Vodka was securely wrapped in a blanket of love and care by everyone involved. He knew it, they knew it, and a small but significant miracle occurred as a result. When we left town several days later, he was still being tended to by the community—and was frisking around the streets.

When was the last time that you slowed down long enough to ask someone “How are you, really?” and mean it? Connecting can be cool– really, really cool. It just takes a little courage and initiative. Like the young calf, if you’re thirsty for true connection, be willing to get your feet wet. And If you happen to fall in, a helping hand will pull you back to shore.

Saturn Return, Transformation

The Second Saturn Return: Passage to Wisdom

Everyone who lives to be 57 or thereabouts goes through their second Saturn return. This means that they have reached a point in their life journey where they are entering the earliest stages of “old age” or elderhood. Like the first Saturn return, it is once again a cycle of maturation involving significant life passages. People retire, they become grandparents, their own, aging parents may die, they may move, values changes, bodies change. This is hardly the end of the road, however. It’s actually just another beginning.

Saturn wants these folk to climb their own mountain, too–only it’s a far different one than the one of the first Saturn return. There is a gravity to their efforts, and a sense of less time ahead than before them. Therefore, an urgency often arises to pass on what they know. Many people who volunteer, for example, are older. It may, in part, be as a result of extra time due to retirement, but that’s only part of it. They want to give back.

Older doesn’t mean wiser, of course, but it does mean that someone of 60 has had more life experience than someone of 30. All of us have had the misfortune to have to sit and endure an older person pontificating about “the good old days.” How boring is that? We don’t learn, or want to learn, from such lecturing. Those are the individuals who fail the second Saturn return, to be left alone in Saturnian loneliness and solitude, cut off from the kind of meaningful connection that can occur between youth and elders.

The Cool Old Man or Woman, who traverses this critical life cycle elegantly and consciously, shares examples of his or her life. In that way, younger people want to hear what they have to say, because they’re not being judged and the stories close the gap between the generations. Think of Dustin Hoffman–he’s funny, wise, enjoying the hell out of life and is eminently human.  He still acts, but his main focus is on his family and truly taking time to do what he enjoys. He doesn’t care what other people think. He’s one cool dude.

The second Saturn return, done correctly, allows the person to chill and mellow. To notice what’s important now, not in the doing, but in the giving. In the sharing. In the reflecting. Life tends to become less serious and sweeter. If someone tries to ignore this passage, they may face end-of-life fears which could manifest concretely as lack, restriction and  loss of faith.

I approach my second Saturn return this year. I look to it with curiosity, openness and respect. I have a sense of what it will bring, but I choose to make the most of it. Meanwhile, I surround myself with people younger than I am, who remind me not to get rigid, to go with the flow, to be curious, open and celebratory.