SoulCollage® – Council Suit – Ancestral History and Future Vision

SoulCollage® – Council Suit – Ancestral History and Future Vision

Two of my recent SoulCollage® cards, each belonging to the Council suit, remind me of my place in time, sandwiched between the long arc of history past and the infinite future that has yet to unfold.

I am reminded of the importance of “being here now,” of staying mindfully in the present, that NOW is all I have. But my NOW is balanced precariously between the history of the past and the unknown of the future.

Council Suit – Ancestral History

My NOW is informed by the past – not only my personal past, but the history held in my pulsing veins, in my DNA. The history of my ancestors, the history of my land, my country, this planet, the Universe. To be ignorant of that history is to miss the mystery and the miracle that I stand here at all in this NOW. To be ignorant of that history is to risk repeating its mistakes. To be ignorant of that history is to risk being ungrateful to all those upon whose sacrifice and struggle I stand. To be ignorant of that history is to risk never knowing what I’ve gained, never mourning what I’ve lost. Never knowing, really, who I am and where I come from. History is the scaffold upon which my NOW is built, it is the skeleton ’round which my flesh and blood is woven.

Council Suit – Future Vision

And from here in this NOW, I am empowered to dream ahead, to envision the future. I am tempted to ask She Who Sees the Future to show me what is to come. But I know that whatever she may see is only a potential future, for it is not yet written what shall come. That ambiguity, that unkown and unknowableness of the future brings meaning into how I spend this NOW. What future will I create through the actions of this moment? What legacy will I leave for those that follow? What mistakes do I bequeath to future generations? What is gained by my own sacrifice and struggle? What stories, what history will be woven from this moment in time, this NOW that is all I have?

And, of course, this NOW in which I stand is no more mine alone than was the past or will be the future. This NOW of ours is a multi-player game. No one of us, including myself, wields total power. It is the collective forces that shape both past and future. Collective forces at play in the NOW. And every move counts.

SoulCollage® – Community Suit – One Giant Leap

SoulCollage® – Community Suit – One Giant Leap

July 20, 1969. I remember watching the lunar landing with rapt attention. It was almost bedtime, but I stayed up, my eyes glued to the black and white images on the screen of the family room TV, still wearing my damp swimsuit from a backyard swim earlier in the evening.

I was 11 years old and a bit of a nerd. I was good at math, an A-student for the most part, still a good little Catholic girl, kind of shy and dorky. Along with the usual cartoons, Leave it To Beaver, I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched, I also secretly loved watching Nova, a science program, on PBS. And Star Trek and Lost in Space.

I knew the difference between fiction and science, but seeing those men walking on the moon made all that science fiction stuff a lot less fictional and a lot more real. It seemed like anything was possible. I wanted to be able to go there myself one day. Exploring space like Captain Kirk seemed like something we’d all be experiencing in no time.

In spite of the horrors of the Vietnam War, that whole era of the ’60s and early ’70s seemed so full of promise and expanding horizons. Women were getting jobs and burning bras. The Civil Rights movement had come a long, long way. And now we were planting a flag on the moon!

I made this SoulCollage® card to honor my experience of the lunar landing and the impact it had on me as an 11-year-old as well as the feelings it evokes in me now. I am putting it into my Community Suit, because it represents an actual event within my own experience that had a strong impact on me.

Feeling my way back into that formative era, I have a sense that anything’s possible and the sky’s the limit.

These are the questions this card encourages me to explore:

What is my own new frontier or far horizon? Which things do I choose to do, not because they are easy but because they are hard? What is my own small step that becomes the giant leap? Where do I choose to plant my flag? Will that flag be a symbol of peace or of conquering victory? How do I see my world differently from this new vantage point?