Excerpt from "Dula Weekly," Volume 1, ep. 1

For Back-To-The-Landers Tony "Dula" Mary and Sheila May Mosser, each day on the homestead offers opportunities to expand their consciousness and behold the wonders of Life on Spaceship Earth. Amongst fairy flowers and organic vegetables, free range animal companions and clear flowing mountain spring water, Tony and Sheila tread with a gentle footprint on Mother Earth.

"My work as a dula allows me to not just witness life, but also to perceive it fully," Tony Dula explains. "I remember back in the 80s when I was a thug. I was like just waiting for that next train, man. I was so spiritually dislightened that I didn't even realize my yang was disrupted. It had been torn from me like the breast is so often torn prematurely from the suckling kindergartener- weaned before its time."

"My work as a dula has illuminated to me the miracle of repairing my disengaged yang through the engaging of my inner yin. If that makes any sense."

Typically, Mary's work as a dula finds him supporting mothers in the age-old business of bringing forth new life. Pre- and post partum, eco-friendly lamaz, lactation consulting, kegels- Mary's dula skills are finely honed toward those blessed moments before and after childbirth.

Today, however, Tony's work threw him a cosmic curve-ball, so to speak. And he caught it.

"Ever since the Year of the Dragon, I have been dedicating myself to expansion. Expansion in the sense of everything real, man. I'm going for a total Big Bang of the 7th chakra, man. My meditations have been crucial."

Tony goes on to explain, "When the supermoon happened and then like 3 days later Mercury went into retrograde, I knew it was coming. I told Sheila, I said 'Honey, it's coming. The lightening is gonna strike.' I totally didn't know how serendipitous those words would be."

It was a few minutes before 5 o'clock Saturday that Tony noticed the chickens squawking. "Those hens are normally so peaceful," he said. "Like Sheila always says, 'they remind us to believe in angels.'" As quickly as he could resurface from the trance of his afternoon meditation, he made his way over to his avian companions. What he found there was the essence of one of his mortal challenges- a raccoon skulking around the birds' enclosure, coyly devising an entry plan.

"We always find predation to be a real challenge," Mary admits. "We consider our homestead to be a sanctuary for all living things, and we speak to all mainfestations of Life here with equal respect. We have an agreement with the predators that they might walk freely upon this land, including in the house if they wish, in return for their honoring our No Kill policy."

"I fear that this racoon must have wandered onto the sanctuary from another territory."

Tony watched with practiced unattachment, his yin and yang forming an energy field of a figure eight. He picked up the hose and offered the raccoon and spray of sacred water to gently remind him of the non-violence pact. "As we all know, water transmits purity of thought," Tony explains.

But rather than heed the gentle reminder, the raccoon took an unexpected course of action. She scurried up the nearby power pole and in an effort to seemingly attempt to take refuge atop of the transformer. Moments later, there was a "sonic buzz" and flames of white and blue leapt from the site of the raccoon up towards the sky. The raccoon, in its moment of reincarnation, toppled slowly to the earth, and her body lay there smoking.

"I heard it all the way from the cage-free creamery!" exclaimed neighbor Rosemary Michaeux. "Our lights flickered off, and then came right back on- totally hit my psychic reset button!"

Sheila looked up from her work in one of the zinnia patches in time to see the fall of the raccoon and hear the thud as she hit the ground below. "I heard the sonic zap, and I thought to myself, 'I can't believe it.'" After she realized what had occurred, she was able to simply and eloquently explain, "It was Karma in action- right before our very eyes."

After allowing some time for the smoke to clear and the reincarnation to complete, Tony Dula Mary gloved up, and delicately delivered the electrocuted raccoon to her final resting place. The whiskers were singed into little ringelts, and most of an ear was burned off. Even the contents of her final "elimination" were charred. "I realized I was like midwifing this Karma-stricken creature into her next life. Far out!"

Later that evening a clutch of chicken eggs hatched out as the wheel of Life made another turn. When asked if he had any further insights into the events of the day, Tony winked, slowly shook his head and said quietly, "They don't call me Tony 'Dula' Mary for nothing."

-Starla Nigel is a freelance new age writer dedicated to bringing light to stories that are in jeopardy of remaining in the dark.

Everybody rides out the storm somewhere

Hopey sneaks upstairs to snuggle with the pink fluffy 3-legged unicorn during a particularly scary thunderstorm.



Notice the body language and eye signalling in the above photos that reads: "Leave us alone over here on this rag rug."



Perspective

Summer storm flares up my perception of danger. The elements are absolute in their dominance over the course of things here below. Thor has a strong say in things. The dark sky, the driving rain. The wind gusts with such force that we feel our mighty automobiles of steel and petrol wobble like cardboard on the road.

Old man Clifford, old buddy, tells a story of an real real old man who could read the weather signs in the sky. A direct contact with Thor- like they shared a walky-talky set. It was mid July and the old weather man told everyone to pick all their tomatoes, whether they be green or not, because it was going to come a freeze. Most folks wrote him off as a crazy old man over-heeding superstition. Clifford and a few others following the warning and brought in bushels of green tomatoes. Sure enough, it came a hail with such force that it shredded most everything in the fields. What was not dessimated by the hails was kilt by a thin sheet of ice over the tender green early the next morning.

Last summer I was driving home from my grandmother's house by the river when a mighty storm blew in. (Snap) like that. Suddenly. The wind blew a dead standing locust down across the road, and it missed hitting my truck by inches. It was a horrible place to wait out a storm, and several cars accumulated on either side of the fallen tree. Finally two other ladies in flip-flops and I hoisted the tree out of the way so cars could pass. The lightening was almost up our butts, and the driving rain was like a power washer of ice water coming from every direction. I woke up the next morning sick, the force of the storm having driven something either in or out of my person- it's hard to say.

When the rumble grumbles and the sky darkens and the wind whips the treetops on the mountain, it's funny how my perspective goes elemental. No more grass to mow. No more laundry to dry. It's get out of the way of falling trees and rivers jumping their banks and pray for mercy. Gather the children in the folds of your apron and watch the wash out from the safest place available. Talk pretty to Thor and hope for the best.

Man, oh, man

This is me, smiling as broadly as possible with my little mouth, holding a GIANT SIZED three-prong reishi (Ganoderma tsugae) that I found not a 2 minute walk from my kitchen door on the root of a dead standing hemlock. It's on its way to becoming a double extraction (extracting first in grain alcohol and then in boiling water) to serve as a health and longevity tonic for me and my clan. I admit, I am having a hard time taking a knife to it because it is so absoultely bizarre and stunning in its entirely fungal glory.