Refuge from the Cold

Taurus 1 // on resourcing in hard times...or all the times.

It’s finally May, and spring has sprung! There is so much green in my front garden now. Even while getting gas the other day, a robin treated me to her chorus as traffic hummed nearby. As usual, I was planning to send this out on Tuesday but as I was typing last night I heard a splashing sound coming down the hall and suddenly knew we had not dodged the stomach bug after all! So I’m sitting on the floor of my kid’s room as she sleeps off her tummy troubles and I try to write…

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Taurus welcomes us into the truly spring-like weather of April and May and we enter the season of pentacles - magical coins that represent our bodily, mundane experiences of work and home and family. A time to settle in by the hearth fire with the people you love. A time to reflect on what truly makes life worth living and how we support and resource ourselves along the journey. Yes, please.

I love this piece by

Anna Brones

and how she describes us as seedlings. We are sprouts who, even while looking forward to the suns return, are naturally vulnerable: “It’s the seasonal emergence, as if we are little plant seedlings, our faces urgently directed towards the sun, but our roots not quite deep enough to hold us. Spring cracks us open, and as we unfurl, lays bare our vulnerabilities. We see the light, but we also feel the grip of dark.” This in-between time can be so tender, uncomfortable and lonely.

Peace of the Whole

wrote about this paradoxical discomfort this week too.

5 of Pentacles from: Magical Nature Tarot, Biddy Tarot, & Tarot for Kids

The first decan of Taurus introduces us to the 5 of pentacles. If you’re unfamiliar with tarot, this is a card that sometimes gets put in the “scary” card category along with cards like the Tower or Death. The imagery is usually pretty bleak, and its’ Hermetic title is “Lord of Worry” - so I get it. Most people fear the darker cards because tarot is stereotypically portrayed as predictive and no one wants to be told that they’re about to go bankrupt or death is right around the corner!

So I’ll start by saying that I do not read cards in a predictive way, but in a way that brings insight and clarity to the present moment. That’s not to say that you can’t or shouldn’t read them in other ways, it’s just not my personal path. I resonate with

Between a Rock and a Card Place

when she says, “As most modern readers will tell you, the tarot is not about fortunetelling, nor is it about neat, definitive answers. The cards are simply one path to reflection, a way of better knowing ourselves and others through universal themes.”

So what are the themes of the 5 of Pentacles? When you look at the card you immediately see two people wearing thread-bare clothes. They are huddled together outside a church at night in the snow. Bleak. It calls to mind stories of the little match girl, or the enchantress who visits the castle in Beauty & the Beast and is turned away by the selfish prince. But this card isn’t foretelling destitution or bankruptcy. This card is reminding us that life is hard. Like the Buddha said, life is suffering. We all experience painful circumstances, financial difficulties, loss and we all have times where we feel “left out in the cold” and alone.

I just finished reading (listening to) the book Everything Sad is Untrue, by Daniel Nayeri. It is a beautiful, autobiographical novel about his life as a boy in Persia, and then as a refugee in the US. He weaves his own stories with the tales from the 1,001 Nights of Scheherazade into a beautiful, hilarious, and tender book. Nayeri’s mother had to escape Iran with her two small children and travel around the world (literally) seeking refuge. It’s hard enough finding safe lodging and food as refugees, but even once they are settled in Oklahoma, Nayeri struggles to find his place in his new community. As the only Persian boy in his middle school class he is subject to misunderstanding and ridicule. He is truly left out in the cold. If you had to pick a card that represents the experience of a refugee, this card would be it.

All Persians are liars and lying is a sin. That's what the kids in Mrs. Miller's class think, but I'm the only Persian they've ever met, so I don't know where they got that idea. My mom says it's true, but only because everyone has sinned and needs God to save them. My dad says it isn't. Persians aren't liars. They're poets, which is worse. Poets don't even know when they're lying. They're just trying to remember their dreams. They're trying to remember six thousand years of history and all the versions of all the stories ever told.

In one version, maybe I'm not the refugee kid in the back of Mrs. Miller's class. I'm a prince in disguise. If you catch me, I will say what they say in the 1,001 Nights. "Let me go, and I will tell you a tale passing strange."
That's how they all begin.
With a promise.
If you listen, I'll tell you a story. We can know and be known to each other, and then we're not enemies anymore.

This book was so tender and Nayeri writes so poignantly about regret and loss, belonging and memory. I could tear up just thinking about his favorite toy he called “Sheep Sheep” who had to be left behind in Iran. But one of the most beautiful things about the story, was when he wrote about his mom. His mom was able to make unthinkable circumstances bearable. She was able to find help from unlikely places and she was able to hold her family together. I think this too is a message of the card - when things are hard, where do you find the resources to keep going?

The two figures in the cards are looking down and maybe don’t even see the lights in the church windows and the potential refuge they offer. In times of struggle and difficulty it can be hard to lift our eyes and look for the help and community that may be near or available to us. And even if the church isn’t a literal church (god knows that many of those buildings might be less than helpful these days) it can also remind us to turn to spiritual practices that sustain us. Lighting candles. Centering prayers or mantras. Building altars. Walking in nature. The two figures also have each other - it may not be much - but at least they are not completely alone. Remembering that it is human to suffer, not a failing on our part or an indication of unworthiness, can connect us to others in a deeply consoling way.

“What you believe about the future will change how you live in the present…The legend of my mom is that she can’t be stopped. Not when you hit her. Not when a whole country full of goons puts her in a cage. Not even if you make her poor and try to kill her slowly in the little-by-little poison of sadness. And the legend is true. I think because she’s fixed her eyes on something beyond the rivers of blood, to a beautiful place on the other side. How else would anybody do it?”

The 5 card falls in the middle of the journey (ace through 10), when you’re in the middle of a hard thing it can be comforting to remember that this is not the end of the journey. And confronting our own perceptions can help us to find the resilience to keep going. Where are you perceiving lack? What would refuge look like for you right now? In this in-between time, when I am feeling vulnerable and fresh out of the dark winter where could I find unexpected community? Togetherness? Abundance? Capitalism tells us to look for outward signs of security - wealth, savings, etc. but resources are much more than that! Who are my literal social networks: supportive neighbors, loving family, emotionally healthy friends, snuggly pets?

A happy bedside table: artsy quote, crystals & kids’ art.

When I was pregnant with my third child we received some difficult news at our 20-week ultrasound. I was overwhelmed with feelings of loss and vulnerability and fear. Our days were clouded in worry. In the weeks before her birth I purchased a piece of art that still sits on my bedside table. It consoles me. It reminds me that even when I feel left out in the cold, I’m never truly alone.