A Monthly Blog
Creating a practice that feels like a companionship with the Painted Oracle cards takes time and focus. Now, in this very public space, I explore the cards intimate meanings for me and how they deepen my personal understanding of self.
Working with one card for the month, I address how it feels in the moment, the ways in which I am aligned with it, the ways I am not and the possible discoveries there in.
Join me offering your insights as they relate to you.
Everyday Parade
May 2026: Everyday Parade
I know the Everyday Parade Card means to get out there and participate in community, and I feel fortunate to have a neighborhood as vibrant and creative as I do. I am grateful for this communal force that holds my weight and allows me to settle in. I am lucky to feel secure, nurtured and confident in my small city. My fervent prayer affords this to all, everywhere.
You are my Everyday Parade. I see you on my bike ride to work. I see you hustling to classes. I see you mending roofs and planting seeds. You are driving in cars, opening business doors, serving up hot coffee smells and scones. You are the strangers that become my day’s recollection, falling into routine and holding up the walls of this universe as I know it.
We are a scrappy lot of good souls. We are so Pacific Northwest casual, and we know how to laugh. We have a code, don’t we? Hold on don’t fret; we have some homemade soup warming, and slices of buttered bread.
When you get the Everyday Parade Card your community is calling. What will you do? Where are you needed? Where will you connect?
The other day, someone in the neighborhood asked me if I do coaching for hs students needing advise about next steps. I said,” Sure, I do that.“ I meant other neighbors and friends have called me to their kitchen tables with their twenty somethings. I’ve a keen ear, and suggestions; I’m a quick thinker. I can feel my way around this problem. This person thought I did it for a living. “No”, I said, “This is what I do for free.” I could tell he didn’t want to ask me to do anything for free, and I tried to explain that it is like asking a neighbor if they can help you load your truck with an old sofa and two chairs or if they could tell you about how to cement the fence posts in the ground. He got the point, but he was surprised by my willingness to support.
It reminded me that I used to tell people (in jest) to call on me if they were having an emergency “with punctuation!”. You know, a punctuation crisis. I am a teacher after all, and I like to word smith. Sometimes this would make my friends smile and pat me on the back. “Good one”. Now, of course there’s AI, and not as many literary crises. But back then, I was pleased I had something to offer along with a meal or a bandaid for a scraped knee. I can see I have grown in my neighborhood’s eyes. I support people going through changes. I sometimes get in there with the really practical stuff like resumes and cover letters. I guess I am like a tea connoisser creating an exceptionally varied and hardy drink except my tea is a wordy brew sprinkled with pauses and exclamation points.
I also read oracle and tarot and paint on my days off, but these are things I don’t tell just everyone. I wait for you to come to me if you would like to. That way, I don’t have to explain myself, and there’s already an openness and an invitation for a nuanced moment between us.
Like long ago, the card lady is setting up her wares; come as you are; she has something to say that you’ll want to hear.
Oooh, I think I get it; I am part of the parade too.
April 2026: Teacher
When the Teacher card showed up today, I knew I would be writing on point of view, radical acceptance, and letting go. I probably won’t mention these terms again; but that’s what I am talking about. It’s clearly what I am learning much to my own chagrin.
Sure I wondered, who is my teacher? the compassionate Kwan Yin? Thich Nhat Hanh whose wisdom speaks? Freda Kahlo whose art transforms ? Is my teacher my child? The mountain reflected in the lake? A pine tree whose cones decorate my table? Is my teacher my open or closed heart? My anxious or clever mind, my blood, my bones? My tree skin dream I had the other night? Is my teacher everything? Who or what is my teacher?
As a teacher, do I gift what I learn to others? In my readings? In my classrooms? Will these intentions bring them closer to what they need to know?
The teacher card reminds me to live the questions as I would any spiritual pathway.
And I remind myself, there’s a lot of wondering while I make my way.
I want to acknowledge there are many kinds of teachers whose ideas and brilliance have lit up the world. There are libraries of instruction manuals & guides, analyses and maps–detailing experience after experience on our bookshelves, in our podcasts & videos and throughout our art. Yet even with all this good hearted sharing, spiritual optimism, and top-mind scientific revelation, many of us still feel lost and don’t know what to do or how to be. There’s so much that feels out of alignment at any given moment. There seems to be no stopping us from finding trouble and sorrow; it’s everywhere. We can not deny it.
Oddly though, at any given moment is also it’s flip side: that being– the correct and exact alignment, already perfect, and in equal measure, fulfilling. The wise Monk and the philosopher sit on a hill somewhere. Their paths intersect in agreement. They say through our breath, here, in this space is a purity of experience outside of these words and in between our thoughts. Like a Garden of Eden that isn’t a Garden of Eden. —Maybe. I am not sure, admittedly.
(I wonder if there was such a time when distraction was not an experience known. When eating was eating, and the sun was the sun. When escaping reality was not imagined, and non-existent. When war internal or external could not have entered consciousness as no cognitive doorway could make the shape for falsehoods to proceed forward. Can you imagine that world?)
As a teacher, I am always reminded of the saying that teachers make the worst students. While this is actually a joke, ha ha; I have observed it many times. Teachers come late to the workshop, open their lab tops and clearly engage elsewhere. They talk to their colleagues, never take notes, and leave early.
On the other hand, teachers also are the most seasoned students interested in the how, why and what of learning. They sit up front, eager and full of questions about what they just learned. These teachers take us on journeys through time and space and leave us with more than when we started. Modeling how how to frame questions is essential and part of their service. Knowing is wonderful, but knowing how to learn is even better.
Questions are our springboard, our compass and our first step in the solution.
What is in between my thoughts?
These shapeless spaces where I am not.
What is in between the in between?
The starless, ancient tapestry.
The outside inside of the no-mind-self —not so small at all
March 2026: Queen
Queen, My Queen.
Say to me what I need to know.
I will broadcast it far while honoring it close.
When the Queen comes round, I know truth telling is imminent. Boundaries must be set or reset, and inner shifts require language for clarity. Interpersonal relationships need a check in. Or perhaps we need some tea and a visit with ourselves. Sometimes we are the Queen and sometimes the Queen arrives for us.
Words are important to the Queen. When to start and stop talking, and how to accentuate with assured meaning is her great skill. She takes no pride in her delivery, for she deeply feels each and every story told and reaches her conclusion despite herself.
In our circles, how the truth telling gets told is anybody’s guess. It need not be angry, vengeful or sarcastic, but it could be. It might be loving, kind and promising, but not necessarily. The message may be a piece of art on the doorstep. A question posed followed by a cry that stretches over an hour.
Every tear and sober word is the queen’s sword. It is the exact air that is needed.
If you have been following my blog journal, you know winter brought woes and weariness too many to recount. I am feeling at little better (the sun through the window warms), and I am working on health and art goals.
Today, though, walking my dog, the Queen spoke loudly and clearly. She reminded me of my vulnerabilities and my fantasties.
She provided two facts. The first came as a text. “The US and Israel just attacked Iran.” The second was an observation; among the tree tops were Great Blue Herons, at least 12 of them, in their rookery.
One made me sick to my stomach. I immediately felt a surge of fear and dread. My pace hurried, and I kept my head down. Later, I found out a girl’s school was hit and dozens young girls were killed. The other stopped me in my tracks. I felt instant pleasure; I had stumbled onto a great treasure. The birds seemed to attend to each other offering nest and food. I breathed in this good fortune, and the air expanded in my body. It was hard to stop looking and walk away.
As I approached home, I nodded to another message meant for me. I am not able command most situations. I can not stop these bombs, and I can not go rest with the Great Blue Heron.
Progress
February 2026: Progress Welcome
A pioneer moment! No need for measuring sticks or external markers of any kind. You know progress because you are fulfilled.
Oh boy!
I am not really feeling this right now. I think I am anti progress, more like a shadow where doubt looms large and reflects an air quite unfinished (Including this post, how will I ever write it?)
I know in my best self that progress can be incremental and often unseen, but this day feels more like a horrendous backslide: the country folding in on itself, the Tarot towers crumbling, the yells and screams-the hideous repeating itself. A nightmare dreaming in community. I see you; I hear you.
Imposter syndrome, and the lack of power assume the shadow of progress.
The tipping point flips it.
Until then, I am in the dark.
(Obviously, the seasons know better–Blessed Imbolc!)
Trust
This is really beautiful to read and I can completely resonate with you on so much of this. Thank you for sharing 💛
Thanks, Tracy! I’m so glad it makes sense to you. I have felt it so keenly each December day since.
The roots of the word Trust are such as confidence, help, protection, make firm, comfort. Such an interesting menagerie. We trust in ourselves or not. We trust outside of ourselves, or not. A connection made firm is bound in trust. It is given and allowed.
Hi Jessie,
Your post reminds me when we trust, we are propelled forward; something is set in motion. Trust requires attention, yet it can also grow on its own. 🙂
Commitment as the readied offering, the prepared for rite, That really resonates as it feels that it is rarely a new thing, but as you say deeply rooted. And, built in, as you also say, is its slightly tarnished underside of not wanting to. I’ve thought lately of the act of willful sacrifice that may accompany commitment. The placing of a loved thing on the altar of a new endeavor as forfeiture and offering for the higher right.
Commitment as the readied offering, the prepared for rite, That really resonates as it feels that it is rarely a new thing, but as you say deeply rooted. And, built in, as you also say, is its slightly tarnished underside of not wanting to. I’ve thought lately of the act of willful sacrifice that may accompany commitment. The placing of a loved thing on the altar of a new endeavor as forfeiture and offering for the higher right.
Progress feels inevitable. Bound into the same gyrating orb are humanity’s complicated, brilliant and devastating expressions. The tools at our behest are small in the world at large and mighty at arm’s length. I sometimes feel that what we think of as progress is not that at all as we are the same creatures we’ve always been just maneuvering in ever shifting surroundings.
Bird totem is powerful for me. They bring immediate levity to me and they are always just themselves, Just reading the words “Great Blue Heron” in your blog feels like an incantation, and immediately brightened in me.
That’s a lovely thougtht.