I arrived at my mother's home, just in the outskirts of Tokyo on the 11th of July, on a family mission to look after mum.  She had multiple set backs in her health after her fall and breaking her arm bones last summer.  So the time had come for me to stir the boat of parental care by attending to her day to day living.
It's been a tough arrival.  We have some family issues. I guess like most families, we have not been seeing eye-to-eye on numerous things.  So the lack of our family cohesion has lead to my landing at mum's place in a mess of an affair.  I was aware of the possibility and my heart was prepared.  But landing in a family mess is as eek as it can be.  
Coming to Japan, I had to leave my earning potentials as yoga and massage therapist behind.  I packed my bag full of my glass bits and pieces, leaving everything else back home.  I intended to invest my time and earning potentials in creating my ensouled glass art work.  
It took me a few days to carve out a space in mum's already over-crowded home to make a mini-workshop for my mini windows.  I had already prepared some 3x3" and some 4x4" glass bases.  Now that I have arrived, what stories are here for me to give form to?
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I had a call with Susanne Reuschl already scheduled for the 12th of July.  We decided to keep our three-times annual call alive after our epic Mosaic Angel making at Cluny Hill College, since July 2023.  Even though we don't know where our mosaic angel making may land, we decided to keep meeting, and keep going.  With a day or two delay, for me to recover from the jet lag, we turned up.  Though I was exhausted, I just felt I could not let the angels down!  Squeezed by time limits, we focused on our purpose.  
- 'How can we recognize when contact is made with the angelic world?'
Susanne attuned us to the question.
-'A feeling of lightness comes to me when I feel the presence of the angels.'
-'I have a sense of feathers, like having wings, like flight ...'

Oh, the question reveals the answers.  I am reminded again, how asking the question is what opens the path, the way to know.  Feeling so light and grateful after our conversation, we closed our session.  A sense was born in me, a knowing of how I could perhaps arrive at my mother's place, and support myself while living in Japan and looking after her.  I'll make ensouled glass angels.  I'll keep asking what is present in this moment? I'll wait to receive a presence, a cosmic song, an ensouled glass, in the moment.

Angel of Balance

A concept spoken by Ra, a social memory complex, through my beloved spiritual teacher Carla Rueckert McCarty resonated in me deeply.  The concept is that of balance.  The poetry of Ra was this that the creator could pluck the harmonies in a balanced individual.  It could be because of this bias in me, or it could be that I was open to the energies of balance, that the first ensouled glass angel that came through me in my Tokyo sojourn is the Angel of Balance.  The glass angel making process is a mystery to me.  I couldn't explain it logically.  All I am aware of, is the need to stay open to the energy of the art work that emerges.  The pieces re-arrange themselves.  I sense an energy and follow my heart.  When the glass angel finally appears, my heart rejoices.  This is all I can say.  And with this, I welcome the ensouled-glass Angel of Balance to the world.

Zimmerman and Coyle explain some more about the nature of Council :

 The principle of interdependence is further supported by the quality of leadership that emerges in Council. The long prevalent dominator model of hierarchical authority tends to be replaced by a strong commitment to partnership, analogous to that practiced in certain traditional earth-cherishing cultures. 

 As in the ancient circles of elders (and perhaps in the mystery schools as well), each Council member comes to know they bring a piece of the truth to the circle - essential in itself, but only a part of the whole. The passion of our personal vision is shared without attachment and then our position is released to the larger truth of the circle. When Council is working, we all experience this truth without any threat to personal identity and without the “tyranny of the collective.” Everyone recognizes what’s really happening and sees the path to “right action,” often more or less at the same time, and usually accompanied by the special joy inherent in the co-visioning process.

Simply put, the essence of Council lies in direct participation with our cohorts in the realization of (the circle’s) wholeness. The interdependence among members of the Council then becomes a deeply felt reality that frees us from the bondage of self-absorption and opens the door to spirited co-creation.

The ensouled glass pieces I have made for Forest Councils are seeds of intention.  What if we reached a stage to step up in our care and presence to form Indigenous Councils to include both human and non-human (nature beings) participation to collaborate and co-create a healing movement for our forests, rivers, mountains, oceans?  How could our Councils look like, and feel like?  The ensouled glass pieces tell a visual story of how our Forest Councils could look like when we include all the relevant partners, of all colours, forms and shape to sit in a circle with a common purpose : to heal our environment, our relationships, our history, and our own hearts.

When Shigako and I arrived at her family home in her childhood village, Kase in Aomori, one of the first things we did was visiting our ancestral grave-site.  There is something about this practice, as if to say, we are here to honour you.  We don't know very much about the worlds beyond death.  We can only know the reality of this world with our senses.  So with all our senses , we are here to connect with your lives, you who have gone beyond.

Shigako took me on a walk about, guiding me to the village grave site, where the bones of our ancestors rest, as do those of other village folks, other kins.  Solemnly she found the grave.  Written on it was Kidachi Mangoro, her grandfather, the sake maker, a martial artist, a lake restorer.  I never met him, but I had spent time with mother's grandmother, Mangoro's life-partner, Kaa as my mother and her sisters addressed her charmingly. 

My mother and her sisters are full of stories of their ancestors.  Just the other day when we put a dish of pickles on the table, they said 'oooh, Kaa's pickles were so superb.  They were even thinking to make a business of her pickles, even to take them so far away as Tokyo to sell them, they were that good.' In my mind, when I heard this story I conjure up the thought of her excellent partnership with the bacterial world to make excellent fermented food.  My grandfather must have had a similar partnership with the bacterial kingdom to have been a sake maker in his time.  We still have the huge wooden barrels in which he made his potent brews in the family workshop.

​Mangoro had a keen connection with nature.  Apparently he had a hand in restoring several large water bodies in the areas they lived.  My mother tells me how he used to go out frequently to work on the lakes.  She took me to a large body of water, a lake in their village one day.  This is one of the projects he worked on.  He had the foresight to see that restoring the lake would increase the biodiversity and the life-force of the land as a whole.  The family received a letter of recognition from none other than the Emperor of Japan, for Mangoro's earth healing activities.  

Going to a grave-site may feel like an end of the line, like you go so far and no more, because the dead don't talk.  But I feel they do.  I felt a great kinship, like coming home.  I felt an unbroken bond with Mangoro and Kaa.  So he was an earth healer too, and so was she in her own ways, in her weird and wonderful partnership with the bacterial kingdom.  Sometimes I feel the ancestors are not too far, and death is not the end of the road.  It may just be the beginning of a wonder-filled adventure.  How strange that I am finding myself treading the path that my ancestors have trail blazed, but in other parts of the world.  How mysterious death is.  How wonderful to be alive, to reconnect with the ancestors, to know that they return, in ways I couldn't know, but can only feel their presence in my life.