Image description: A hand is holding a Tarot card, Death by Pamela Colman Smith for the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot. In the image, a skeleton in full armor is riding a white horse carrying a black flag with a white rose on it. The sun is rising in the east. An old person is laying dead on the ground, there are children and a clergyman next to the body. Behind the card are an assortment of shells and objects on a wooden shelf.
October 4 | Death | You learn to acquiesce
It has been said that death is not a thing to understand. You don’t get under it somehow, or gain a foothold. Death gets under you, and your job is to learn how to rest there. I’m referencing one of my favorite things ever said about death by mythologist Joseph Campbell, who said: “You don’t understand death, you learn to acquiesce in death.”1
Acquiesce. From the latin quiescere, to rest. Dying feels unsafe, by definition. And to expect rest without safety? Unjust. Still. Contrary to popular belief life and death aren’t all or nothing. So don’t assume tiny pockets of respite—sprinkled as they are through the descent—have no use. Maybe a single second of resting (so easy to miss when you’re flailing) is an opening. Go there and see where it takes you.
October 5 | Four of Swords | Prayer is material
Prayer perforates the line between heaven and earth. For theologian Ivone Gebara, it is “a human need marked by gratuity and freedom.” Prayer is material. It involves the capacity to make contact with ourselves, with others, and with the world. It’s not only about praise or requests. Prayer unfurls in relatedness, "with the whole of which we are one tiny expression.”
Prayer moves through the gaps like a breeze betwixt branches, and in the space between swords and the coin. For Gebara, prayer is “the spirit, the breath of life within us.” Prayer is a matter of situated-ness since—for those of us living—breath is our shared situation. Because of the way it connects us, prayer is preparation “for acting in solidarity and respect.”2
October 6 | Queen of Cups | Name what you wish to be witnessed
Tatterhood was the ugly wild twin of a highly sought-after beauty. Forced to wed a stranger, she lamented to the weird groom, “why do men never ask the questions that open a woman’s soul?” And then something magical happened. She asked for the precise thing she wanted: “If I tell you what to ask, will you ask me?”3 He agreed. Which was sort of extraordinary, maybe. But not nearly as much as her asking, if you ask me.
She named the exact questions to ask and what she wished to be witnessed. “Why do I ride a goat? Why do I carry a spoon? Why do I wear a hood?” And to this day, sometimes when I don’t feel seen I think of her. I think of knowing, with precision, what I wish would be seen. And having the courage to request someone ask me.
October 7 | Ace of Pentacles | Processual gesturing
There are times when a grand gesture’s beautiful. Like a fruit that explodes in slow-motion through seasons. But big moves can also be frenzied, wannabe fix-alls. Somewhat anti-process efforts hurled desperately at long-standing problems that are going no where, no time soon.
Sustained struggle necessarily involves days when you’ll feel it is really not worth it. And it would betray my worldview to say each day is new. But I do think there are ways to look at old things with fresh eyes. To seek what’s novel about an old trouble. And to stay trusting in what’s possible through sustained and processual gesturing.