oh my goodness, I've done it!

Thank you to the several friends - especially Corrine and Wade - who encouraged me to blog and inspired me by their venturing into this "vague realm" where I am constantly learning (and getting stuck with not knowing what to do next!).

In the summer of 1983, I went on a rather unorthodox Vision Quest down to the Ozarks to spend a week with a friend in a cabin with no running water.  Located on the land that had once beckoned a bunch of people who wanted to form a new kind of community we called in those days a "commune," it was deep in the woods of southern Missouri.  By the early 80s, it had become a small center for women who wanted to get away, experience the land, and get away from the rigidity of patriarchy.  My friend had taken a summer to determine her own future as a single woman once more and had invited me down.

Little did I know that August of that year would be one of the muggiest and blistering hot months of that summer.  I came home with 283 chigger-mite bites AND a vision quest NAME.  The bites happened because I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor of the cabin and walked in the dusty, scraggly woods for a week going back and forth to get water from the main house.  I did this all while seeking (what seemed like endlessly) for The Great Spirit to give me "my spiritual name." 

By Saturday noon, I was driving up a rutted hill to get back on the paved road and was thoroughly disgusted!  I had not been given a name!!!  All I wanted was a simple vision and a voice booming in my ear with an exotic - or profound - or amazing new name.  Why hadn't I been heard?  Who was "up there"?  Were They listening?  Was I  unworthy?  Grumbling and itching, I turned onto the asphault road and abruptly HEARD my name.  I braked and sat there in shock.  Not only had I actually been given a name but I didn't like it!  I sat there for a few moments with my brow knitted and feeling grumpy. 

"Well..." I thought.  I liked part of it.  I liked the TRUTH-SEEKER part of it - but "relentless" sounded too harsh.  Why would there have to be an adjective in front of the noble sounding TRUTH-SEEKER?  The more I thought about it, the more I liked the second and third words...  I even thought about just leaving off the RELENTLESS part although that did seem a bit like cheating.  I had heard all three words loud and clear, so I took a deep breath and started for the several hour drive home.

It is only now, over a quarter of a century later that I fully appreciate the whole spiritual name given to me: RELENTLESS TRUTH-SEEKER.  I have discovered that I have a strong tenacity to keep looking until I find what resonates in my heart as "truth."  Now that I've lived fully so many years of exploration and discovery, I know that this relentlessness has truly served me well. 

A psychic once told me: "You only come to people like me after you've discerned your own answer, don't you?"  I shrugged because she was the first psychic I had ever asked for a reading, so how did I know I would do it next time or there would even be a next time?  I've discovered that she actually was right "on target" and I do follow my instincts and my intuition and seek out answers for myself.  And always, my "test for truth" is always to let my HEART "tell" me. 

So here I am, doing my first post on my new blog and will promise any who reads my words that I promise to have tested them for myself before I share them with readers.  I will never ask you to "believe me when I tell you...," but rather only ask that you pay attention to that which RESONATES WITH YOUR HEART.  It is always up to you to decide what is "truth" for you.

Dedicated to Love and Light and Service to humanity and the Earth,
I am Marcella, "relentless Truth-Seeker."