Tonight, while returning from a dinner with Kim, Kari and Mari to officially launch Kari into the world of the Germans for a year and change, I stepped out of my car, my mind whirling with thoughts. It had been a profoundly joyous evening for me with these beautiful and amazing women in whose company I was lucky enough to spend a few hours of friendship. It made me think of this post and this night, and how happy my mother would be of the man I've become and the way my heart has opened wide to allow love in.

On the way home, my mind started to churn about many favored anxious topics of late that build up and entangle and rob me of sleep. And when I stepped out of the car, my emotions were a mix of happiness and confusion, and a general overwhelm that whined in my ears like a television test pattern. I took maybe six steps, hardly paying attention to anything before me, when I saw him.

The mouse sat atop the fencepost and looked at me, wide eyes, large ears and a tail the wrapped around it's body. I felt an instant shattering, a complete lift of every thought, a dismissal over every anxiety, and an energetic focus that brought every ounce of myself into the present and into connection. This happened within seconds. And nothing mattered but what passed between us, and no words were spoken in my head other than the words I spoke to Mouse.

For me, Mouse is about detail, making sure you pay attention to what you should pay attention to, making sure you don't lose the big picture in the small dust motes and kernels of your life. I love mice. I haven't seen a mouse in probably ten years.

So after our talk, we had our moment, me trying to edge past him, and him trying to figure out just how trustworthy I was, running along the top of the fence when the tension of proximity overloaded instinct. At times, I could have reached out and picked him up. But in the end, we had to make an agreement. I'd have to brush against the chain link and he'd have to drop into the darkness.

And so it was.

There's a definition of shaman that is "a person who acts as intermediary between the natural and supernatural worlds." I've lived forty years. I've been mindfully practicing this spiritual path for sixteen years. And at no time have I called myself a shaman.

But tonight, I felt every single piece, every molecule, every thought and action brought forward into the space between. It wasn't a intentional reaction. It was an involuntary reaction, one that has been repeated millions of times in my life, ever since I had my first memories. I feel this when I have interactions with crows, or otters, or turtles, or my opossum, or the giant spider, or any number of animals or elements. There is a homecoming and a completeness. There's a sense that I am instantly where I belong and a sense that I should not try to be in any other space.

So I'm ready to get over my fear of that word now, shaman, use it maybe not in the way that trained people might use it, maybe not in the way that indigenous people use it, maybe not in the way that many definitions describe it. But I'm ready to claim it as my own definition. And I think it's time to really recognize and remember that it is the place that holds my peace and my creativity, those in-betweens, and how ready I am when they arrive to surrender wholly to them.

I've been lost lately in overexplaining and overthinking, but more than that, in diodes and carpet and plastic. It's not that I can't have those moments while surrounded by these things. It's that I'm not advanced enough yet to have them reliably. I need a balance. Many of my answers, I can finally see, lay outside my door into the realm in which I belong. I have to get out there more often into those places and bring them back home. My path and my way of going about it, as always, is going to continue to be self-defined, experimental, and open to change.

Thank you, Mouse. You were so beautiful and perfect with your dark eyes and your round body, the short staccato grey fur and the way that little pink fingers clutched the edges of wire. I hope you find a nice hollow to sleep in.

And now, I should do the same.