SpiritMaa

i've got scorpio in the ascendant, and venus and pluto in my house of philosophy - does that explain this sometimes exhausting focus on love and death i've experienced from an early age? maybe it has to do with family dynamics, and/or being socialized with the 'original' love and death story as a catholic? or, perhaps, past lives coming through?

everyone has lost someone they love (for me it was my grandmother/heart-mother when i was 12), but by the time i was in high school i was writing reports on massacres of native americans by U.S. 'christian' soldiers...in college, i studied liberation theology and cried in front of the grotto when i heard that archbishop oscar romero was killed in el salvador for standing up to the u.s. backed death squads... in my twenties i read martin luther king, gandhi and cesar chavez, trying to understand how they managed to love in the face of such violence. by living and working in inner city detroit, was i testing my own capacities?

in my late twenties and early thirties, after a move to the texas/mexico border, i was soon off doing research on social justice issues in nicaragua and guatemala - gathering stories on how people lived and loved in the face of human rights abuses - again putting myself 'to the test' (and realizing i might not be non-violent after all). as i was also choosing to be sexual in the age of AIDS, the personal and 'political' was dovetailing...

in my forties i heard the call again. first in the form of the warrior/mother goddess kali in my meditations (queen of love and death). then skulls became a regular feature of my dreams as i watched my father, best friend, two other friends, students, my uncle, and a dear co-worker all become ill and die within a few years... is it because i love them that i am still in denial they are gone?

now i'm contemplating a move to a place where my astral-cartography warns there is a venus and pluto line. haven't i been making friends with death all this time? so why should i be hesitant to test myself once again - isn't this what i was born to do?  during meditation i see the goddess' fierce gaze turn into a big heart - the answer?...