Joy entered my life just after my father had been incarcerated. In addition to my father’s house and possessions, his most recent girlfriend had also taken an interest in the occult.
Awash in a plume of cigarette smoke and Nag Champa, my father’s girlfriend was in training to become a psychic. Joy and her flamboyant friend, Bob, were schooled in these mysteries and willing to lend their support.
One night, Bob and Joy came to my father’s house to perform a four winds ceremony. While I was no longer allowed to live there, I was invited to the ceremony. I too was in search of some peace in the wake of such tragedy.
Joy sat at my father’s dining room table, a burgundy-haired woman of size, wearing a large, flowered hoop dress. She spoke in a soft, ethereal voice as if she were singing.
Bob was a tall, tan, gay man wearing cut off shorts. His long blond hair hung to his waist, and he wore large rings on most of his fingers. “Aries have long legs,” he explained, showing off his long, thin legs. He was truly beautiful.
Although I had never been to a Four Winds ceremony, I was told that it would help repair the energy in the house. Candles were lit and incense was burned, my father’s dining room table now transformed into an altar. Joy and Bob called the four directions and their gifts/blessings. I watched in amazement; this was far different from anything I had experienced in the sterile Lutheran church of my childhood.
After the ceremony, we all enjoyed some light-hearted conversation. Bob told us about his drag show performances and how he pranks Joy when she is sleeping. During these stories, Joy released a loud, infectious laugh that would have us all laughing to tears.
Joy passed me her phone number for a future connection of support as she left that night. Fascinated with topics that were not of interest to my peers, such as near-death experiences and Dr. Kevorkian, I was living an isolated existence. I had just lived through my first death and was trying to find a way forward in a small city where difference made you a target. Everyone in town was aware of the religious protesters gathering outside of the bookstore that sold books on spirituality and held meditation sessions. There was a need to use the back door.
I made a few calls to Joy when I was in a bad spot, and she always offered a compassionate presence. Joy expanded my focus to include The Jeshua Letters and Autobiography of a Yogi. Soon she began inviting me to her home in the next town down the road.
As new, teenage driver, driving down quiet, two-lane county roads, the journey to Joy was a nervous mix of emotions. Never sure what to bring as an offering for such a gift of presence, red carnations often sat on the seat next to me and filled the car with their perfume.
“It’s the house with the winking window” Joy instructed me. A simple place, Joy’s home was filled with an overabundance of comfortable furniture and crystals displayed on tables and windowsills. “I talk to them often” she said as she made me some chamomile tea and lit some Nag Champa incense. Puzzled if the crystals answer her, I sipped my tea and felt like a baby in this new world that was approaching me.
Joy’s black cat often greeted me as I sat enveloped in one of the deep couch cushions. “They told me that she was aggressive and that I should be careful not to touch her” Joy explained of her experience at the Humane Society. “I opened her cage, and she jumped up on my shoulder and started purring.” After treating her kidney disorder with homemade parsley water and homeopathics, the now healthy black cat had become a miracle. “You can never know what something or someone is by how they look on the surface”
Joy shared stories about her divorce, and what her life was like in that period of time. “I was angry often and really unhappy, but that time was such a blessing! I wouldn’t be here where I am now without experiencing those difficult times.”
After embarking on her new spiritual path and legally changing her name to Joy, she committed to a life of celibacy, sobriety, meditation, communication with Spirit, and helping others on their spiritual paths. Joy read astrology charts and offered psychic and tarot card readings, but she was more complex than a stereotypical New Age woman. While she had formally left the church, she still played the organ there with no sense of inner conflict. “I enjoy the music of the church,” she said. “Music is one way to communicate with God.”
“I got kicked out of church because the pastor didn’t like my questions, ” I said. Joy smiled a knowing smile at me. “Well, there is some truth in all of the traditions, and they all speak the same language of love at their core.”
Sometimes other seekers would visit Joy’s house for readings or meditation groups. It was there, sitting on her back porch, that I had my first run-in with a Potawatomi medicine man named V. He would often share his stories in between long periods of silent contemplation.
“I once had a girlfriend who used her medicine to trap me and bring me harm. Once I realized what she was doing, I took baths in wild cherry bark without her knowing, and her negative powers didn’t work on me anymore.” These were things that I had never considered before. Could plants really have such magic?
“You know, we have a cure for AIDS,” he said boldly. “We tried to tell the white doctors, but they didn’t want to listen. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t want to talk with us about a cure for such a terrible disease.”
An older, white man would often come and sit in the meditation room in silence. His face was expressive though his words were few. Joy explained to me that he had been adopted by native people and was following the native way of life. One day he surprised me by approaching me with tears streaming down his face. He held out his hand containing a leather tobacco pouch with beaded tassels of white, orange, yellow, and red.
“I made this for you,” he said. “It would mean a lot to me if you accepted it.”
I had seen such hate in the wake of my father’s trial and incarceration, but Joy and her posse taught me about love and acceptance. All broken birds of some kind, we were finding our way forward. Listening carefully to what and who approaches on the twists and turns of our paths, taking refuge in each other, and spending time delighting in the warm sunshine streaming through the windows of Joy’s winking house. These moments are simple nourishment for the spirit to continue on.
©Cardinal Speaks