Offer Me a Flower:A Spiritual Quest

Scents of pine, moist rock, and wild animals wafted in and out of my consciousness. Thinking I was still in my cave in the Chiricahuas, I reached out from under the covers to softly pat the coyotes, only to brush my hand up against the fur of my Old English sheepdog mix, whose tail began thumping against my bed. "Delilah, it's you," I crooned. A song sparrow chirped in sliding arpeggios outside my window as I lingered in bed savoring the memory of my quest.

Eventually making my way to the bathroom, I stared at myself in the mirror. I looked the same as I always had-gray-green eyes, brownish hair, impish features that some men found attractive, yet something had changed, lending me a new, more peaceful appearance.

After my morning walk with Delilah, I wandered into the living room, which I rarely used. A large Oriental rug covered the tan wall-to-wall carpeting, and in lieu of furniture, colorful pillows imported from Turkey and India were tossed casually in bunches. I sat at the center of the rug and contemplated two framed prints of Giotto's St. Francis of Assisi hanging on the side wall. I wondered if the wild birds that were said to perch on the good saint's arms foretold the future. Then I gazed into the face of Fra Angelico's Mary on the end wall, her eyes wide open, hands crossed at her breast, receiving the kneeling angel's message about the coming birth. Delilah nudged my hand with her nose. As I combed my fingers through her bangs, revealing her shiny black eyes, I asked: "Do you know the truth, girl? Did my meeting with the vanishing Mother happen or was it just a dream?" Delilah happily brushed her tail back and forth against the rug.

In the few days before classes resumed I had time to walk, write, and lie in sandy arroyos under palo verde and mesquite trees. The Mother's presence permeated everything. Her garments spread across ridges of the Tucson Mountains, reflecting the pinks of the setting sun. Her hips and breasts undulated in the heat waves rising off the horizon, and her long hair unraveled into winding ravines. The tingling stillness of the desert air spread inside me like a mist, saturating me with fleeting glimpses of a happiness that existed beyond the passing of light into darkness, day into night, life into death.

Then Monday came. I dragged myself to statistics class, but on my way there students' faces jostled my senses. My mind twisted and whirled like a kaleidoscope, rotating fragments of glass into new patterns with each turn. Every step I took gave way to uncertainty; a world was collapsing under my feet. Stopping to rest on a wall, I wondered how to piece together what was real and what wasn't. As sparrows hopped and pecked around me, a classmate suddenly tapped me on the shoulder, urging, "Come on, Luce. It's late."

During the lecture, my thoughts drifted like seedpods on puffs of wind. I reflected on the Mother's gurgling laughter and her words, wondering how I might bring the experience of her into my daily life. I recalled a visit I'd made years before to a Byzantine basilica in Ravenna, Italy, where diffuse light shone through small windows onto earth-tone mosaics embedded in the rounded ceiling. Walking into the dimly lit sanctuary and feeling my body separate into sunlit particles was something I could never explain. To describe the sensation, I used terms like "mystical," "suspended in space," and "timeless," none of which gave full flavor to the experience. What was it about that small, dark temple on the Adriatic Sea that made it shimmer with otherworldliness? Could I create a similar feeling in my own living room?

At last, the professor's droning had stopped and students were preparing to leave. My friend Diana laughed. "Are you going to sit here and think about statistics for a while?"

****

Under the Fra Angelico painting in the living room I decided to fashion an altar filled with items I had collected over the previous few days. As a child, I would spend hours decorating a bookshelf for Christmas, using cotton for snow, a mirror for ice, skating and skiing figurines, and in a far corner a manger with Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the shepherds and animals. Now, in much the same spirit, I began covering cement blocks with maroon burlap, then placed a slab of flagstone across the top. Over the flagstone I arranged a Middle Eastern weaving salvaged from a yard sale, and on top of that I set the poster of the coyote.

For a long time I stared at the poster, struck by the similarities between this creature and the wolf from my childhood. To me, the wolf had meant freedom, excitement, living in the wild, unencumbered by interruptions from adults- especially my mother, who was forever fearful of my well-being. Why did the Mother appear soon after the wolf? What did the unrestrained independence of the wolf and the playful, unconditional love of the Mother have to do with each other? Perhaps both these qualities are related to the immortal nectar I'm supposed to find. Things would be so much easier if it were something I could just drink.

Continuing my creative task, I reached for an oak frame and arranged within it a length of white silk-a place for imagining the Mother. I then lit a candle, placing it to the left of the frame, and set a stick of sandalwood incense aflame to the right of it, poking the unlit end into a piece of volcanic rock. After contemplating the grouping, I scurried outside to select a few stones and branches, and switched items around until the arrangement was just right. My heart swelled. I knelt down, folded my palms together, and touched my forehead to the floor. Smoke from the incense curled around the picture frame, revealing an image of the Mother's face on the cloth, which soon faded to stark white again. Tears welled up in my eyes. Have I been seeing things all along? How can anything so seemingly real be merely a product of my imagination?

I sat crumpled, and repeated the only phrase I could remember from the lilting tune I had listened to on my way home from Rainbow Moods Music and Book Store that morning: "Let my spirit fly to you. No place could be too far. Remove this cloud of ignorance and show me where you are . . . and show me where you are."

*****

For days I spent long hours in front of my altar singing, praying, holding my palms together. From time to time I'd step outside to contemplate saguaros, giant beings of the Sonoran Desert, lifting my arms to mirror their supplication to the sky. On a few occasions I crept out into the night to sleep at the foot of the saguaro behind my house, thinking the Mother might come to it under the cover of stars. I'd fix my eyes on its silhouette as I fell asleep, imagining my body stretched toward the heavens. Although I didn't see or hear the Mother on these adventures, I did feel her peace.

On one such morning I awoke and, reaching out of my sleeping bag, touched something cool and leathery. A rattlesnake! I rolled away like a tumbleweed, whereupon the serpent flashed its tongue and slithered off. Seeing that its head was narrow, instead of triangular, I knew it was not a rattler but rather a bull snake. Could it be the Mother, I wondered, warning me of the hazards of sleeping unprotected in a desert where snakes, tarantulas, and scorpions crawl in profusion? I slung my sleeping bag over my shoulder, shuffled toward the back gate. Once inside, I soaked in the bathtub, sinking into a dark fog that clouded my vision and struggling over what to do with my life.

*****

"You can't quit when you're nearly finished! So you had an experience in the mountains. Jung had experiences all the time! Does that mean you have to stop everything?" My advisor, Pat Frost, a boyish-looking woman in her early fifties with short, graying hair, peered at me through thick glasses.

"Sure it sounds crazy, but I don't know what else to do," I said. "Classroom material seems to fill my head with concepts that no longer have meaning to me."

Pat planted her elbows on the desk, rested her chin on folded knuckles. "What happened in the mountains, anyway?"

I opened my mouth to speak, but words failed to emerge, scattered as they were in the chasm separating my experience in the Chiricahuas from the matter-of-fact world of university degrees. I lowered my head. "I don't know how to explain it."

Pat leaned back in her brown vinyl chair and wrapped her hands together behind her head. Enunciating each syllable precisely, she said: "Look, why don't you finish this semester. Enroll for your twelve credits of practicum in the summer. Act as if you intend to complete your degree. Just go through the motions."

I rolled and unrolled the course catalog while mentally running through a patchwork of images-the bushman, the coyotes, the cave, the Mother, the inexplicable love. Raising my head, I looked at Pat. "What good would that do?"

"It would give you time to think-and maybe contexts, like Ron's Gestalt class, for processing whatever went on in the mountains."

I swallowed.

She rocked her chair forward. "Why don't you talk to Diana."

I nodded and bit my lower lip. Diana had been a divinity student before coming to the counseling department. Maybe she would have some insights beyond the realm of psychology.

"You'd make a good therapist, Luce. The experience you had might make you an even better one. Give yourself time."

I looked up and smiled. "Okay, I'll try. Thanks."

I stepped out into the smoldering air and hurried down the cement pathways adjoining the clusters of four-story brick buildings. My mind spun like a hamster on a wheel, sending notions of right and wrong tumbling every which way. Nearly stumbling on a curb, I had to grab a tree branch to keep my balance. At last tossing my purse and papers in the car, I sat behind the wheel contemplating an upcoming haircut appointment that now seemed meaningless. I scrutinized myself in the rearview mirror. I need it, though. I look just like my dog.

After my trim, I lingered in front of a pet store and then slipped inside. Parakeets chortled and terriers yipped incessantly. A red Siberian husky, too large for its cage, chased itself in circles, biting at its right hind foot. I was amused at the husky's inventive way of entertaining himself under such inhumane circumstances. At the other end of the stacked rows of cages was a gray-and-white malamute, lying quietly, its hollow blue eyes staring into space.

"How much is that red husky?" I asked the sales clerk.

"Ma'am, he's marked down from five hundred dollars to four hundred twenty-five."

My heart beat fast. Oh gosh, what am I getting myself into? I'll know I'm crazy if I pay that much for a dog. I felt as though I were on a conveyor belt with no possibility of turning back. "Can I see him?"

The clerk left me alone with the puppy in a tiny, bare room. When I tried to pick him up, he twisted his body and threw his head from side to side. Then he paused long enough for me to see that he had yellow eyes. The way they darted about, not seeming to register the world around him, suggested that he was a victim of pet store abuse. Right away I wanted to rescue him and reintroduce him to freedom.

I carried the writhing beast to the counter. "Do you take credit cards?"

*****

With the puppy straining and shaking his head against the leash I'd tied to the window knob, I drove north down Oracle and turned onto Ina, past the flat-roofed, single-story brick homes nestled against desert landscaping. At the cul-de-sac, I pulled into the carport of my adobe rental, tucked the little husky under my arm, its gangling legs flailing, and set him down in the ocotillo-fenced yard. "I'll be right back, little fellow."

Delilah greeted me at the back door, sniffing me all over. "You know something's up, don't you, girl?" I said gently. Once inside, I stared out the sliding glass door to Mount Lemmon, guardian of the Catalina range. Delilah pawed at my leg, pleading with me to take her out. "Poochie, we have a new puppy. How would you like to be his mom?"

After introducing the dogs, I dragged the phone cord to the sliding glass door, where I could watch the animals' getting-to-know-you antics, and called Diana. "Guess what I got?"

"What do you have, Luce?" Diana asked in her faint Texas drawl.

The puppy dashed around and around nipping at Delilah's legs. She growled, bounded at him, and knocked him over. "A red Siberian husky. His name is Shaman of Wands."

"Oh my God. What craziness prompted you to do that?"

I stuttered as I watched my usually peaceful sheepdog pummel the little husky into the sand over and over again until he whimpered and lay quietly looking up at her. "That's what I need to talk to you about. Something happened to me while I was in the Chiricahuas over break."

"I've wondered about you lately. Is everything okay?"

"Well, not really. Can we have lunch after Pat's class? Somewhere quiet?"

*****

Diana was tall, nearly six feet, and slender like a fashion model. Clothes draped over her body as if she had planned every fold. Her brown eyes, behind large yet delicate horn-rimmed glasses, were soft, doelike. She sat leaning against a tree with her long arms wrapped around her knees. "That's a pretty amazing story, Luce-kind of like St. Anthony in the desert! Speaking of which, you said the coyotes and the woman appeared early in the morning, when you hadn't had anything to eat or drink for a while. Is there any possibility it was a dream or vision?"

We both laughed, but even so I could feel myself knotting up inside. I pinched my sandwich and with the other hand clasped my shoulder as if to hold myself together. "That's what I don't know. It was pretty real. At first, I was okay with the Mother gone because I could still feel her everywhere; now, I'm having some weird problems. Dizziness, forgetting where I am, strange dreams. The other day in the cafeteria I thought my head would burst from the clinking of glasses and plates as a busboy cleared a nearby table. Sometimes I feel deep peace, too, but that's dwindling. I don't know what to do."

Diana reached over to touch my knee, then slipped her hand into mine. "Luce, believe me. If something like that happened to me, it would change my life, too."

My eyes stung with tears. Taking a deep breath, I let my hand fall to my lap. Then I leaned back and took another bite of my sandwich. "Pat says I should continue with my course work to give myself time to think."

"Does that feel okay to you?" Diana asked while pouring coffee from her thermos.

I stared at the Catalina Mountains, recalling the panoramic view from my cave in the Chiricahuas. "One part of me sees the practicality in it. The other part wants to take off, wander the world, find another cave where the Mother would come to me. Maybe in Hawaii. I've heard there are lots of caves on the Big Island."

Diana placed her hand on my shoulder and studied me with a deep tenderness. "Luce, didn't the Mother herself say you would have to cross some hurdles?"

I fished an apple out of my brown bag and examined it. "Yes, she did."

"Maybe this is all part of it." Diana's full mouth smiled, forming faint dimples at the corners.

Taking a bite of the apple, I said, "I guess we'd better go to class. I feel a little better now that we've talked, but I still don't know exactly what to do."

We got up and sauntered arm in arm to the counseling building, arriving just in time for Transactional Analysis.

After class, Diana squeezed my hand. "See you at Ron's next week. Maybe you'll be inspired to take the 'hot seat.'"

"Yeah, maybe it's time," I said.

*****

Several nights later I woke up past midnight in a cold sweat. A man with a pistol had been chasing me down alleyways, over fences, into warehouses. I switched on the light, rested my eyes on a pastel painting. Oh, Mother, please help me. I sighed and dropped my head to the pillow, leaving the light on as I drifted back to sleep.

Over breakfast I mapped out an early morning hike the dogs and I could take along the Pima Canyon Trail. But did the nightmare portend a repeat of my chase in the Chiricahuas? I wondered. If so, was I to entrust myself to fate and not worry about my future, as the Mother had advised? Because Delilah was too friendly and Shaman too young to offer much protection, I added my hunting knife to the food and supplies about to go in my day pack.

The dogs and I meandered over a knoll of reddish shale before descending into the canyon, where we hiked beside a lush stream lined with seep willows, wolfberry bushes, and cottonwoods. Shaman flopped along, biting at Delilah's hind legs until she paused, wheeled around, and let loose a sharp bark at him. Her ears snapped up like a jack-in-the-box, then dropped down again just as fast, punctuating her disciplinary act. Shaman rolled over on his back, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. No longer did his eyes dart around mindlessly, as they had when he first came home from the pet store. Thank God for that.

At a spot where the stream formed a shallow pond, the dogs stopped for a drink and I squatted in the sand. Several groups of people passed by in both directions. The lap-lap of the dogs' tongues echoed in my ears and began circulating through my head in surging waves. My body proceeded to vibrate in response to an urgent pulsing of blood. The temperature was nearly ninety degrees, yet I couldn't stop my teeth from chattering. I felt strange-hot and cold all at once. I pulled off my boots to cool my feet in the stream, but sounds and sensations stalked me. Maybe I need to eat. "Come on, Delilah, Shaman. Let's sit over here." I crawled up an incline to a cottonwood. There I ripped open my sack and devoured some of my sandwich.

The shaking persisted. Maybe I'm just scared. But why? My eyes darted up the trail, back down, then up the ravines on both sides of the canyon. I saw nothing but casual hikers chatting, or stopping to gaze through binoculars at birds. Their voices, the rustling of leaves in the breeze, and the gushing water all echoed through a hollow inside my brain. Holding my head, I felt a scream rise like a bubbling volcano about to erupt. I've got to get out of here. I stuffed everything back into my pack and jumped up. "Come on, Delilah, Shaman."

With the dogs panting behind me, I splashed across the shallow stream and scrambled through wolfberry bushes on the other side of it, thinking I could move faster by avoiding passersby. Up the incline I went, still off the trail, stumbling and even falling before I emerged, emptied and wasted, at the spot where I'd parked my car.

In the mirror at home, my hair and face appeared dusty and caked, like an Aborigine's. I look like the way I feel. A bath soothed my aching muscles and smarting scratches. After running cold water over bruises, I sunk down to rest in the hot tub, only to be overcome once again with the strange shivering. What's happening to me? There's no one pursuing me now but the demons of my own mind!

I sought solace at my altar, hoping the Mother would relieve me of my mental anguish, but later that night the chase dream returned. I awoke transfixed, pinned to my mattress in a coat of chain mail. In the morning, to alleviate the shaking I rode my bike around the neighborhood, singing loudly to chase away the clanging each little sound was making in my ears. Scorched by the heat, I came home as dusk was falling, then slumped onto the temple-room floor, lit the candle, and hunched down by the altar, shivering. Certain that I was going mad, I pondered the Mother's words about the soul being the source of true happiness. If that was so, and if my encounters with her were guiding me to this fount of joy, why, then, had my despair increased? Was my trust in the reality of the vanishing Mother causing me to lose my mind? Too frightened to sleep, I sang repeatedly: "Oh, holy Mother, comfort me. Let me hear you once more whisper my name. Lonely and frightened, like dust in the wind, I'm lost in this infinite world."

The sun woke me, shining its beams on the floor, where I lay rolled in a ball. After toast and coffee, a short bicycle ride to Ron's house refreshed me enough to participate in the three-hour group session. Sam, a burly fellow who worked with prisoners, drove up at the same time I did. He grinned broadly beneath his baseball cap, walked briskly toward me, and said in a Brooklyn accent, "Looks like you had a late night." He wrapped his arm around my shoulder as we walked toward the house.

I had always enjoyed Sam's company, but found myself wincing under his touch. "I'm in trouble, Sam. I hope I can 'work' this morning."

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