A Futile Horn

Well, the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much, it's doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn
Come in, she said
I'll give ya shelter from the storm.

Even before my right eye started acting up I was thinking about being the one-eyed undertaker for Halloween. In college some friends held a ‘come as a line from a Dylan song’ costume party, which seemed so clever. How do I remember that? I have no idea. I’ve never been into costuming, but I’m gonna be with the two-year-old Queen Lilly in Colorado for Halloween so I was feeling like I should up my game. I was thinking I’d wear an eye patch, black clothes and walk around with a horn that no one hears.

No one would get it, of course, but does it matter?

I mean preacher rides a mount feels closer to home, except it would he hard to take a horse trick or treating.

Then again … Aspen …

I’ve done so many funerals lately that I’m beginning to feel like an undertaker, and what a weird word, right? Undertaker. And I was thinking my funny-acting right eye maybe just needs a break and that I would ask the eye doctor for a patch to wear for a while. So, there we go.

The line from that song that gets me, though, is the part about blowing a futile horn. We don’t know what the undertaker’s futility is about, the song doesn’t tell us, but I bet I can guess.

Something like this: everyone dies in the end, folks, enjoy your life while you have it. The undertaker would know, right? The person who sees all the grief, the wailing, the regret, the shock that jesus christ, we actually do die!

We do! We will! You will! Me too!

I wanted to tell you two things today.

First, well, OK. Three.

First, I’m a person who has visions. I mean, we all do, but I’ve been working intentionally in recent years to access my dreams and visions to guide me through life. In simpler terms this might be like saying I can easily tap into my intuition. But it’s a little more than that. In the quiet of the night, when the world is asleep, I often ask questions like what is the point of all of this? Then I listen and trust that what I’m hearing is coming from a Deeper Knowing. I also see things that help answer these questions, too. Like dreams, only I’m not asleep.

This, of course, is part of how I function as a medium: I give over to an infinite intelligence in order to access information. It’s not that big a deal, but it does take a lot of practice to be able to trust what’s coming through.

Recently I asked something like that: how does this work? Life and death? And then I had a really beautiful vision.

A guide took me by the hand and led me to an overlook, a hill. We stood there looking out over a village and I could see the living and the ‘dead’ all there, working together. And I said, OH! It’s all one! We don’t go anywhere at all when we die, we just don’t have a body anymore.

It was a very peaceful vision, there was a great deal of harmony.

It’s all one.

And, you know, I’ve kind of known this all along, that what we so charmingly call heaven isn’t a place far away in the clouds. That death is just a transition, just like birth. That we move in and out of bodies over a vast continuum of time, trying out all different kinds of personality traits, learning as we go (hopefully). But there was something about that vision that was really peaceful and obvious … it’s all one.

So that was the second thing, and I probably could have AI generate some kind of gauzy image to go with that vision, but maybe not. Use your imagination.

The third is this:

As mentioned, I’m having these weird eye things: flashes and floaters. Which feels kind of cool, but in typical human fashion I made the leap from my eye kind of hurts to I have brain cancer in under ten seconds.

I started thinking about the diagnosis that could come that would precipitate my demise. I wondered if my time on earth was closing down. I hoped it would be fast, like before November 4. And I hoped it wouldn’t, like after the birth of my first grandchild.

I thought about how for years now I’ve been talking and writing publicly about death, how much I love the subject, my own experience knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door and being with lots of folks making that transition. Watching someone take their last breath, that intake followed by stillness. Planning a gazillion memorial services and funerals, guiding people through that process. My lifelong obsession with all of it in film, music and on canvas: Death Be Not Proud, the Grateful Dead, Six Feet Under, everything Hilma af Klint painted. What a relief it was when my friend Jen read my natal chart a few years ago and told me that I have “a contractual obligation to death.”

So, number three, I was thinking about my own death and how I would want to report back to all of you from the other side. And I imagined myself having trouble finding a medium, someone available through whom I could speak. And I thought, frig! I have to devote the life that I have left to doing that! I can’t monkey around with this anymore! Ever since I sort of discovered that I could channel those in Spirit I’ve had a kind of wishywashy relationship with it. There’s no place in our world here for people like me. We’re a circus side show act, the freaks of the world who communicate with the dead. Other cultures easily integrate life and death; ours pretends death doesn’t exist. Mediums become entertainers, exploiting their abilities to charm and surprise.

But I imagined myself floating around out there, wanting to report to everyone here what happens after death and not being able to find anyone at the other end of the phone.

And I thought, I have to devote my life to this. In a more focused way. There is important information out there about the beauty and peace and joy that comes after we die. And it can help you and I feel safer and more ready to go there. And when we feel safer and more ready to go there one day, that means we can have a better life here, now because we can spend less time being afraid of death and more time loving life.

If you want me to help you get in touch with someone you love who has left their body ( I really hate the words death and died; they don’t well-convey the reality of how cool death is ) just drop me a line HERE. I do it remotely or in person and on a donations basis.

So that’s everything. Please note: this one-eyed undertaker loves Snickers.
xomo