Come back. Come back. Come back to me.

the mantra of love

I missed writing my usual reflections on my high holy day, Groundhog Day, because one of our ancient cats, Rosie (20) passed with the full moon. She was, quite simply, one of the most loving beings I have ever met, a goddess of ecstatic joy and pleasure, funny and warm, a great mama to all the souls in our home, my dearest friend, a soul sister I will miss beyond measure.

It has been an extraordinary season of loss in our family. Once upon a time our house was filled with animals—six cats, two dogs, goldfish, ducks, geese, sea monkeys, rescued wildlife inclucing baby possums—but slowly over the years we have been saying good-bye to these dear friends. But we never imagined the last would all decide to check out together within months of each other—and that my sister would unexpectedly depart. We pray a rosary for 49 days whenever a loved one passes and we have finished one pilgrimage through the bardo, only to catch our breath for a day or two, before beginning all over again. Clark makes a double knotted rosary when someone dies which he cuts at the burial—giving one to the deceased and keeping one for us to pray with during this time of transition. So many white cord rosaries are now hanging from our bedroom altar to the dead.

My favorite astrologist, Hannah Sparrow, has noted that not only are so many of my planets in the eighth house of death and the underworld but I have had a once-in-a-lifetime set of planetary transitions this past year with my own hospitalizations, illness, and health challenges. I have been spending a lot of time at the side of graves, contemplating the decay of bodies I have loved and feeling the torn apart brokenness of my heart. When she was very little, my daughter turned to my husband and said, “When a heart breaks, is it so a bigger heart can grow in its place?”

Some time ago I began asking myself, what is the deepest prayer of my heart? What petition would I offer up lifetime after lifetime, even if I knew it might take eons for the answer to arrive? What did I want so truly and deeply that I would pledge my soul to it for as long as it took? What was my heart’s desire? What vow woule let my heart break, break open and break wide, so that this prayer could blossom?

Draw my kin close. My blood kin. My soul kin. My odd kin. Draw my kin close.

But this prayer became even simpler, found its rhythm with my heartbeat as Rosie died. Come back, come back to me, come back, I whispered. As an animal, a grandchild, a friend, a sister, a mother, somehow come back to me. I realized my heart had been whispering this prayer all season long—to my rescue dog, to my old cat, to my sister, and now to Rosie. Come back.

In Groundhog Day the main character, a disgruntled weatherman, feels cursed to have to come back to the same day in the same town again and again. He wants out of the ceaseless cycle of samsara that is embodiment. But that’s only when he’s new to this game. He goes through all kinds of transformations—victimhood, narcissism, suicidality, lust, boredom, and finally joy. He spends 10,000 days taking piano lessons, listening at last to the beating of his heart, and ultimately draws to him all that he has ever wanted. Finallly, he wants to be reborn right where he is and who is. He wants to come back.

What happens when we all come back to each other, world without end?

Apparently there were Siberian shamans who increased the potency of the hallucinigen they used by consuming it, peeing, drinking their urine, drinking it again and repeating the process until the psychadelic had achieved maximum distillation and potency. This is not anything I want to partake in. BUT, I think when we come back to each other, when we can claim the long story of our souls, lifetime after lifetime, we can begin to recover so much of the wisdom we have lost.

What happens when we not only know who our children have been but have known what the deepest prayers of their heart have been? How differently might we guide and nourish them? What happens when we are recognized for who we already are? What happens when our oldest desires are cultivated, our lifetimes of wisdom are recognized, when we are encouraged to claim what we already know and have known world without end?

Come back, come back, I whispered to my sister. Come back, come back I whispered to my pets. Come back come back I whispered to Rosie.

Come back to me, my husband and I whisper to each other as we fall asleep. We felt the answer to that prayer whe we found each other this time, when our children were born, when we stood upon the land where we now live.

What happens when we want to come back, know we’ll come back, experience the radical belonging of always returning to those we know and love?

To love is to always know we are praying come back, come back to me, come back.

I don’t know how my cocker spaniel or my kitty or my sister will return to me. Perhaps one day we will be a charm of goldfinches together, glinting in the sun. Perhaps I will hold a grandchild in my arms and recognize them. Perhaps we will be a grove of trees together, a pod of seals, a murder of crows. My prayer is not that we stay the same, that the eternal dance of change that is ecological creativity stop, no. My prayer is only that our souls that love each other, whatever way we weave, touch each other again and again.

I am looking at the cold oaks standing in the snow outside my office window. How many of them once upon a time whisptered come back to my soul? A wren lands on the windowsill. She visits me regularly, recognizes me, even when I do not recognize myself. The whole world remembers the mantra of love. Come back. Come back. Come back.

The prayer of the earth is for life, for that which allows the eternal return, for the entangled dance of love in which all are embraced.

Come back. Come back. Come back.

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Perdita Finn is the author of Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World and Mothers of Magic: Summoning the Wisdom of Our Ancestors. With her husband Clark Strand she is the founder of The Way of the Rose and the co-author of the book of the same name. She lives in the mossy shadows of the Catskill Mountains with her family and offers a variety of workshops on collaborating with the dead.

Find out more at takebackthemagic.com