Neptune's Gift

I'm grateful for time, at last, to process all that's happened the last two weeks: A voyage on the pirate ship Calabar Felonway, meeting the Bog Queen, my wild ride into Neptune's world beneath the Lemurian Sea, and all the fair memories that seeing him stirred within me. It's hard to believe it all happened, but if I want proof all I need to do is look at the coin the king gave me.

Neptune urged me to ponder the symbols on it in relation to Believer, the name I chose for myself, not my given name, Barbara, that my mother always claimed was a mistake, a slip of the tongue when she was asked by the nurse what to call me. Mom had adored her father and he'd had a step sister in Poland who, in typical fairy tale fashion, had treated him cruelly. Her name had been Barbara. Neither of my parents had ever used it.

What meaning can a trident and a nautilus shell have for one known as Believer? I begin to meditate, lulled by the sound of the calming surf exactly one hundred steps below the Abbey. Fully alert, but quieted, my mind ceases its constant flitting from thought to thought. In dreams we choose our own metaphors and symbols, so there is no reason I can't do that in my waking state. Neptune's prime symbol the trident looks just like the pitchfork the devil uses, so it may not be a fitting symbol for a Christian to carry unless, for me, it symbolizes the Trinity and the wisdom to remember times past without sorrow.

With the mandelas I admire, one walks or follows a path from the outside to the center. Centering leads to the inner self. But the nautilus grows from the center and spirals outward adding a larger chamber each time and moving into it as it grows. My wish has always been to grow, in compassion, in faith, in knowledge. What could be a more perfect combination of my life's goals than to continue to reach out and grow like the nautilus in union with my faith in the Trinity?