A shadow stole through the mists of consciousness last night as I lay half asleep in the throes of sudden body temperature changes. Coyote, yellow-eyed and grinning, placed one wise, slender paw ahead of the other as he threaded his way across the inner landscape. He looked askance at me to let me know he was aware of me, and to show me some canny message of movement and silence.
In my mind's eye I watched his bobbing tail as he picked his way through the sagebrush, under an egg white moon. I did not have the feeling he wanted me to follow him. He had come, displayed himself, moved on.
When Rosean and I used to drive across Wyoming on our frequent long jaunts, Coyote would sometimes cross the road ahead of us. It was always wise to watch what happened next. Coyote is a devil to a planned-out existence. He likes to shake things up, unsettle what is firmly tied in place. He is the aspect of God that Clarissa Pinkola Estes speaks of in her little book The Faithful Gardener, "Though we think we are following the rightful map, God suddenly decides to lift up the road, placing it and us elsewhere."
Coyote magic runs through Rosean's and my lives in a strong river. We know that God laughs when we tell her our plans. We have learned over the years to find the joy in the moments we travel even as we grieve the shattering of expectations and connections.
Last night something different happened. Watching the retreating bushy tail, I was suddenly aware I was looking at a human face, a quiet presence of compassion and invitation. It was like my icon of the Compassionate Christ, how that icon would look if it came to life and realized itself beyond the foibles of the artist. Coyote was still trotting along, and yet from the same space the face was gazing at me. Gentled, embraced by those brown eyes, I lay quietly for a long time. Finally it dawned on me. "You are also the Trickster God," I said to this Christ who looked at me out of my heart.
Out of my heart he claimed me. "Who are you?" he whispered, as though it were a riddle to which he knew the answer that I must guess.
I found myself thinking of my qualities: determination and patience, arrogance, yearning for community, irritability, inarticulateness in some moments, eloquence in others, dead-on accurate intuition, flakiness. I thought of my compassionate heart -- and then of the abrupt coldness I can sometimes manifest. I remembered my quick mind -- and my absolute obtuseness in certain areas. I examined my desire to please people -- and my utter willingness to speak the truth when the chips are down. I looked in a thousand mirrors and saw the reflections of me at all my different ages. I thought I might have begun to form an answer out of all those and many more pieces.
"Who are you beyond all that?" he whispered.
I felt myself go completely still. I looked into darkness like soft felt. Thoughts swam away from me like fish. Feelings bloomed like flowers and disappeared. Going into matter until the atoms in my body were far enough apart that starlight shone through, I admired all the little universes. "Where is Laurie?" I wondered -- and then wondered who wondered. With that I snapped back into consciousness and found myself fully awake and lying in bed next to a deeply-snoring Rosean.
"What are you asking? What are you asking of me?" I addressed my memory of the Compassionate Trickster Christ, and saw again Coyote's most eloquent tail.
The whisper of a whisper reached me. I am not certain what he said. It was just that he had come, and had displayed himself -- and would shine in gentle compassion, once in awhile, from Laurie Gudim's eyes.
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