Doing the work

I recently asked “What part of me can best help the Journey Oracle go out into the world?” For advice I obtained a Kinder Surprise, which is a hollow chocolate egg, wrapped in foil on the outside and containing a plastic bubble on the inside filled with pieces of a small toy. To conduct a Kinder Surprise divination, I first ask my question and then assemble the toy to receive my answer. I got a blue jug spilling milk, atop which were sitting two grey mice—balancing at the ends of a red teeter totter. Although the symbolism of the blue jug was clear: the Journey Oracle itself—in the color of spiritual seeking—spilling nourishment to all who drink from the cards and stories, I was stymied by the mice until I remembered that one of the stories is about mice. It is the story of the Sun card, called “Doing the work.”

There was a couple who found a mouse in their house. How it got there, they didn’t know, but they decided it could not be just hanging out, and must be trapped. The couple used a box baited with peanut butter crackers; and after their success they drove the little mouse a long distance from their home.

The next day, the couple was surprised to find three tiny mouse babies under the tail of their old dog—they had apparently crawled there to avoid energy loss from the morning cold. The couple realized that these were the children of the mouse they had trapped and although they could toss them outside, they decided they were not going there. The couple thought “Through our actions Spider Woman’s web be broken.” They wondered how to mend the net of this broken family? In a burst of forces marshaled to nurture these creatures so new in the world, the couple built a moss soft nest in a plastic tub, and fitted the top with a screen lid.

At first the three babies dined on eye droppers full of warm milk; days later they feasted on bird seed and hard boiled egg. At night the three mouse children would run laps upside down on the screen lid of their home and then sleep in a puddle of tiny feet and pink noses during the day. At last the couple took the plastic tub to the forest, and offering peanut butter crackers as rewards, encouraged the mice to enter their rightful world.

Years later the woman found herself in exhaustion and pain from the discovery of a childhood trauma. She closed her eyes and asked for help. In her inner sight she saw a little mouse nose wiggling toward her face, and felt a spirit energy communication. She understood that this was the mouse mother, come to repay the gift of her children’s lives. The mouse indicated she would be doing the work—helping the woman find her way back to her family—because the memory of wild things is as long as forever.

For me this story is about choosing to do the thing that takes effort, rather than choosing to do what is easy. It is about doing this effort-filled thing for perhaps a long time without a guarantee of success or even acknowledgement. The mouse children balancing on the red seesaw are a symbol of my choice to do the work to bring this Oracle into the world. And like caring for the real mouse babies, this choice will take my passion as well as my effort to keep feeding the Oracle’s growth with my energy.