the Pretty-Raven Podcast Page

WELCOME to Episode Two of the pretty-raven story! That’s me – my name is Maxine Yo, and in thirty audio episodes and matching text posts I’m going to tell all about my brilliant life with Julie Mason. In the year 1975 I was an A&E nurse at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, where a colleague...

The first beginning step to freedom! It certainly didn’t seem that way when Onion let herself be talked into going off with the eccentric Gilbert O’Connor for a wilderness canoe trip in Canada, and yet things kept falling into place. The poor girl simply had no idea what was about to happen to her!

Narrator: Sallybeth:  Finola Ó Siochru singing An Goirtín Eornan.

You are the dark blue butterfly, You are the green parrot with red eyes, You are the thundercloud, pregnant with lightning, You are the seasons, You are the seas, You are without beginning, present everywhere, You from whom all the worlds are born. [Chandogya Upanishad] We’ve reached the end of this highly unusual story about...

.. Bobby said, ‘Sidney knows almost nothing about it.’ ‘No, you haven’t told him but he feels it, sweetheart. He can feel the change in you – he’s not stupid. But it’s not too late. Don’t worry – we have to think what to do – it’s a most extraordinary situation – I’m very glad...

‘Give in. Surrender to me sweetheart. I’m looking after you.’ ‘I already have.’ ‘Then do it some more. You simply have to go farther, darling. I mean allow yourself to go farther. This is your time for complete surrender. I mean TOTALLY! We’ve gone so far and now you can’t go back.’ ‘I don’t want...

It was all wrong for me if I’m honest. I mean going to a concert with a man like Robin was alright, but the whole point of it wouldn’t be the music, would it? We would both know that something else might happen afterwards. In his car. Or up against a wall somewhere; or we’d...

I thought again of good old Saint Paul, writing so passionately all those years ago to his disciples on the subject of love. It’s easy to see how the Corinthians might have misunderstood him though – he was describing what they’d be finding in themselves as they opened their hearts to a deeper reality:

“Love is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love has no fear; it does not worry; love keeps no records of wrongs; never fails.”

Onion said thoughtfully, ‘You know, that’s actually a pretty good desciption of you at the present time, darling.’

This is a serious post that deals with a theme that runs through everything in this blog. Yes, believe it or not, there IS a central theme – it’s the idea that commonsense holds us back from knowing the blissful Reality that we all carry within us – what Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaven....

This is the end of the beginning of the strange story of Onion and me, and how we had Hafiz under our skin. I know that these little episodes haven't always made much sense on their own, but taken together it's a red-hot story for our times. The first posts told of our joyful innocence right at the beginning, and now in the shadow of this last post we stand at the threshold of a completely new chapter in our lives. It was over ten years ago that Onion was given her Eagle initiation in Little Grand Rapids, Manitoba, and since that time she's been faithfully practicing the program of meditation she was given. Now she's ready to go back for more instruction. Gilbert always thought she was a Dreamer. Maybe he was right, and this time she'll be taking Michael to meet his father for the first time, bless her.