Looking at the many LINKS in life.

I’m new to this cyber-blogging stuff, so be kind to me as I eagerly and humbly begin my association with the Shivas Irons Society.  A year ago, I wasn’t even aware of himself, the great golf instructor & philosopher. So how is it that a, middle-aged housewife from the Midwest, who hasn’t handled a club in 7 years, gains entré to the Kingdom?  Well, I’ve always had trouble with subtle life lessons as I usually require a strong conveyance of the important messages. So it was that Shivas Irons found my family at a point where we were at our lowest, twelve years ago. (That happy and curious meeting is described in Jo Crisp’s Blog-The Tail of Shivas Irons.)

It took me 12 years before I began to investigate the name of Shivas Irons. The facility of the Internet and the creative and sincere warmth of Jo Crisp really started something in me. I read the books of Michael Murphy and the entries on the SIS website. I felt as if I was being connected to that which I had lost. It’s begun to bring me back to who I was when I first met Shivas Irons, my dog.

In little bits and tiny ways and chance encounters I’m re-learning how to build connectivity and structure. The events and happenings of one’s life are really like the patches of cloth that make up a quilt. Each of us would recognize a scrap of material and call it such. By itself, it could be a piece of an old outfit or clothing and it can be used as a rag perhaps. It can stand alone.  However, when it is connected with other bits of caste off rags and sewn together with the overall vision of a quilter, it becomes something else entirely. After some significant piece work the scraps become Folk Art, collectible, practical and recognizable. It becomes a quilt.

A golf hole, by itself is like a scrap of material. It becomes a golf course when the collection of 18 golf holes are LINKED together by the golfers who leave their individual stitches on the fabric of the land as they play through.

Our lives are a collection of people and events that are linked into a logical pattern that describes who we are and what we have done. But occasionally, something can go terribly wrong and our life story becomes disjointed.

While searching for Shivas Irons’ original family I began to hearken back to my own lost self and was probably looking to solve the mystery of me as much as the mystery of she, Shivas Irons. A horrific traffic accident had shredded the fabric of my life leaving me with scraps. Some pieces were recognizable and would be reintegrated into myself and others pieces have lay in wait, looking to find a spot where they can belong again.  (See the Jan. 2007 article by WSJ columnist Tom Burton.)

Last December, I was on the Internet Searching “Shivas Irons”. Imagine my surprise when I learned how many were looking for Shivas Irons. Visitations & Sightings were few and far between.

And here we had Shivas Irons with us all that time. My Internet relationship with Jo Crisp grew as my realization of a fantasy reunion with Shivas Irons’ first family would probably not take place. I always felt that this relationship between our dog and us was bigger than we could understand, at first. Perhaps we weren’t ready to hear the message of Shivas Irons until she was practically ready to take her leave. So in many ways, I’m cramming for exams, trying to “get it”. However, the lesson of true gravity tells me to slow down & center myself because although I’m a slow study these days, Shivas has been here the whole time. I trust and believe that I’ll learn how to connect those scraps of my life that haven’t easily linked up yet.

I’m off to a slow start as I’m one of those folks who was recently inundated by the severe storms hitting the Midwest. Ours was just an inconvenience and the basement was easy to clean up. We consider ourselves very lucky, again.

Tomorrow I go off to Montana to the Bob Marshal Wilderness to fly fish for a week. We’ll be without power and communications. Perfect conditions for fishing and to hear & see more of the Tail/Tale of Shivas Irons. There are connections between fly fishing and golf, you know. A cast is like a swing and false caste is surely a waggle. And who among us could believe that Shivas Irons wasn’t a proficient fly fisherman?

I’ll bring ye a full report.