Newsletter Articles written by Tera Thomas
Issue 24
Maia’s Prayers
by Tera Thomas
I woke up Sunday at 5am to feed the animals like I always do. I was so tired that morning, sleepwalking my way through the routine, and I gave my cat, Maia, an over-the-counter pain reliever that is toxic to cats instead of her thyroid pill. I knew I’d done it the second the pill went down her throat and, in the way bad accidents seem to make everything move in slow motion, I saw that I would forever be changed by this moment of unconscious action.
The emergency veterinary clinic is an hour away from me and I drove there in that dark hour before dawn feeling so scared, so alone. The vet didn’t hold out much hope as the pill I had given Maia was 2.5 times the lethal dose for a cat. They put her on IV fluids and said we’d have to wait and see.
Maia asked me to relinquish my feelings of guilt, to calm down, and to bring in the forces that could assist her. She suggested that I contact the people and animals who know her and ask them to pray for her. As I was doing this, it occurred to me that it was Maia who wanted me to put a page on the website called the Healing Circle. It’s a page where people can ask others to pray for their animal friends and themselves. It is Maia’s energy that works with the prayers that come to the website, that helps connect those in need with each other. And now she was asking for this assistance for herself.
The love and support began to pour in for Maia and for me. I felt us both wrapped in a cocoon and it gave me the strength to allow all of the emotions to just flow through me. The grief broke me apart; the support put me back together; the fear smacked me down; the love lifted me up. I was the ocean, allowing the waves, the calm, the turbulence, the tides to move through me, all the while feeling rooted in a connection with all who were supporting us with their love and prayers and in the knowing that All is One. This is the way we are meant to be, the way the animals are—open to all feelings and allowing everything to move through us. It is a state of heightened being, a place of magic and power.
This feeling of connection, of being and feeling all, is one that I recognize well. I have felt it many times in my life, most especially at times when a personal tragedy has occurred. I have also felt it when a universal disaster has occurred: after Katrina, the Tsunami, 9/ll. The power of the connection that all of us felt was electric. The world was grieving and loving together and we all knew it. We vowed we would remember the fullness of this connection, the depth of the feeling. Yet, as time passed, the feelings were dulled and though we were changed in some way, we were back in our routines.
How do we end up numbing ourselves again and again? Do we have to keep having tragedies to get us to remember our connection to each other and to the planet, to focus on the love inside and to be willing to share it? Can’t we just start doing that every day?
A few months after Katrina people didn’t want to hear about it anymore and the term “disaster burn out” was coined. Are we so unused to feeling our feelings that we get exhausted when we do feel them? Is it really just draining to feel love and compassion for others? This is a screwed up concept. I want to feel love and compassion for others at all times. I want to feel the highs, the lows, to open myself to embrace all of my emotions no matter how scary or messy I think they are. That is truly being alive, truly participating in life.
Maia came home from the emergency hospital after 3 days in intensive care. As of this writing, I don’t know whether she has permanent kidney damage or whether she will heal. She has gone through this trauma with unbelievable equanimity and grace. But she is always graceful. I would call Maia’s return to me a miracle; she would call it the power of prayer.
Maia says that prayer is the state of being connected to the Earth, to spirit, to our inner wisdom, and to each other. It is the state that many animals live in. Maia doesn’t need to be reminded that we are all connected or to open her heart and share her love every single day because we don’t know how many days we have. Maia lives in the moment and fills each of those moments with all that she is.
I’m so grateful to Maia for asking me to stay present even when it hurt, to call on others for support, and to spend the last few days in a state of prayer. (May I not forget and go back to an old routine.) I don’t know how long Maia will stay in her body. As she says, “we never know that anyway.” I am praying for her full recovery and thanking her for each precious moment she is here. I will hold Maia eternally in my heart, she is my beautiful teacher.
