Card of the Day: Nine of Pentacles

Against a background of warm red-orange-yellow horizontal lines, four feathers are arranged in a diamond shape, creating a container for nine golden pentacles. There is stability here, and warmth, and plenty of resources. It’s what every person longs for—safety, comfort and abundance.

The feathers suggest wildness, separated from their original source to provide a sacred container for what is most valuable and precious. I always think of liturgy when I see this card. We are meaning-making creatures, and liturgy gives us a chance to employ this natural tendency of mind to tell a better story, to see our physical space as an altar, to create the reality we long for. We can arrange the elements of our body, speech, mind and environments to invoke and evoke sacredness, to call in what is precious to us.

This is a time when many people do not feel safe—in fact, are not safe. Abundance is a dream, an insult to the reality of not knowing how to pay rent, buy food, provide for loved ones. Where is the comfort in the midst of losing a job? Or having to work overtime in unsafe conditions? Or being separated from loved ones? Or just being afraid? This is all real. We are seeing what happens when an entire socio-political-economic structure is built on accumulating wealth for a few through the exploitation of everyone else, especially Black, Indigenous, People of Color, LGBTQ folks and women. Our country was founded on this.

I am spending my mornings doing liturgy, ritual and creative practice. Invoking the many beings who I long to touch with my mind to offer them safety, health, happiness and ease. Later today, I will do an ill friend’s laundry, teach a meditation class, watch Angela Davis and Naomi Klein’s teach-in via Zoom, and host our nightly online Metta Service at 8pm. Is it enough? Of course not. But today, it’s what I will do.

How are you navigating your inner and outer worlds right now?