Author: Raine Shakti

Raine Shakti believes in living her life cairn by cairn and in helping others learn to do the same. Her day job is in the training and communications field and her best professional experiences are when she is able to empower people. She has spent the last few years reclaiming her life and her inner warrior. Part of this journey was becoming an ordained priestess with the Fellowship of Isis. Her Matron deities are Nephthys who has helped her become a true virgin woman, the Morrigan who has taught her what it means to be sovereign, and Yemaya who has taught her the strength in having a loving heart.

Pandora’s Bliss

Pandora’s name inspires paranoia about the dangers of curiosity and how poking your nose where it doesn’t belong can unwittingly unleash all sorts of demons. At least that’s the lesson we all learned from Greek mythology about the first woman on earth whose curiosity lead her to open a secret box and unleash all sorts of horrors on the people of earth.

Unfortunately, we all have a tendency to forget a few things about the myth such as that at the very bottom of Pandora’s box was hope. That’s a lesson we can all hold tight to in these turbulent times for as long as we keep our hope alive things will get better. The other lesson we forget is that Pandora’s very name means all gifted as she was endowed with many talents including beauty and the the gift of music.

Pandora and her musical gift inspired the Music Genome Project to name their internet site Pandora. Pandora is truly a magickal mystery tour through the land of music. By plugging in your favorite song, you can create your very own Internet music channel that plays music similar to your favorites. The algorithms and computer science behind the site are way above my head, but at a very basic level plug in the song you like and you’ll get a lot more songs like it.

So what does Pandora have to do with my sixty days of bliss? Well, like may couples hubby and I don’t always have time to sit down and talk about the things that really matter. I gravitate to my laptop and he gravitates to the TV and even though we’re in the same room, we could be on different planets as much as we interact. Hopefully, Pandora is going to help me change that.

The other night, I was upstairs and hubby was downstairs and he came up and realized I was listening to some really good Blues. He sat down and we started having a conversation about life, about the kids, about music, and about a lot of other stuff. Some of it mattered and some of it didn’t, but the bottom line was that Pandora helped open up a box of conversation and that really mattered. I even changed the station from the Blues I learned to love in Memphis to a classic rock station we both enjoyed.

It was so relaxing to close the lid on the laptop and pay attention to what my husband was really saying without the the distraction of the TV, the latest thriller I was reading, or the ever present work. I’m hoping that now that we’ve opened Pandora’s blissful box, we’ll remember to open it a little more often and rejoice in the music and conversation.

Luke’s Bliss

So what exactly is bliss? Even though it’s what I sincerely wished for, I’m not exactly sure what it is and how it applies to me. Is it a continuous state? Is it a journey? What exactly is it? The textbook definition of bliss, according to Dictionary.com, is “supreme happiness; utter joy or contentment. Hmm that definitely sounds like something I want, but how will I know when I’ve gotten it? What exactly does it look like? 

I finally realized that bliss stares me in the face every day when I walk in the door. It’s the look of utter adoration, happiness, and joy that I see on my dog Luke’s face when I get home. It doesn’t matter how many things I’ve screwed up or who else in the world is mad at me, Luke is always absolutely, positively happy to see me and he has been from the day we met.

We bought our first house two years ago and the primary reason that I wanted a house was so that I could have a dog. I’ve always loved dogs and have never thought life is complete without one. We had two awesome dogs in the past, but after our last dog died, we didn’t get another one because we were moving into a rental house in the Chicago suburbs and we knew we wouldn’t be able to have a dog. I didn’t realize how much I missed a dog’s furry and unconditional love until we didn’t have one.

Owning a house had never been on my list of priorities as to me it was just one more thing to tie me down, but then I realized that life had changed and if I wanted the dog, I had to have the house. From that moment on, I worked diligently to clean up our credit and save money so that we could get a house…and a dog. I poured over PetFinder.com to find the perfect pet. I tried to entice my husband and kids to look with me, but they were smarter than I was and knew that I was only going to break my heart if if found the perfect dog, but couldn’t bring him/her home because we didn’t yet have a home of our own.

When we finally closed on our first house, my very first order of business was to get a dog, so despite the boxes that still filled the house and the POD in the driveway, the weekend after we moved in, I was at Orphans of the Storm, an awesome no-kill shelter in Deerfield, IL searching for the perfect dog. I’d searched online and found a few that I liked, but when I met them in person there wasn’t that click that told me I had met the perfect dog. Then I saw Luke and took him into the play yard. It was love at first site. While the other dogs had been more interested in being out of their kennel and playing in the snow than in interacting with me, Luke was different. He ran and played and reveled in his freedom, but every few minutes he’d race back to me and look up at me with those big brown eyes as if to say, “You’re still here, won’t you be my mamma?” 

Talking to the folks at the kennel, I learned that Luke had had a hard life. At three years old, he’d spent most of his life in the shelter and had been adopted out twice only to be returned. I’m not sure exactly why someone would have returned this adorably precious dog, but I was more than willing to take a chance on a dog who despite having spent most of his life searching for his pack, still greeted me with such love and enthusiasm.

I’d promised hubby that I wouldn’t bring a dog home without getting his opinion, so it was with a heavy heart that I had to say goodbye to Luke that day and leave him in the kennel. I’m sure he thought I was just another of the long string of people who’d come to visit and left him there. The next day, I hustled John out of bed and up to the kennel and the look on Luke’s face when he saw that I’d come back was one of joy. We took him out to run in the kennel and now he ran and played and ran back to both of us as if he knew we were meant to be his parents. John was as smitten as I was and we signed the adoption paperwork and Luke became a member of our pack. 

We’ll never know for sure exactly why the two families who adopted Luke returned him to the shelter and although my heart breaks at the thought of my precious Luke spending three years waiting for me to bring him home, I’m forever grateful to the folks who chose not to make him a member of their pack, because it means he’s part of mine. I feel sorry for the people who will never know exactly how much love can be packed into a 60 pound dog who launches himself into my arms like a furry cannonball every time I return home and overwhelms me with the knowledge of exactly how much I matter to him. That knowledge alone is a very blissful thought.