Just at the beginning of January my husband’s mother died suddenly. (It was a situation where she didn’t feel well, went to the hospital, and was dead a few hours later.) As one does, the household dropped everything and figured out how to get from the western edge of Europe to the southeastern United States with heavy storms forecast on both sides of the Atlantic.
Sure enough, we got across the Atlantic with no problem, only to run into massive airport delays. Incoming flights were being diverted, stranding 1000s of people at the last minute. Our flight, coming up from Raleigh-Durham, still showed as incoming but delayed six hours.
We parked ourselves at a restaurant and had a good meal while talking about non-travel things. We needed to regain the energy the cross-ocean flight had drained out of us. Restored and refreshed, we shifted into magick mode. Physically we could do nothing, but how could we work with the natural forces to assist in the final flight of our journey? As my husband talked with his siblings, I closed my eyes, turned inward, and listened.
Snow was falling, but it was the wind that was knocking things around, and the later it got the more ice would be building up.
I had no words, but opened my eyes and picked up the salt shaker. Pouring a small mound out onto a clear space on the table, I set the shaker aside and composed myself. With a quick mental motion, I cast a circle around the table, and instantly the noise level dropped. Casually, I began tracing a spiral into the salt as I contemplated how storms often swirled and flowed, ebbed in energy, and moved like a graceful dance. There was energy there to let a plane land safely, and then depart, moving within the storm’s energy and not fighting it.
I had no sense of time, but knew when to stop. When I did, I casually swept the salt into my glass of water, stirred it, and then sprinkled some over the both of us, thanking the powers and beings who chose to assist in this matter.
Our plane arrived two hours earlier than predicted. The change of crew and cleaning was handled in record time, as was the loading, and we were on our way within 30 minutes. While we experienced some turbulence, it was far less than expected, and we arrived at our destination safely.
My pre-sleep meditations included a great deal of thanks for the assistance received and a promise of libations and offerings when I returned home again.