Othila looks like a diamond with legs.  It represents authority, tradition, and responsibility and is associated with concepts like loyalty and patriotism.  It has something to do with religion and values that stand the test of time.  To draw this stone may mean that there are important family events to attend to, perhaps a wedding, a funeral, a holiday, a time when the meaning behind certain traditions is comforting and viewed with new respect.  The month of Othila is November and its moon is the Fog Moon.  It may be a time to review wills or receive an inheritance.  You may seek the advice of an older family member when dealing with a problem.

The healing side of Othila is grief.  You may need to address an issue or event that has brought you grief in the past.  Perhaps you never took the time to grieve.  You need to embrace the loss of something, be it a person, place, season, opportunity, and then move on.  If this does not seem to apply at the moment, you may be able to offer comfort to someone else who is grieving.  Every day we lose part of the world that was familiar to us.  At the end of our lives, we may even end up strangers to ourselves.  There is much to grieve.  It is not a crime to do so.

We had moved around so much when I was growing up, I’d never learned to really grieve.  In time it became easier to say goodbye than to stick around.  Our family traditions gave some structure to my upbringing, but were also prisons at times.  My father, as a preacher, was only allowed to project one side of himself whenever he was in public.  I respected his convictions, but no one had asked me what I wanted.  It wouldn’t matter if they had.  We did what we were told, and that was that.

After getting out of the pool, I took a walk again in the late afternoon, this time heading down to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral.  Although everyone in my family had been Christian, we were Lutherans.  The only indulgence in our churches had been the stain-glassed windows.  I like visiting cathedrals with all of the incense and saints.  This particular one had a museum that I paid a few pesos to get into. 

You can hear the same story so many times you forget what an incredible tale it really is.  Here was God and his son Jesus, side by side on a cloud, the white beard and the brown beard, the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove, descending upon them in a ray of light.  Now there were two saints in chains, kneeling in front of an angel, little children praying to the Virgin. 

In another room was Jesus, riding into a Jerusalem on a donkey.  There he was again, lying dead beneath a sheet, now rising up victoriously, flashing his sacred heart.  These images were imparting principles and powers that are difficult to put into words, love, mercy, suffering, pain, repentance, forgiveness, redemption, transfiguration.  For many years I’d acted as if the Bible meant nothing.  At the time of the pandemic, I’d been profoundly humbled, however, and was willing to become a believer again.  Without a series of miracles, I didn’t stand a chance.  I knew that now and could really only pray for mercy.

From the cathedral I wandered down to the boardwalk, just as the sun was setting on the Gulf of Mexico.  There was an eagle on a pillar, like a giant sun dial, and further down some painted concrete balls.  The sun seemed to be melting into the ocean.  It was still a long way back to Mexico City.