Life Cards in my life

I grew up in Carnarvon, a small town in the Karoo, in a home where my parents loved lovely words of poetry and classical music. My mother can still, at age 84, recite long poems and often when we are driving somewhere she would see something that moves her, and out of the blue she would recite Kipling, Shakespeare or NP van Wyk Louw so that your toes would curl with enjoyment. With mothersmilk we were fed the knowledge that words are sacred, and tools, like Van Wyk Louw’s “beiteltjie” with which you can bisect profound truths. With a true word, the sacred manifests in a way that you can feel is the real thing.

Since my childhood, nature has been the place where I could understand myself, where I could process the strange world and where the landscape felt like a beautiful long poem. Here, the words of great poets came to life in a beautiful Karoobossie, the opera resounded in the Bokmakierie’s song for its mate and the plains always told me stories that could enchant me for hours.

When I left home to study drama in Stellenbosch, it was with this precious knowledge of the sacredness of words in my pocket that I embarked on my discovery of the world and stumbled upon Tarot cards. The beauty of the pictures left me dizzy with enjoyment, sometimes the words inspired me, but it bothered me that the cards could give you an indication of where you are in life and where you were headed. I believe that that which you need in life will come to you when you are ready to assimilate it and to apply it to your life, and to go look for it before you are ready to understand it doesn’t help much, because you understand it in your head, but you don’t feel it in your heart yet.

A memory from my childhood, deeply etched, is where both my parents, each in their own time, became still before the Bible and “Uit die Beek”, a diary they read in addition to a bible verse as an elixer for the day. Throughout my life I’ve searched for something I could read in addition to the Bible, something which could also guide my day.

And I’ve finally found it in Michael and Penny Misplon’s Life Cards. The ancient truths of the words on these cards resonate inside me like a bass drum and I could ruminate it for days after. I specifically remember this one card that beautifully calmed my thoughts when I struggled to accept something my nephew, a young man, reckless in his youth, did. My first reaction was to tell him how stupid he is and how he would have to change his ways. On the day that I wanted to call him to tell him off, I took out of the deck of Life Cards the card that said that you can only fully walk your own path when you can allow others to walk theirs, and to make their own mistakes. Right there I was struck dumb and needless to say, I never made that call, because I realised that I was here today because of “mistakes” I made that taught me what not to do. With these cards I could understand why it was so important to finish something you started, because the completion of your task frees you to begin new things. Unfinished cycles have a “dead energy” and it confuses your thoughts because it causes an imbalance in your life. I’ve experienced this many times and when I’m stuck deep in the mud of unfinished business, I go read the card that speaks of  ”Completing cycles of action”. Then I go back on my tracks, and I finish what’s unfinished.

Michael and Penny have been doing wonderful things to help people find the link with which everything on earth and the universe is connected for years, and through the years this couple have, with a sentence or two, guided my ways and life. If you have a desire for daily engagement with words of truth, do yourself a favour and order a pack of Life Cards. With the pressures of fast, modern life, which, if we were honest with ourselves, is entirely unmanageable for the average person, where we’ve become hungry to talk with one another, because most people only “communicate” electronically, these cards play an important role around a space where you can become still to come to your senses. The place where you can remember about the place where the truth lies in simplicity.

Call Penny at 044 873 0251 to order.