Nicholas Oak - victory of the people, rooted doorway of prophecy
Ronin Alexander - masterless warrior, defender of humankind
Griffin James - protector of priceless treasure, supplanter of what no longer serves
Each of my children's names has come to us in steady course; each time, once the pair of names has been spoken aloud, it's felt certain that their name has been chosen. Chosen by...us, the parents, I suppose. But in each case, the names have felt beyond my preference. Evasive of prediction. Not just about what I or Robby "liked" or didn't. Each subsequent name was not derived from leftovers of the previous choice but rather emerged independently, clearly, resonantly.
While I feel an interesting distance from each name (though an intimate connection with them as the names of beings I dearly adore), in retrospect, each has felt like a mirror to the lessons that have met me through each pregnancy.
When I was pregnant with Oak, I began to write with a freedom and fervor I had never known. Although writing has been a lifelong passion of mine, it had never felt like something I could do publicly or spontaneously or without much self-censorship. However, in my first pregnancy, I suddenly felt as if a channel had opened in me. Messages and tomes of text assailed my being in waves, often in the middle of the night, so completely and insistently it was all I could do to type the words quickly enough. I began to call these experiences "downloads" because they felt almost as if they came from somewhere else...someone else. The seeming paradox was that, as I opened to this other space, I simultaneously began to find my Voice. I began to more fully honor my personal autonomy. Giving birth to my first child required me to fully rely on myself and trust that I knew how to do this - or, if I didn't, that I would show myself the way. AND I DID. I had scaled a wall around my soul and torn it down. My deeper, truer self was winning. It felt like a transcendence. A victory. A revolution.
During my pregnancy with Ronin, I felt a deep call to and grounding in work that, I began to see clearly, was groundbreaking and countercultural...truly, work with no leaders, few paths, and vague maps. Information and connections flew at me from unexpected directions and I found myself in roles where I had to sustain dedicated work to get a job done (starting a project and seeing it through to fruition is NOT my life's forte!). I also had to step out as a leadership figure. Attending workshops and reading about cooperative businesses; co-leading a counter-rally when Trump was in town to campaign; spearheading new work projects that broke the mold of all that had been done before - all are just a few examples of what showed up in those months like galloping horses with empty saddles. I took the reigns, climbed on, and journeyed. I learned and grew much. I saw I could work with others in ways I hadn't thought myself capable, as an equal and in true collaboration. I realized I could do this because I had identified what I most dearly wanted to defend: spaces for people to feel safe to gather, work together, and flourish in their humanity.
This pregnancy, my third, with the child I now know to call Griffin, shook me to my core. I was busy tending to my two little ones full-time while participating in a dozen community causes in meaningful, time-consuming ways. I was reaching out and going out and speaking out. Our family had also just welcomed another family into our home in a communal living arrangement, which abounded (and abounds) in goodness but brought many new lessons and challenges, most very personal and unexpected to me. I was expanding, and feeling stretched, in a thousand directions. Conceiving this child caused me to collapse back into myself harshly and suddenly. It was a shock to many people and to my system. Certain realities of my life came into sharp focus: where I was not setting healthy boundaries, where I was neglecting to care for my basic needs, where I was overextending my energy, where I was performing out of a sense of duty rather than of desire. My body was TIRED. I withdrew. I reserved. I rested. I went deep.
The world may have seen walls going up, but I felt for the first time in my life an internal release to JUST focus on me. Me, my children, and this baby. My needs, my health, my struggles. It took a lot of digging and supplanting to discover which external or internal voices were keeping me trapped in unhealthy cycles of neglecting my own wisdom. It has taken (and will continue to take) much work to delve to the core of these issues, most rooted firmly in my childhood, that numb me to my intuition and keep my throat closed from telling my truth. It has felt painful. It has felt liberating. Meanwhile, I have come to recognize that I am learning to become a guardian of what's mine (after first separating what IS mine from the rest of what I carry), releasing what does not belong to me. I am beginning to trust that there is treasure in my truth and that my worth doesn't come from carrying around others' weight.
These days, I may look and sound a little scarier, with a sharper beak and keener talons, but it is in the service of what I am here to do. I'm gaining new language. I'm returning to my heart. I'm refocusing on what is mine to do, so that I can do it to the absolute best. So when Griffin's middle name choices narrowed to a few, it didn't take long to see which was his: the name of sovereign rulers, the brother of Christ, and with origins pointing to upheaval that tills the soil for future harvest. Salvation.
How is it that this all feels so much about me and not about me at all? Perhaps in the way that a parent and child, for the child's early life, are not one person and also not two people. They are intrinsically connected and mutually feed from and inform one another. They are separate beings that irrevocably alter the course of one another's life. They are a microcosm of greater truths, always at play and unfolding in our midst, but by which I never cease to be surprised. In so many ways, as a parent, I am just along for the ride. And in many other, important ways, the greatest work I can do is on myself. My children will see. They will watch. They will hopefully not be too scarred by my inadequacies. They will find their own ways. They will live into their names, given or chosen, just as I am still living into mine.
Olivam - olive branch, extension of peace
The Other Side
I heard the soft scamper of four little feet across the wood floor. First my oldest, then my middle child, came voicelessly into our bedroom, climbing up and cuddling close between their parents. The child in my womb tossed and turned, resettling for sleep like his brothers. In the dark, I felt our five bodies arranging themselves against each other, our breath calming into sync, as the clock blinked 2:30am.
Through the open window, sounds of a storm floated to us, melding with the gentle music playing in our room: flute notes in the rainfall, violins strums in the thunder, chimes and bells against the windy backdrop. The temperature dropped by the minute. My mind wandered to earlier in the evening when we had hiked in the unusually warm December dusk. Families and friends walked and ran and biked in all directions. The woods held a certain mystical quality, as if the waning light hung like a veil between this autumnal scene and winter approaching. I felt I would turn at any moment and see someone there from the other side, from another place altogether, telling us what was to come.
We had walked a path through the forest, up the tallest hill, and to a magical night view of bare branches clinging to dark clouds before returning the very way we came, my partner and children and I hand-in-hand-in-hand-in-hand, the baby within me leaping and swimming.
There are moments you suddenly come fully into your body and remember YOU ARE ALIVE. Making love, making adventure, making believe, making way - you feel the thrill of your breath and sensorial sharpness. You feel another's breath against your body and the limits of your physical self pressing against an ethereal edge. Whether or not all mystery is embodied, it is no less marvelous, always simultaneously self-dissolving and self-awakening. It moves among the trees and over papery leaves and in the space between day and night.
It gathers in the place where each member of my family joins, whether we walk or lay side-by-side or far from one another. Our meeting spaces - in a memory, kind word, awe-filled connection, emotional experience, shared lesson, or mutual awareness - show how common and cosmic, this union. It rumbles and flashes, it cleanses and fills, enveloping us like a storm.
As I laid in the soft bed next to the window and my dearest loves, I could not fall back to sleep. I could only lay still, silent and awake.
Spirit
I cannot carry the World's Hurt alone - but, for a moment, I can hold it, and surrender, it and offer it up to all that is beyond me and all of which I am very much a part. I can raise my arms and release what paralyzes me, embrace what empowers me. I can bask in a moment of being alive and awake to the miraculous happening of everything. I can participate in the coming together of what has evolved for aeons to this point AND what is spontaneously emerging from this particular alignment of forces, never before seen, never to be fully understood, never observable or measurable or capturable because, a mere moment later, it is gone.
Two nights ago, I woke in terror as the mechanical screech of a missile...no, a jet...no, just an airplane? jolted me from my sleep. It took me several minutes to calm my racing thoughts, which had, for inexplicable reasons, immediately jumped to running upstairs to grab my oldest child and bring him downstairs to the big bed with the rest of his family to keep him safe. My younger child was still fast asleep next to me. My thoughts raced wildly as I smelled the air floating in from outside. Would nuclear warfare have a certain smell? Would I feel my skin burning first, or would my vision change? I was awake for hours after I finally could believe that my anxiety had seized my awareness in the night.
I was deeply disturbed by my irrational(?) fixation with the fabricated horror. And then, in the same breath, I felt sickeningly, deplorably privileged because I did not actually know what a missile sounded like, and I had never had to so viscerally feel fear for my family's safety. Nevertheless, visions of mass shootings and local murders, disturbing national and global headlines of all kinds - layered with personal fatigue and heavy feelings - brought everything close enough to push me to an edge of terror from which I knew I needed to retreat.
I needed grounding and reminding. I needed to feel the peace of wild things, to touch ancient beings and immortal truths, to open myself to messengers and signs seeking to bring me back to center.
I decided in the darkness that I would go to the forest later that morning with my children.
The drive to Bernheim Forest brought fresh tears at every turn. Dead deer littered the edge of the road; the sight of those majestic, limp bodies tossed aside as cars whizzed by left me aching. Autumn's brilliance was a patchwork quilt of colors covering the rolling hills under morning's gray sky. I choked back sobs at the brilliant show, knowing it was to be brief and would pass as November waned. I cried acknowledging tenacious trees clinging by the roots to rock cliffs, the regal rich green of pines in sturdy rows, the sweet musings of my oldest child from the backseat, the soft and sleepy breathing of my younger child.
We arrived in the forest. My children ran ahead as we began to meander a path in a figure eight around two large, adjacent lakes. I marveled at the water's pristinely still surface, how not one thing seemed able to disturb it, although leaves were falling all around like manna. As twin watery mirrors to the surrounding trees and cloudy atmosphere, I saw in the lakes a rim of light and a central, murky portal to Somewhere Else. Cardinals and blue jays crossed our path, beckoning us forth. I felt myself sinking into that parallel place of attention, lost in the movement of transient color and ancient form and time at a cadence my imagination can barely fathom - a mobius strip of wondrous illuminations of what it can mean to exist, at this very moment, as Human.
Old ones lined our path: Hornbeams, Hollies, Dogwoods, Oaks, Elms. We spoke their names aloud like a prayer litany, Oakie running to each small sign at their roots, begging to know, "What does this one say?" We came to a log of petrified wood more than 350 million years old, and I felt like kneeling to it; Ronin immediately ran his small hands over the bumpy bark, exploring its texture and weight with fingers that formed less than a few, fleeting years ago. We rested our palms side-by-side on it as if it were a relic from some long-gone saint from which we drew essences of holiness and fortitude.
As the day wore on, I began to push the little ones along in a stroller to continue my pilgrimage around the Big Prairie. Above me, regally presiding over the dying grasses and striving saplings for acres and acres, was a sculpture - "Let There Be Light." She raised her arms against the shroud of Fall, amid darkening days, strong and commanding. A pair of crows leapt and danced among her trees, their raucous cries echoing across the fields and into the hills. I something stirring within me as fresh tears brimmed, and I knew I would circle back for a longer visit.
Many times, the movement of the Spirit feels impossible to put into words. Even calling it "Spirit" suggests I am referring to something immaterial and ethereal, otherworldly or ephemeral. But when I say Spirit, I mean this: the clear intuition I had before I began a walk I knew would be too long to a destination I knew would not fulfill its desired intention. I pushed my children to a far end of the forest and we all arrived exhausted, unable to enjoy its beauty. Spirit had told me - or the part of myself I might call Spirit, which is nothing I imagine as separate from any other part of me, had somehow Known - that this was not the ideal path.
I also mean this when I invoke Spirit: that things somehow, in spite of our unwillingness to see the movement, still come to us in infinitely inspiring and mysterious ways we can use. Although there is surely some universal order or cosmic reasonability that could illumine the traceries and trajectories leading to and from any given Moment, I find myself suspended in time with all the waymarks and wisdom right there, inexplicably encapsulated in my small sphere of awareness.
My children forgave my foolish ignorance; they drifted to sleep as I made the long trek back from whence we came; and I made my way back to the Goddess of Light. I parked my children at the foot of the hill and made my own, solitary way to pay homage to her.
I bowed to her, then to the expanse before her, sensing within myself a certain power to speak into Being Something from Nothing.
In that brief, liminal space, I brought the blood and tears of death and destruction the world over; the pains and sufferings of each One longing for sustenance, security, and an abiding sense of belonging; the terrors of every person who ponders the legacy of violence, bigotry, and planetary instability we bequest to our children; the oppressive noise and incessant clamor of distraction from what Life can fully Be; the cry of Earth in distress and the cosmic hymn of forces striving to unite, to create, to birth.
I cannot carry the World's Hurt alone - but, for a moment, I can hold it, and surrender, it and offer it up to all that is beyond me and all of which I am very much a part. I can raise my arms and release what paralyzes me, embrace what empowers me. I can bask in a moment of being alive and awake to the miraculous happening of everything. I can participate in the coming together of what has evolved for aeons to this point AND what is spontaneously emerging from this particular alignment of forces, never before seen, never to be fully understood, never observable or measurable or capturable because, a mere moment later, it is gone.
I looked up. Above me, a hawk slowly circled - one, two, three times - before sailing silently into the trees and out of sight.
This is how the trees feel their eternality, how a human feels as if she could fly.
Spirit.
Light and Dark, Leaf and Wing, Rising and Falling, Power and Surrender, All That Is and All That May Be,
Pray for Us.
I walked back down the hill to my children, and finished our journey back to where we began.
EPILOGUE
As we crossed the bridge, a family of five geese floated without a sound under our feet.
I thought of my husband, myself, my two children, and the small being in my womb.
We headed home again.
I slept long and hard that night after many, many more tears.
Today, this morning, I drove in the rain through Cherokee Park.
Suddenly, at a stop sign, I looked left and started as I found my eyes meeting the fixed gaze of a young buck. He stood still in the drizzle, staring at me for a few seconds of intensity, then slowly sauntered back into the woods, and was gone.
All that was left was the rapid beating of my heart,
my heavy breathing,
my astonished laugh,
my eyes, closing in gratitude, hanging on to what I know really happened.
Always Space
That impulse to come together - within ourselves, to one another, and in grandiose efforts as an Earth Collective - is what sustains and continues us, what has and holds us, what grants us the grace to be more than we ever thought possible.
What is the space between?
The entelechy of particle-waves in relationship with each other is to seek out more connections, to move toward one another. At the same time, the universe is, right now, expanding - and more, more, more space[time] emerges.
With so much suffering on our little, lonely planet, I can feel suffocated by the myth that there is a right way to alleviate pain and grow love. I can trap myself with the trick of believing I am never doing or being enough. I can imagine my perceived failure, although a miniscule effort, is a crux of all that is wrong. I can feel the increasing expanse of the cold, infinite universe like the distance between who I am and whatever version of me would be worthy and of service.
But in the dark, as I breathe deeply and feel my lungs filling, I sense something internally swirling and collecting. I marvel at the mix of things both cosmically created in the crucible of stars - carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen - and the Earth-hewn oxygen fuelling my element-rich blood that come together in mystery to give rise to ME.
Me, a strange and unique and nearly-impossible happening. This, a moment, an experience, an awareness, in which, when I begin to think on it, even thought and language break down and fall away. We, a collective beyond my imagination, comprised of humans and animals and plants and fungi and elements and other life forms that may or may not be hiding in plain sight - all arising alongside every other thing.
What is coming together at this very small level of the universe?
We are unfathomably bigger and more complex than the bewitching strata of quantum fodder, yet infinitesimally smaller and less overwhelming than the clusters of galaxies in just our region of All That Is. It is a place to be. It is where I am. Insofar as I am striving to do as little harm and as much good as possible in any given moment, I am participating appropriately.
Sometimes, that looks like sitting still in silence while the Sun is at the opposite side of my planet, and pondering, and breathing, and paying attention, simply noticing, with my limited and liminal faculties, what is arising.
What I know for sure is that there is an ache at the center that compels us forth. There's a striving for something else. There's an existential wanderlust that keeps us looking. When we can recognize this common longing and feel it fully, without repressing or numbing or belittling or distracting from it, we can remain curious about what truly nourishes and heals us.
What heals is always love, an impulse to come together.
That impulse to come together - within ourselves, to one another, and in grandiose efforts as an Earth Collective - is what sustains and continues us, what has and holds us, what grants us the grace to be more than we ever thought possible.
In that coming-together, the expanse of a growing universe looks less like a bleak omen and more like an inviting, omnipresent horizon, for the expansion occurs not at some distant edge we will never know - the expansion is EVERYWHERE.
It tells us: There is always enough space-time. There is always room for whatever I am, whatever we are, whatever is becoming. There is limitless potential. There is always something new in our midst to discover, to explore, to celebrate...and to keep us coming together, aligning the parts of things that long to meet.
The remnants of old stars swirl and gather to give birth to new light. The raw material for innovation and inspiration is at our fingertips as the cosmic ancestry we embody, the Earthly legacy we inherit, and the human manifestation we are ever collaboratively creating.
Who are you? Who am I?
Who are we, and what are we making together?
Breathe. Let your life answer.
"If there were no internal propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level — indeed in the molecule itself — it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up, with us, in hominized form...Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being."
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Look!
Today, I fell off a chair flat on my tailbone and into sharp shelving, bruising my spine up and down. I was hurrying too much, worrying too much. I was frustrated with my limitations (short stature, impatience, exhaustion, chronic forgetfulness as a result...). I was reaching too high on an unstable pedestal, not intentional about or mindful of my grounding. Laying on the floor of my closet after the fall, I breathed through the tears of hurt and humility, the fears of injury, the shock of being planted firmly by my mistake.
My kids were seatbelt-ed in the car in the driveway; I'd just run inside to grab something really quick before our next stop. We'd ran four errands by 9:30am. I was tired and stressed from the demand that those couple hours of activity had required and, simultaneously, the fact that I *needed* to be out of my house and doing something to maintain my sanity. But the surprise of the physical pain, and the imperative to get to my children, was enough to clear some of the mental buzz. After a few minutes, which felt eternal, I was able to recover myself enough to hobble back out to the car and get us to our next destination: Mama's Hip.
The best friends in the world tell you you're doing a good job, that you are seen and loved, and remind you you're still in the trenches. They show respect to your children and treat them like real, whole people, even at a difficult time. They acknowledge your hurt and still stay honest about their own struggles. They hold wide, open space for the suffering world AND for small-big explosions of wonder, simultaneously. They can see how everything, all the effort of a day, can be made worth it in a moment of joyful song when everyone sings together, focused on the light and beauty of being alive. And they know how important it is to turn to you and tell about it.
My people are in the trenches all. day. every. day. They do not shy away from tension or tenderness. They make their work through laughter and tears. They help to pull me back up again. They brush me off and give me a hug. They say, "I'm right here with you." They bow to me in a million ways that center me in what's possible. They are waystations and fellow wanderers. They pay attention, weep and smile, and despite everything, keep declaring of the heart of the matter, "Look!" ❤️
I Am
Stand at the precipice of that chasm you ache to close quickly and sharply the same way you have closed it ten thousand times.
Just this once, look out across the void.
Do not be afraid...
or do be afraid, and hold your gaze anyway.
You are about to claim your magic.
old habits and tired stories
shouldn'ts and don'ts
fears and anxieties
rejections and losses
punishments and judgements
practiced answers and painful silences,
Do not be afraid...
or do be afraid, and hold your gaze anyway.
You are about to claim your magic.
Parts of the Whole
I am giving what I can.
What I have nourished to the best of my ability, I can release with trust and gratitude.
What I am tending may be small, even imperceptible, but requires my energy and deserves my focus.
"Mommy's eye. Ronin's ear. Mommy's nose. Ronin's mouth." We play our new game while he nurses just as he has since birth, reclining near my heart, meeting my gaze in effortless, intimate trust.
Suddenly, gently, he pulls away and, unperturbed but clear, signs "more." He's thirsty. After he has just "nursed." I know what is happening, as it happened when Ronin was the wee one growing within me and Oak was the child weaning: my body's wisdom is redirecting resources to the new life emerging.
A sip from a cup, and Ronin is satisfied. But I can't quench the pang of mourning the loss of this precious relationship brings.
Pregnancy nausea and fear for the planet have been my constant companions today. I am learning to trust the same truths in both my immediate, viscerally physical reality of tending and creating children and in my movement through the wider world:
I am giving what I can.
What I have nourished to the best of my ability, I can release with trust and gratitude.
What I am tending may be small, even imperceptible, but requires my energy and deserves my focus.
It is okay to let things move on.
It is okay to stay right where I am.
It is okay to believe that slow work is worthy.
It is okay to treasure what is good.
It is okay to despair at what isn't.
It is okay to be as needed, and I can decide what is needed.
I sometimes wonder what I'm doing, having another child in tumultuous and unpredictable times, as so much dangles from a precipice. But then I watch my silly-giggly children slow-dance-embrace and pull each other across the floor in uproarious fun at just being who and as they are. I feel a swell of nausea, both uncomfortable and reassuring, telling my body and soul that Life prevails. I feel tears well as I sit next to my beloved sister and friend, in my comfortable home, surrounded in rain and light.
I have had to surrender what I thought was required of me just to stay alive. What I have known in that void is the rapturous disintegration of the non-essential. I've sat in that liminal space, being not one person, not two people, looking in the eyes of eternity. This is where I can return in any moment I choose, remembering that nothing is ever lost, that hope is a practice of survival, that my power is my authentic participation in the unfolding of everything.
Eyes. Ears. Nose.
Mine. Yours.
Parts. Inputs.
To the Whole.
What we truly thirst for is quenchable not by milk or water, but by the secure, loving trust that what we are doing together, if it is done truly together with least harm, will be enough. That our energy in any given direction will eventually expire. But that something new, in mystery, is always coming into being.
This is our dance, tipsy and terrifying and transformational. Turn, turn, turn. Hold on. Release. Let your heart spill over. Say it's enough. Stay. Surrender. Sing.
An Open Letter to My Fellow White Folks
Racism is alive in us. This is why it's essential to admit and claim it: when we can look it in the eye, we can acknowledge that IT IS NOT US. It is a function. We are the operator. We can reprogram. We can retrain our minds and hearts. We can work to liberate ourselves. We can get more free.
Time for some real talk, Good White Folks.
Here's the overview: White folks, we are racist. It is dangerous to not acknowledge this. However, once we do, there
is a real chance for healing, for internal reconciliation, and to make ourselves actually useful in the fight against white supremacy.
I can almost guarantee that you felt a repulsion at the thought that “we are racist.” That's because, even though you and I are racist by birthright, I would guess that you, like I, long NOT to be. We want to be good people. We want to think we're evolved and enlightened and compassionate. We want to think that we're better than our forebears or the white people marching in droves with torches. We want to think we were raised to be good people and are being good people in the world.
Please hear me: I am not saying you are not good. I am not saying you aren't trying to do the right thing. I am not saying you are intentionally trying to be racist.
I'm just stating the fact that racism is alive in you.
Since before we were born, we've been swimming in a white supremacist milieu, unconsciously internalizing a racist blueprint of the world and our understanding of self. Wittingly or not, we have been participating in and perpetuating systems of oppression that simultaneously benefit us and keep us trapped since before we were conscious. We can barely recognize this because we have been looking at everything through the lens of white supremacy since before we can remember.
Is this hard for you to believe? What I have found is that, if we tell the *absolute truth* about what comes up in our conscious and unconscious at any given moment, we can begin to more clearly see and examine the functions of white privilege and white supremacy operating in and through us.
Let me give you one example. It's an uncomfortable and painful example to talk about because it's not something we want to be true about us. Nevertheless, I have yet to meet a white person who can outrightly deny that this is their experience. Here it is:
Most (if not all) white people have had experiences of intrusive, bigoted thoughts. These intrusive thoughts may come frequently or infrequently, noticeably or imperceptibly, in a variety of contexts, but they come. They come as the fleeting, unwelcome thought, “Of course it was a black person.” They come as the fleeting assumption about someone based on skin tone, even though you are a “woke” white person. As the mental substitution of a nasty, racist word (one you would NEVER say aloud) in place of a normal descriptor. As qualifications of someone (only non-white people) by a word not relevant to the conversation. As a fleeting fear when appearances conform with racist images purported by media. As split-second decisions made based on information assumed about a person of color before you. As a thoughtless microaggression, tone policing, or racist platitude.
These intrusive, bigoted thoughts also come as the paranoia of being extra nice to the person of color in the room to prove you're a “safe” white person. As the adamant defense of yourself as an “ally.” As the broadstroke but “positive” comments about an entire people. As your paralyzing fear that keeps you silent in the face of an overt racist.
Who among us can claim that none of the above have ever happened, nor continue to happen, within us? If any of the above examples have been true for you, it doesn't make you irredeemable or evil. It makes you a human in white skin.
This is just ONE example of the ways white supremacy works within us. There are countless ways we can learn to notice and there are countless ways we have likely not yet recognized its movement through us.
Racism is alive in us. This is why it's essential to admit and claim it: when we can look it in the eye, we can acknowledge that IT IS NOT US. It is a function. We are the operator. We can reprogram. We can retrain our minds and hearts. We can work to liberate ourselves. We can get more free.
Until a few days ago, most of us in Louisville weren't aware that a particular statue in Cherokee Triangle glorified a Confederate slave owner. I cannot tell you how many times I drove by and didn't know. I didn't stop to really look. I didn't read the plaque. I simply curved around it and continued on my way. There are racist edifaces in our psyche and spirit as seemingly obvious as a huge, bronze man on a horse that have managed to blend into our mental-spiritual scenery, but that redirect our actions every day. Stopping to take a good look and being honest about what we see, within and around us, is a first step.
That's when we can begin to deconstruct the racism alive in us. We can become more conscious of when it's ME talking or when it's the WHITE SUPREMACY talking, and how the latter has harmed the former. We can better acknowledge our privilege at work and humble ourselves. We can begin to participate in the work for justice as a better accomplice to people of color…because we can more clearly see that we aren't “helping others,” but rather we are saving ourselves, thus saving humanity.
The truth is, this is the hard, slow, painful, but essential work of a lifetime. We may never finish our efforts to examine, heal, and recover our racism before we die. But every bit of honest extrication uproots this legacy for our children. It cultivates the possibility for them to separate themselves and keep themselves separated from the claws of white supremacy. It lays a more truthful foundation for solidarity. It begins to plant seeds of freedom.
White people, we may not have created the white supremacist world in which we live, but we belong to it. It's ours. Let's claim it so we can change it. Let's take responsibility so we can eradicate oppression. Let's be honest about who we are so that we can better support and accompany one another on the journey. Let's foster collective liberation so that every last one of us can become who we really are, who we want to be, in freedom.
Dawn
me to wake up with the sun,
to open my eyes
when exhaustion from a night
of screams threatens to
keep my soul closed to the day.
I rise resentful,
sad, apathetic, afraid.
But their eyes meet mine,
brown mirrors of potential:
joy at the closeness;
delight at whispered sharings;
curiosity;
acceptance of what is now;
trust in Earth's turning.
Their hearts, hands reach, pull me up
through the clouds of doubt
toward their dawning promise.
New Moon in Leo
Trust the seed-spark that this new moon in Leo beckons from within you.
The call of this kindling has been forged by universal elements for aeons,
germinated in the substance of your spirit,
preserved as a treasure
for this particular alchemical awakening through you.
Square your shoulders.
Fix your gaze by looking deeply into your own eyes.
Claim courageously, wholeheartedly, the ember you will embody in this space-time.
Feel the inner flame writhing and expanding, burning and brightening. It is yours. It is you. Inhale deeply to fan the fire.
Let a full-throated soul-roar echo your announcement to the universe:
"NOW."
🔥
Things won't always be this way. My children won't forever be so small and jubilant and exhausting and dependent and adorable and clingy and close and pure and free. I won't always spend time oscillating between bone-deep struggle and cosmic euphoria with them. They won't take my face in their hands or surprise me with tickles or tell me about how the world is a garden bed or look at me like I'm magic. They won't beg to be held and only fall asleep at my side. Their precious voices will deepen, the distance between us will grow, and their turning toward me will become less and less frequent. So, I'm leaning into this tiring summer of sticky delight. The goodness is syrupy sweet, like overripe blackberries falling from vines; the intimacy is as intense as the air's humidity; the brightness lingers into evening's promise for rest. But there is reprieve in the fireflies blinking at twilight, the spontaneous swell of energy that inspires a longing to chase them. There is freshness in every newly-noticed thing. There is the knowledge that these long, luminous days are but a season to relish, to hold and savor in hands covered with dirt and juice from abundant fruit, to treasure for their warmth and weight and wonder, while they last.
Sparks
When the sacred terror of death's finality seizes my consciousness, I keenly feel my blood, my skull, my tight chest.
I open the eyes of my eyes again, each time with a little less fear, and less certainty, of what there may be to discover.
Down
Down, under the night, are stirrings everywhere.
Migrants shift through hot sands ingrained as a barren inner and outer landscape: empty promise, vessel to another land flowing, in which they float next to Death.
Babes tuck one another into cardboard boxes, nibbling stolen food, giggling at stories under the stars' canopy and resiliently surviving against the odds of aeons.
Hidden lovers trace each other's bodies beneath the cover of darkness, sacred and secret in their surrender to the transcendent alchemy of togetherness, each point of contact redefining all former notions of what is possible in Union.
Simple Lessons for Equilibrium
Let go of the idea of balance.
Instead, step into the possibility of paying attention.
Let go of the idea of balance.
Instead, step into the possibility of paying attention.
Breathe. Listen to your body.
Pause. Notice who else is with you.
Trust what you need. Tend to yourself. Tell others what you need. Receive it gratefully.
Ask others what they need. Trust their needs. Tend to them. Give with gratitude.
Listen to someone you have never heard before.
Trust their truth.
Let it reshape your life.
Together, create something life-giving.
Take the next right step.
Forget tallying up the score. Forget shoulds and shames. Forget the lie that you could not be enough. Forget ambition.
Look back with gratitude and surrender.
Look forward with gratitude and surrender.
Look around with gratitude and surrender.
Triduum
Solitude: foundational fodder for an intentional life, but the cave I have come to fear to enter. Anxiety meets me there, existential dread, and terror for my children, all children. But I came back to my breath, again and again, and the beating of my heart. Everything alive is breathing. Everything alive is beating. Everything dead is to be held with the awareness that something new, somewhere, will be born from it. I'm connected to all of it. I'm dying and living. I can be reborn.
The Norway Spruce canopied me and the child at my chest on the grounds of Yew Dell Gardens. Morning light filtered through the spiny branches yielding young cones resembling pink berries. I touched and tasted the sap, more floral and fragrant than sweet. I breathed the air, not yet heavy with the day's heat, but warm and waking. I walked across the soft bed of fallen needles, a nest of comfort, under the shadows of ancient ones whispering their secrets of longevity.
I read later that this ancient tree belongs to the species of the oldest single living tree and was the first gymnosperm genome to be sequenced by scientists. Its evergreen limbs form protective coating on their spiky leaves that protects chlorophyll - alchemical component that transforms light into nourishment - and retains precious water - essential life element. The variation is great between individuals but each tree features th
e hardy characteristics that keep its boundaries to outside harshness impermeable. External storms inform the plant's growth, touch the bark and the roots, but do not penetrate the energetic center. Thus, the trees continue to flourish, aeons old.
Illness wore down our whole family, forcing an abbreviated quarantine. Quarantine: forty days, period of transformation. While we were only sick for a week, the time began simultaneously with a sabbatical from social media. The last twelve days of Lent invited the deep healing of body and spirit, painful and purging and profound. The upper room of our home became the Hermitage.
Solitude: foundational fodder for an intentional life, but the cave I have come to fear to enter. Anxiety meets me there, existential dread, and terror for my children, all children. But I came back to my breath, again and again, and the beating of my heart. Everything alive is breathing. Everything alive is beating. Everything dead is to be held with the awareness that something new, somewhere, will be born from it. I'm connected to all of it. I'm dying and living. I can be reborn.
Relationship: as Merton wrote, what saves us all in the end. I reached out to friends who are also
suffering. I spent time with my people. I loved on my little ones without mental interruption. I listened to the news and wept as I have been unable to for weeks because the information came to me in stories, one at a time. I felt the singeing sorrow wrapping us in fire and I shared about the pain with people in a circle of chairs. I felt the bomb's reverberation without my eyes on a screen. I have no answers. I have awareness I can practice. I have hands to extend, hands to put to work, hands to hold.
Alignment: what happens when you remember your own inner wisdom and hook it to your feet. Feeling returned to the edges of my energetic appendages numbed by overconsumption and digital distraction. My heart ached again, my mind settled again, my body spoke up again, my spirit alighted again. I trusted I was all I could be, and so was enough. I did what I could do and paid attention to my life.
The next week, Holy Week, I felt intoxicatingly alive. Sensation returned like the sharp relief the morning after a terrible migraine, when suddenly you can open your eyes again. My children were playing again. The sun soothed us, the breeze refreshed us, and music brought us back to life. As we sat down to a hearty dinner on the porch under an umbrella's shade, I asked my oldest son about his favorite part of the day. Without hesitation, he responded, "Right now, eating this dinner out here with everybody."
The next night, he ritually received a foot-washing. He washed my feet and his brother's in return. He knew it was a way to teach us how to love. But first, curiously, he watched others enact the old, symbolic practice. He tenderly expressed, "I want to have my feet washed, but I feel nervous." Then, he accepted the reassurance of his mother's hand, his young friend Justice's kindness, and sat with his legs dangling above the ceremonial bowl. He smiled as his small, wet feet were dried in a soft towel.
He was eager to bend and pour the water over my feet. I breathed in, letting the gentleness of his inexpert fingers touch my heart, letting water trickle down my toes and from my eyes, letting the painful and powerful tenderness of sacrifice and resurrection wash me anew. When he finished, he hugged me close. "I love you, Mom. Let's do that again!" Later, after washing the feet of his baby brother, he spontaneously embraced him with passion. They held one another without self-consciousness. "Mmm. I love you, Ronin."
To share meals and wash each other's feet;
to choose personal presence and engaged action over information consumption and paralysis;
to stand under silent pines and sit in circles of people listening;
to trust the photosynthesis of my soul and balanced permeability;
to protect my spirit by preferring community and following my own creative movement;
to make space for healing, however long it takes;
to surrender the idea that anyone else knows better how I may best serve the world:
these are the daily fast I choose.
After early morning storms, we rose on Easter Sunday to a clear sky, stepping into water and light at play under our feet.
