W@nder
Life is wild. Let’s journey together.
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Exposure Therapy & Taking Back Our Agency
This is an astrology-related audio note with transcript.
Through that exposure therapy, Pluto causes us to have to see what we don’t see, to have to accept it, or Scorpio, I should say, causes us to have to see what we don’t see, to have to accept it. And with Venus retrograde, that means we’re even trying to understand, ‘How can I make this process beautiful? How can I make this (when it moves into Libra) pleasurable even in the midst of difficulty?’... ’How do I reform my relationships?’”
The Gift of Being Wrong
For years, I kept learning that I didn’t know what I thought I knew about the Spirit, about the world, about people, about the systems that shape how we live together.
It was when I met the sacred Spirit of life in places and people that I was taught were wrong that I truly realized how wrong I’d been about others, about the world, about God, even about myself.
And it opened wide the door to freedom.
Notes from A Season That Demands Attention
Many people are finding themselves between a rock and a hard place, facing decisions and processes that are asking, “Who are we really?” “What do we really want and how bad do we want it?”
Below are a couple of offerings that I’ve found to be supportive for myself or those I sit with during this time that demands we pay attention, go deep, and find an ability to move with confidence and power.
Even A Tree Will Bend
If there is a constant wind going in one direction, even a tree will bend.
I’m thinking of how people who I experience as having the capacity to be expansive end up with unyielding doctrines and violent stances that seek to eradicate the other. I’m thinking of how many times now, when I talk to a person, I can see the strong influence of a particular algorithm.
We Are Of Equal Size
Being in this position of looking down can make one feel powerful. Sometimes larger than life. And it can give you a vast view.
Then, I realize, I look just as tiny to them as they do to me. Because of distance, we are both tiny in each other's eyes.
May Our Healing Be What Spreads.
This past November, I wrote in my journal:
May my wounds heal. And may my healing be what spreads and not the wound.
Immediately after I thought, “I'm tired of healing.” And I wondered why that is.
Healing is a natural process that is part of the body… we don’t make it happen. We support it.
Garden.
Lately, I’ve felt a pull not only to dream, but to create those things that I’m dreaming of. To take my dreams more seriously.
And, what has followed is… anxiety. Fear. The border between fantasy and manifestation is a risky one. Cost seems inevitable. Failure is always possible. And with both of those comes the possibility of the loss of the dream entirely…
Grieving Dreams Like Elephants
It seems grief doesn’t leave for good. But even acknowledgement that death is real, death has come, needs a process and ritual (and rest). Then, we need practices for transmuting the sorrow, hopelessness, and sometimes guilt into movement and life-making (with rest).
I’ve Got a Treasure Hidden in Me.
One thing I've been processing lately is how deeply I have held onto some understanding that I would be rewarded for what I perceived to be my "righteousness." When I was young, this was expressed as being the “good Christian girl” that was focused on God in a way that even the adults around me marveled at… I’ve recognized something flawed in this “quid pro quo” understanding, but have struggled to think differently…
Ain’t Gon’ Study War No More
I'm thinking about that old spiritual that says, "I'm gonna lay down my burdens, down by the river side... I ain't gon study war no more." I have carried this song in my heart and in my body for a long time and now it feels like it is creating something new while, oddly, pulling me back to the beginning again.
HOLD: Spiritual Annoyance & Breath work
I am reminded as I’m typing this, that at the world endings and world beginnings that we find ourselves in, many frameworks and expectations fall apart and many repetitive “failures” commence. The breath, I think, is key to continuing to show up to the call of the Spirit of Life amid the vulnerability the unknown and the learning of new ways requires.
Play (in times of Urgency): Some Resources
Amid the urgency brought by awareness of the many crises of the world, the death and destruction brought by systems and arms of oppression, and the pressing pulse that begs us to eek out new ways of living together, it has been necessary for me to call upon all parts of myself. Play is something that allows me to exercise new parts of myself and find freedom from being the producer-consumer I am pressured to be.
Crevasses: Untitled & Incomplete
…I became exasperated searching for plants who were not as intertwined with other plants and who I’d captured with clean enough edges to isolate it and allow it to jut into the white border like that one green leaf. And most of all, I didn’t have the patience for it not to be ordered.
The Ground is Alive and Cannot Be Tamed.
I am often challenging myself to see abundant life and wildness in places where there first appears to be none. If it is difficult to notice the layers of life in a small tree, it is often even more difficult to notice the life in the ground itself, much less to capture it. Maybe that is one of its strengths. It is difficult to contain or anticipate its movements.
Someone to Hold My Hand
What I know is a couple of months ago I felt it very distinctly - someone holding me in place, putting their hand on mine - and it was warm and just tangible enough to know that it was someone.
Those unexpected moment of supportive presence are gifts. So too are the moments I’ve experienced of intentionally calling a specific person to mind in prayer, meditation, or imagination and letting their image or energy offer support. Below is a practice that brings both those experiences together.
An Unexpected Pilgrimage
I wrote the first poem in this series, in March 2022. By the end of April, I'd quit my 9-5 and left Chicago where I was living at the time. The past few years had seen countless doctor's visits, 3 minor surgeries, 2 emergency room visits, months of severe insomnia, digestive issues, and hair loss. Even though I am a mystic and a Spiritual Director, it took a year and many different places to “get” what my body and spirit were telling me.