I don’t know about you, but these last six years have really tested my capacity, my courage, and my sense of what is important – where my body, being & attention are most needed.
Like all inquiries, I find it’s important to allow myself to be in the inquiry without needing to get it right; to allow for experimentation & discovery.
I do not claim to have arrived at An Answer.
As I watch violence increase. As I sense a numbing in many of us. As I witness people turning towards artificial sources that are being sold to us as ‘intelligence’. As I listen to people share about fear & disassociation & hopelessness. As I see so many people trying to ‘keep going’, to stay motivated, productive, engaged in the ways they have in the past – even as they age, as our world changes, as we cognitively know this world is not the same one we were born into, or the world of our youth…
With all this…I question more each day where my time attention & energy are most needed, and I am more called to:
- Local connections
- Feeding who needs to be fed
- Being in-person with other humans, body-to-body
- Protecting children
- Supporting those who are protecting children
- Protecting Earth
- Supporting those who are protecting Earth
There are many ways this can look, day to day. I am continuing to find my ways of doing this – beyond the easy access of re-posting on the socials. I feel the way systems are designed to keep us disconnected & tired enough to make it seem impossible to engage in these ways; designed to make us feel like what’s happening on my phone is all of life.
And it takes real effort to resist that pull. I do not succeed every day.
What saves me are human connections.
What saves me is touching real life.
What saves me is nature: the birds waking up, frog-song on my morning walk, stars in a cold clear sky, my daughter running in to tell me she just saw an owl, narcissus blooming, a neighbor telling me about a coyote sighting, leaving the last persimmons to the birds, watching a tree branch break when one-too-many turkey vultures land there, wild stormy ocean time, weeding in the garden…
I know there are many areas that call for our time & attention – and, in the midst of so much going on in the world, remembering & strengthening our relationship with Land, Earth & Place is one of our most important practices right now.
This is the essence of Return to Source, the Mt Shasta women’s retreat I hold every year. Not a time for a bunch of new frameworks & ‘teachings’, but a remembering of who you are & how deeply you belong on this earth.
Drinking directly from clear mountain springs, moving with the rhythms of light & dark, touching real dirt, getting to know trees, being held by meadows bursting with wildflowers, jumping in snowmelt rivers, gathering with songs & stories around a fire at night….
Being human. Together.
I have been making pilgrimages & bringing people to this land near Mt Shasta for 20 years.
This land & the people who tend it have been some of my greatest teachers around staying committed to what is important. Every year I continue to learn more through these relationships.
My relationship with this land is one of the most profound relationships of my life, and has shaped me in deeper ways than I can express.
If this calls to you too, I would love to have you join us.
