a note from Erin
I have a practice of leaning on wise words – poems, old books, new articles, quality essays – all the time. One of the great pleasures of stepping away from social media is returning to long reading. But this feels especially important now. After morning meditation, when I’m sipping my coffee on the front porch with the good company of my kitty, housefinches, goldfinches, chickadees, sparrows, and the occasional mourning dove, I reach for words to help me make sense of the world – and importantly, to remember how I want to live. Oh yeah, that is how I want to show up…
I recently reread this piece by Dr. E. for the hundredth time and it righted me all over again. Here’s a tiny excerpt.
“One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times.
The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires … causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both — are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.”
There is so much to remember during this time of great forgetting. So much is upside down. It takes a whole lot of courage to be present to the world right now; to not simply numb out and check out. We need a lot of reminders, a lot of kindness, a lot of support. I hope you’re finding that in abundance.
I always remind myself: We get good at what we practice. It’s helpful to practice remembering what matters to us, remembering who we’d like to be and how we’d like to show up. I find this remembrance is helped immensely by creating structure to help the remembering, by immersing ourselves in wise practices, authentic community, orienting poetry and myths, and the slowing down that allows us to listen to those deeper voices whispering underneath the tumult.
I notice sometimes, when we’re left to our own devices without structure and support, we fall into practicing all kinds of things that are less than life-giving: accidentally practicing hours of doomscrolling, or buying things we don’t need, or my personal favorite, panicking in overwhelm about everything that’s wrong.
What if instead you practiced soulful repetition of remembering what really matters to you? Soulful repetition of coming home to your body and the vastness of the present moment? Soulful repitition of befriending your own body, mind, and life? What if you practiced soulful repetition of orienting to the unique medicine you carry and courageously bring it forth? What if you had structure to support you in practicing intentionally?
I keep re-reading the essay called Crazy in David Whyte’s Consolations II. Here’s an excerpt:
Craziness, unmediated by good rituals, good disciplines, good routines, or a good social life, always just stays in the realm of the crazy. We call it crazy because it is discombobulating, discomforting, and subversive to our surface plans, but crazy is always asking us to transform it into brilliant. What seems eccentric and off-kilter inside us is simply looking for good disciplines, good art, and good new forms of expression to find its place in the world.
This is just one of the reasons I love the weekly rhythm of Women Embodied. It gives us structure and support so that what might seem crazy in us can reveal its innate brilliance. The times can make us feel so off kilter. (Am I right?) But what if structured practice and supportive community could help reveal the wisdom inside of that off-kilterness?
Women Embodied is a once-a-year offering I love with my whole heart. It’s an intimate 9-month circle for women+ who want to step off the treadmill of fixing themselves and instead come home to their embodied being. This circle is for those who are not only interested in personal healing and embodiment, but who want to make a difference and give back to this beautiful, suffering world. It is for those who long to become the grounded, wise women the world needs. This is a nourishing circle where you can relax into your real self and enjoy authentic, supportive connection with other women. We make our way through the seasons, deepening together as life goes on.
Here’s a glimpse of what we practice:
Remembering what matters
finding Refuge in presence
Revisioning a beautiful future
Returning to your deep self
Restoring your body & soul
Resourcing inner seeds
Resisting domination & harm
Revealing wisdom & insight
Resting in enoughness
I believe the world desperately needs awakened, embodied humans who are willing to feel what’s here to be felt and see what’s here to be seen, willing to courageously know what we know, willing to envision a life-giving world for all, and to live accordingly. People who are willing to be present and embodied and live lives dedicated to the more beautiful world we know is possible. It takes courage to slow down and land in this body, this moment, this place. It takes time and support to align our lives with our values and to keep showing up as we intend to, rather than just being blown by the wild winds of these times. To become the kinds of human beings I believe the world needs at this time, we need supportive community and potent teachings. We need quality reminders and regular practice in an over-culture that constantly entices us to ever more distracted, hurried, fearful, and disembodied lives. We need to speak and be heard, to listen to others in their wisdom and their struggles, and to know we’re not alone as we fumble along and find our way. We can help each other flourish. In Women Embodied, we do.
The application window for Women Embodied is open. 12 women, 9 months of soulful repetition and deep support. And you can take $100 off when you register during the month of July. The people who have already committed are stellar human beings who I’m so excited to deepen with over the next year. Would you like to join the circle? Read all about the course here.
Whether you join me or not, I find it so useful to set an intention:
What will you practice into being over the next year?
Thanks for holding up the lantern of soul during shadowy times like these. May we keep throwing sparks, sending up flares, building the signal fires to help each other remember.
I hope you’re finding many moments of beauty to sustain you and nourish your heart amidst the flurry of devastating news.
I’m sending blessings to you, to your beloveds, to your nearby trees and plants and wild ones and waters and all that you love.
As I wrote last fall and still feel today:
May we be fierce in our commitment to use even the most challenging circumstances as ways to deepen our understanding and compassion. May we keep finding creative ways to serve the collective thriving of living beings and this gorgeous, generous Earth. If we engage life as an ongoing opportunity to wake up from the trance of self-absorption and hyper-individualism, how can we go wrong?
Today, I’m on my way to Mount Shasta to pick up our Boy Wonder from camp and I’m so excited to meet that sacred land and to hug my boy!
From my heart,
Erin
p.s. My friend Margo has been in close and regular contact with five families in Gaza, organizing donations to go directly to supporting these starving, suffering people. If you’re so moved, consider making a donation to her campaign on their behalf. We’re still donating to these 4/4 starred charities listed below as well. May the horrific violence end, in Gaza and everywhere around the world it is happening. Thank you, Margo, and all who are organizing to help others in unimaginable circumstances.
- World Central Kitchen
- Doctors Without Borders
- Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund
- Middle East Children’s Alliance
- A Word from E.B. White, 1940
- A New World Awaits from Sherri Mitchell
- Joanna Macy, In Memoriam On Being
- Joanna Macy, In Memoriam, The WTR Network
- Girl You Better Try To Have Fun
- This Ever Fresh Aliveness
- Kneeling Before a Locked Door
- Consolations II by David Whyte
- Is A River Alive
- Healing through the Dark Emotions
- Freedom and anything else written by Jaiya John
- The Leaf & The Cloud
- And I’m grateful to be ongoingly listening to Martín Prechtel.
If you have any good reads to recommend, I’d love to know.
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