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A Note from Erin:
I’m sending warm greetings to you from my breezy front porch, surrounded by the songs of finches, sparrows, doves, and many flowers in bloom, – just now monarda and scabiosa and sunflowers and mullein and more – somehow staying vibrant even in July’s heat. I confess, July is not my favorite time of year. It’s too hot and too bright and our air quality declines and so many things smell bad. Yet even during such times of physical heat and cultural inflammation, the Earth continues to be beautiful and generous. May we do so too.
First – I’d like to share a story that deeply moves me.
Here’s a version of it I posted seven (!) years ago. It’s about Refugia. Here is a favorite quote from one of my shero writers, Kathleen Dean Moore, from that piece: “If destructive forces are building under our lives, then our work in this time and place…is to create refugia of the imagination. Refugia, places where ideas are sheltered and encouraged to grow. Even now, we can create small pockets of flourishing, and we can make ourselves into overhanging rock ledges to protect life so that the full measure of possibility can spread and reseed the world. Doesn’t matter what it is, I tell my students; if it’s generous to life, imagine it into existence. “
This magnificent story from Kathleen Dean Moore’s beautiful book Great Tide Rising has been in my heart, just vibrating and zinging and working on me, since I first read it in 2016. I’ve shared it and the notion of refugia with as many people as I can.
It has helped me to understand the core of my calling. “We can make ourselves into overhanging rock ledges to protect life so that the full measure of possibility can spread and reseed the world.” Honestly, y’all, I weep when I reread that for the thousandth time. I feel it vibrating in my body.
Could we do that? Be that? I’m called try. To protect and shelter possibility during these times. I aim to use all the skills I’ve grown to invite others to do that too.
Over the past 30 years at the center of my life have been committed studies of meditation, especially in the lineages of Lojong and Dzogchen, the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education, Focusing/Embodied Inquiry, Embodied Life work, Community Grief Tending, Embodied Gratitude and Praise Practice, Soul Work, experiential deep ecology and The Work that Reconnects, deep dives into teaching Mary Oliver’s body of work, as well as yoga therapy, tai chi and chi gong, I Ching studies, the 19 Ways to the 5th World, ancestor work, coherence work, systems thinking, bee-centric beekeeping, permaculture gardening, mythopoetics, writing, somatic and soulful anti-oppression and anti-racism work, herbal medicine, seed keeping, and much more. I’m a passionate learner and a synthesizer. This doesn’t even begin to include the ridiculous number of books I am always reading or the classes I’m enrolled in. (Can you picture me sheepishly shrugging?) I can’t seem to help myself.
The way my mind works best is when I, like a bee, visit many different flowers, gather nectar, and do my best to synthesize and essentialize my understandings, and then offer them as honey. I understand things better in relation to other things. I’m a systems thinker. I love to offer the essence, the harvest, the honey of what I’ve gathered to nourish the people I’m honored to work with and to help their unique way of ripening into themselves so they too can experience, become, and create refugia in their own unique ways. Whatever I’m doing, whatever method I’m using, this is underneath it all.
I love this quote from Toko-pa Turner that sums it up nicely.
“Create a holy refuge of your life that others may seek solace there, feeling the strength and dedication in the medicine of your beauty, and upon it rest and be encouraged to their own summoning.”- Toko pa Turner
One could spend a life in such a way. Even during these times. What a beautiful choice.
Ultimately, I’m in all of this work not just for myself, not just to have a good time or to make money and feel better, not just to encourage my students to get what they want and feel better themselves, but to keep re-centering LIFE as what we’re serving with our learning and unlearning practices and journeys. Life of course includes us. But this frame offers a much wider and more satisfying, more generous circle of care and connection than the self-centered self-improvement practices and perspectives typically offered by modern culture.
My deep heart wish: May we create a holy refuge of our lives so others may find solace there so life may thrive – even if those others may be in future generations or members of the more-than-human world. If we’re all (or even just many of us) oriented toward living like this, how beautifully we could support each other’s thriving. Community flourishing is core to how we might survive and even thrive during these weird times on planet Earth. As Robin Wall Kimmerer says, “All flourishing is mutual.” May we remember and root into this perspective.
As I’ve been distilling my learning and teaching over the decades, my core intentions have seemed to distill down to two. (I reserve the right to change this as I keep learning!)
1. To use all I’ve learned to help to ripen mature adults and elders the world so needs.
2.) To create refugia so we can together support the reseeding of both nature and culture.
I love to convene communities as refugia – protected places where life-giving ideas and ways of being can flourish in ourselves, in our communal circles, and in our larger lives. In addition to doing the big work of bringing forth books this next year, I’m offering just a few refugia/learning opportunities. One is Women Embodied, a beautiful 9-month learning/unlearning journey I LOVE to share. Read below to learn more. And if you’re not drawn to that offering, please feel free to scroll down to read the rest.
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