🌷 A Spring Love Letter For These Times 🐇

This morning I awoke to the sound of snow geese flying home (Yes, I sleep with the window open because what kind of yankee would I be if I didn’t?).

The sight & sound of their flying made my sleepy self smile and my heart whisper “welcome home.” What an example of communal life at its healthiest. Did you know they honk to encourage each other to keep flying?That they take turns leading so they can share having the burden of leadership (the “V” formation has up to a 30% increase in decreasing drag for the ones behind.) and if someone is too tired to fly, a friend will stay behind with them until they’re ready to move on.

The way home presents itself to us everywhere we look, because home is everywhere.

The holy works along a hidden mycelial-like network, connecting us to each other and everything around us. Our task is to look for it, believe it when we find it and take delight in what we behold.

Sound out of reach? Pollyannaish? Bypassing the current situation in some way?

I’d like you to nudge you to reconsider. I’d like to honk a little encouragement your way.

We know we are amidst a great upheaval. The taproot of “that which is not working” (and it’s a big, long-standing one) is being pulled and the messy debris from it’s upheaval is flying all around us.

Our world, regardless of where you sit on the “political spectrum”, as we know it is changing.

Can you say stressful?

Luckily, our nervous system is biologically driven to pay attention to potential danger and “what isn’t working.” Thank-you-very-much to our ancestors for this beautifully adaptive and unconscious response hard-wired into us that allows us to survive.

We also are endowed with a biologically driven and adaptive response to think of the well being of those around us, to cooperate for survival and to thrive. (This is not part of the popular discussion, but that doesn’t make it any less true.)

We are interdependent.

We are pack animals.

Maybe this time is calling us to remember who we truly are. To remember we thrive TOGETHER. What would happen if we considered we are a global pack? That all children are our children. All elders are our elders.

Life would change in an instant.

What can we do right now?

1. Take Action.

Our nervous system NEEDS to respond. Taking any action, no matter how small, signals to your nervous system you can do something to make life better (and allows your nervous system to move through the stress response). The mistake many of us are making right now is overwhelming the system with information and not allowing time or space to metabolize it all. We were never meant to take in the volume of horrible news at the scale confronting us right now.

Sip the news like your life depended on it, because it does, and then take action.

2. MOVE the body.

Sweat, cry, shake, scream (when & where appropriate…probably not the middle of the grocery store. 😜). Your body knows what to do. When confronted with danger, in our evolutionary past, we fought the danger or ran away from it or hid until it passed and then returned to the pack to shake and feel connected & safe (“co-regulate” is the fancy new term). Or we died and that problem was solved.

3. Focus more on the revolution, not the apocalypse.

Sure, do what you need to do to be prepared for life not proceeding as you’ve always known it. This year we are growing more vegetables and networking more with local farmers. I may even buy a freeze dryer.

Other ideas: Start a collective chicken coop. Learn a practical skill to share. Collaborate and buy in bulk together.

One thing I’ve been trying to practice (and it is a practice) is for every moment I spend thinking about and preparing for things not being so readily available, I try to spend equal or more time on what a better vision of the world could be and try to start making it so. This is not an easy task.

Remember, that while we are hardwired to seek danger, we are also hardwired for connection and we can evolve our thinking & behaving.

Can’t think of anything right away? Start with kindness.

Right now.

For EVERYONE.

No exceptions.

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

― Arundhati Roy

Our task is to get quiet enough to hear the whispers of another world, actively practice looking for it and take whatever small steps we can to make it so. You are doing something by holding a beautiful vision of humans in right relationship with the world around us.

4. Build Community.

Our collective wounds of separation and “not belonging” have resulted in an isolation never experienced before in human history. The “nuclear family” with all of our “technology” has us feeling more alone, more depressed, and more anxious than ever before.

Please don’t let that information make you anxious, there is medicine.

The medicine is CONNECTION.

How to connect?

Anything that builds true connection works.
Recently we sent handwritten cards, letters and love-bomb-gift-boxes to our people afar.
Make a little extra soup, casserole or cookies and bring them to a neighbor. If you don’t know your neighbor, what a great way to introduce yourself.
Join a like-minded group that DOES things for other people.
- Quilters making quilts for premature babies or hospitalized veterans.
- Volunteer at a local hospital to hold addicted-born babies.
- Volunteer at a local shelter to walk the dogs waiting for adoption.
- Start a local casserole or soup club.
- Get together with folks and learn some hands-on skills. (Meet ups are great forums online to find your people locally.)
Pray! Sing! Dance!