Wander 6: Build with Her

Today is our new moon wander. This weekend it is also Father’s Day—my husband’s first, my dad’s first as a grandfather. It’s also the Summer Solstice—the day with the most light—a day for me to tune in to what is happening with this celestial body we live on as she sits in council with the Sun for a long, light-filled conversation this year. I can imagine she might be sharing that some of her children were freed from slavery 150 years ago, and sharing passionately that many of her children are joining together to protest for her Black children’s continued liberation. I can imagine her sharing angrily about many of her human children’s treatment of her, their mother, and each other.

There is a lot to hold. My feeble mind searches for ways to hold them—separately at first, so that my braver heart can do its work as weaver to understand them as a whole. I have been seeing a lot of spiders recently, whose webs stretch from one tree to another, in a seemingly impossible way. I am reminded to trust in the invisible web that holds us together, and to offer gratitude for those who take the first leaps to stretch a string from a safe place to somewhere they may only know by feel, not at all yet by sight.

I have been having difficulty sinking into a wander space these last two weeks. My body has been overwhelmed at times with processing the nature of being white right now—the stored ancestral memories of my body, understanding my privileged space anew, and discerning how I can best show up each day for racial justice for Black lives, for freedom for all our lives. It has also been overwhelmed with processing the commitment to a cross country move and all that is entailed. It is again, at times too much to hold. Standing in the place of presence—grieving what has been—and sinking my teeth and tongue around what is—tasting the sweet summer fruits of this time. Knowing too well they will be over soon and delighting nervously in the passionate hope of what is to come.

The counselor I have been seeing since a little after Robin’s birth specializes in grief work. When we talk, I am often poked to do the work around the grief of whatever issue I am bringing to the table—past or present. I find sinking into grief is becoming an antidote to my perfectionism, as it is impossible to do grief perfectly, and it requires surrender of control and presence with what IS. And what a gift it is to be present when I can let go into it—I need wanders more than ever—I need things that let me know I am here. We are together. We can hold this. And I need to sink into the experiences of discomfort with the same presence instead of dis-embodiment, dis-association. It is a very humbling time.

The invitation this week is, of course, what is helping me commit to being in my body, in my life. When I find my solving thoughts kidnapping me, my resourceful childhood builder has been saving me. She builds fairy houses, makes tributes and altars. So this long post has a short ask—would you create with Her?

I have found nature responding when I do this—by offering beautiful pieces of herself to go into this recreation—or to be witnessed, often in her cycle of death and rebirth as one in the same. The hollowed speckled egg from which no living birth emerged, but who instead houses the tiniest snail…that we may labor for one vision, that may in fact need to incubate another. Or the older snail, who has dared or been asked to be shell-less for the moment—in total vulnerability so she might know what it is to be free.

For isn’t that what freedom is? To not fear death? To not fear loss, but to embrace it as a friend, a teacher, as part of life? And renew our commitment to our lives mattering as a result.

Tis a gift to be simple / 'Tis a gift to be free / 'Tis a gift to come down where you out to be / and when we find ourselves in the place just right / it will be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained / To bow and to bend / we shant be ashamed / To turn, turn, will be our delight / 'Til by turning, turning we come round right

(Shaker Song)