Wander 13: Gathering & Imagining

New Moons are when gardeners often plant seeds—it allows the plants to understand the day and night cycle more clearly. Much of the last few weeks I’ve felt like I had a grey cloud hovering over my forehead, with furrowed birth, and a depressed child lurking behind every door. I’ve felt enraged and helpless on a personal and community level. I’ve also experienced moments—usually in the company of others—of being deep in my heart, walking through fears with a resolved willingness to go through places in myself and partnership that I have been previously unable to go. I am often bound up in this deep notion—that though I work hard for change—it is fundamentally not possible.

As I write this, I have the sense of walking through a hallway—it feels a bit haunted at first, a hotel or dormitory where several people live. The beings who come to look out of the doors are little children, frightened and reluctant to come out, of bounding with a desperate sense of urgency to get out of this room and on with it. The me that is walking down the hall is twofold—I am at once a bold and loving child, hand in hand with a powerful protective woman (Mary, or Artemis come to mind). She and this child are communicating with those they meet, inviting the children who have long used the door for protection, to come out of that room, and walk with them down the hall. We are all unsure if we can all get along. We are unsure what is at the end of this rather dark, at once sparse and overgrown, hall. But we ask for faith that it does not go on endlessly, that we can imagine its transformation.

And this is what I am seeding as we grow from this past New Moon: envisioning alternate endings to old stories. Imagining new possibilities. My partner Andy said recently: “We’ve tried everything we know, we might as well try something we don’t know.” So this is my ask of this time. What is one place in your life where you would like to imagine a different possibility—behavior, experience. I am not talking about controlling a hoped-for outcome, I am talking about a new way of showing up, one where the feeling sense is large, present, and willing.

My faith is that this is how we will imagine something new—with all the parts of ourselves online. Inevitably it will be awkward, maybe even painful at first. A newborn fawn is always awkward as she finds her footing. Many baby humans struggle in their new, out-of-womb environment for a time.

The idea that the Divine speaks to us through our imaginations was first introduced to me by my francophile mother quoting Joan of Arc. Questioned during her trial for heresy, for claiming to have visions from God, the inquisitor asked “You say God speaks to you, but it’s only your imagination.” She responds “How else would God speak to me if not through my imagination.”

This ask to wander is twofold then. Could we wander in a way to gather to hidden and lost pieces of ourselves? And with them, could we imagine a different unfolding, a different way of being for some tumultuous process manifesting in our world right now—personally or collectively?

Here is the suggestion. As you go outside (or wherever you may be), cross your threshold with intention of your wander. Anchor your search in your body from within your chest or lower in your body. Connect with your Resourceful Ones. Walk, sit, or move, with the intention to invite the council of yourself to the table. Perhaps there will be a rock or two, a stick, a leaf that wishes to hold the energy of a piece of yourself. You need not know what they all are. Trust who presents themselves, trust your own imagination. Gather them in council. And hear what they are asking for. Perhaps then it will become a little clearer on who to begin reimagining new possibilities.