July Stew
Musings, themes, music, books, and podcasts that have been touching my heart.
July was a whirlwind of festivals, heat, friends, laughter, clarity, and hard lessons. In June I vowed to lean into surrender, and in July this promise to myself was tested. It’s so beautiful that when we start immersing ourselves back into the natural world, we observe how much it mirrors back our internal landscape. The heat this month definitely reflected back to me the intensity of an old life melting away. It showed me, like a mirage in the desert, a glimmering glimpse of where I could be headed, and the inferno that will take place in my soul if I refuse to evolve the way I am being asked.
The beginning weeks of July I found myself with some of my closest friends and daughters at a new festival in Michigan, Earthcraft skill share. It was held near Kalamazoo at a beautiful piece of property called Tillers. The atmosphere brought me to tears many times during my stay. This was a complete replica of what living in a village and being in community could be like. At any point in walking through the main gathering space there was fire and people working on their chosen craft. Animal processing, weaving, fermenting, archery, kids running around with stick swords and playing in the creek. All under the watchful eye of a few curious cows. I processed a goat for the village dinner and danced with my friends and our children under a full moon. Everything about this intimate gathering felt “right”. As I was sitting listening to music the night before we left, I spoke this out loud to one of my friends Michelle, “this is how humans are meant to be living.”
I am so exhausted with the nuclear family and feminist concept of “women can work as hard as men.” I don’t want to. I want to share the responsibilities of life and child rearing with a community. I want work to be sacred again. I want to stand in my communities’ rites of passage and mirror to others their strengths and gifts. I want to be held in grief and hold others in theirs. I was to be the strong one when I can but also have a soft-landing place when I’m feeling weak. I think this is what we’re all longing for so deeply. This is reason so many of us are sick, depressed, and seeking. We were never meant to traverse life alone. It’s not natural, this hyper independence we’ve been conditioned to believe we’re supposed to live in, and then when we can’t we think there’s something wrong with us. This is absolutely an intentional construct of the colonial/capitalistic system. Keep us so busy and distracted, we don’t have time to look up and notice how absolutely unnatural the lives we are living are. We are pack animals; a village is where we belong.
EarthCraft Skill Share Website
I’m not sure on the how yet. But the village, an actual village, is one of the next steps in my work and journey.
I was also deeply blessed in being able to attend Divine Pine gathering this year with my dear friend Katelyn. We danced and took some classes. Interacted with vendors and met some truly lovely people. I had the weekend away from my girls, which meant I had time for lingering and dreaming, and in this solitude opened the doorway for one of the most powerful messages I’ve received since How to be Human. (A program I wrote 3 years ago.)
Sitting in a cacao ceremony at divine pine, I was overcome with a wave of extreme emotion. Tears streaming, I closed my eyes and tried to excavate through the place this emotional response was coming from. It didn’t take long to say out loud to Katelyn “American indigenous spirituality is so intact, where is our European spirituality.” This was it; this was where the emotion was coming from. I was at a festival where almost every kind of indigenous ancestral spirituality was being represented, besides European. The longing, the aching in my chest was intense.
Now don’t get me wrong, I understand the nuance here. Europeans are the colonizers yes, but it’s also important to understand that we were once colonized, and our indigenous beliefs and stories were stripped from us. These two facts can exist at once, and it is my deepest belief that in order for us to find our way back to right relationship with the earth and each other, we have to find our way back to our beginning. When the European peoples lived in earth honoring ways. To understand this, we just have to look farther back. The Roman invasion of the British Isles decimated the Celtic tribes that lived there. They were stripped of their stories, their myths, their druids, their gods, the spiritual foothold that made them who they were as a people. The grief of this still exist in the bones of the decedents, I feel this grief every day.
The traumatized become the traumatizers.
Katelyn and I vowed together in our camp that night that we would dream into an answer for this longing. For this gap. Europeans who find themselves on turtle island must have a foothold into their indigenous spirituality in order to fully heal. And just because these traditions are buried does not mean they are lost. We have amazing teachers, and something is in the works we can’t wait to share with you.
If you are interested in this work, I am beginning a book club in September to read and discuss Manda Scotts “Boudica”. A book series that changed my life and perspective of what it means to be indigenous to the British Isles and the rich earth-based spirituality that existed there. In her words. “This is who we once were, this is who we could be again.” Email me randie@ethosyoga.net if you’d like to join.
Books, podcast, and songs that carried me through July.
This book series takes place in Arthurian times, 5oo years after the Roman invasion. I am re-reading it as the 3rd book of the series comes out in December. This series takes you on a journey through the time period where the old ways were being challenged by Christianity. If you’re interested in European earth honoring spirituality, and the onset of the Christian church, this is a great read.
The accidental gods podcast by Manda Scott is brilliant. It merges ancestral connection and spirituality with the climate and social crisis’s we are facing as a modern people. “This is the podcast where we believe a different way forward is still possible.”
Seth Bernards music has been lighting me up. All of his work is worth a listen.
May August be sweet dear friends, thank you for being here.