: : the contagion of curated cultures of care
~ The hand connected to the heart of the one and only, Ben Morea.
Photo taken by Reuvain Bacal.
Hello dear ones in my midst and further afield~
{This note is coming to you it 2 parts. Be sure not to miss the 2nd with gifts and offerings}
Writing this newsletter has not come easily for me. Months in the making, and in fact, it wasn’t until last week that I received the button (or one of the) on the bulk of this life chapter that was the permission slip that this little inner world needed.
To be a yogi and to meet this moment on this planet is not the easiest endeavor in nowtimes and yet, one thing i do know about myself is that I am loyal (sometimes to a fault) and being loyal with loving this life business is apparently one of the things I am here for. Which can mean moving through grief and anger and some very big feels.
And so I will speak hopefully softly enough and yet sternly enough to name the truths that I experience without flinching or receding. I am also naming these things without having any hard and fast solutions, but rather in the interest of (just as I teach yoga) all of us finding our own answers from something very deep within. I am not saying these things to create fear or anxiety, but rather in the interest of generating truthful conversations (and in fact we are organizing a few that you can join- our first is with the gorgeous glaciologist, Aleah Sommers!)- that they might contribute to some plotting and tinkering in and towards contagious curated cultures of care. Not to mention, I think we can do this in a way that simultaneously has a lot of FUN and D E E P body contentment baked in. But always together. That is the invitation, incidentally, of grandmother medicine. Some of you will recall the newsletter I sent last winter about such things. Please feel free to find and read again at the newsreel.
Yes there is a lot of overwhelm, but to take it in dribs and drabs and teeny beany bits at a time- and to do it together- makes much more possible, as we know.
And so in the coming months I am turning to expert friends of mine that know far more than I about particular topics, to share and to lean into things together, should you like to join. I am also learning from eldership that is close to home.
So back to grandma…
I’ve been swimming in the residue of the mass exodus we just experienced of so many wisdom keepers and wisdom peddlers on planet earthball, the last of which left me pretty speechless for quite a while. The historical trajectory of this nation can keep us all hovering in half dissociative relating a lot of the time and that is no fault of our own. It was a brilliant adaptation at some critical point in the survival string that is our ancestry. But at some point, once we’ve done the work and seen the truth of it, we feel compelled to (however sloppily) remedy that weightless dance. We are quick to seek elders of other cultures and reach far beyond or around the next corner for all the shiniest of the lot, but here at home we have some of the wisest that ever there were. Today, and many days, I want to turn our attention to them…
~ Dolly Parton, Wendell Berry, Gloria Steinem, Annie Dillard, Yayoi Kusama, Ben Morea (whose hand you see above), and on Oct 1, last year, Jane Goodall ~
I would be writing for a lifetime if I were to go into great detail about 2 things: 1- the passage of these last two years and 2- the influence that these greats in our midst have had on me along with another great elder- my grandmother (deceased 12 years ago).
For the former, I may devote a whole book, or as my friend Janet just described after an insightful experience, place in a box tied beautifully with string and high upon a shelf. We shall see.
But for now I will give stage to number 2- to these elders and also ride the coattails of the newsletter I sent last winter about grandmother and grandfather archetypes. The values these phenomenable forces held and the ways they chose to revolve around what they held dear, can be a compass for us in times of unrivaled challenge.
Humanity is nearing, and in fact may have already landed upon the event horizon of 3 gigantic issues:
Man-made global warming, ai infiltration, and world war 3 (adversarial forces- be they war abroad, detention centers, racism, sexism, or one party against another).
Any of these on their own is a force to be reckoned with but the fact that they are all 3 converging simultaneously is unprecedented -and in fact, un-presidented. I will talk more about the fatherless nation we find ourselves in at a later time, but to say a bit:
Grandmother/grandfather energy, archetype and medicine is a functioning and complimentary piece for father and mother energetics. In the over-culture, we are living a moment of a fatherless nation and a motherless land. We have seen what it is not to have deep presence and protection for the most vulnerable. Of what it is not to have the lands protected and in fact a roll-back of legislation that held safe what is most sacred. In the ways that the macro can provide for us a sliver of insight into at least some aspect of the micro, we can see that many of us are struggling inside ourselves or interpersonally with being deeply present and find ourselves plugged into some device (father/masculine/presence), and going for hours without attunement to the land that is the body, the soils of the flesh (mother/feminine/embodiment).
Interestingly and somewhat surprisingly perhaps, the antidote to that lack can often be attendance to gm/ gf. Without attending to the eldership within and with-out, endeavors to fill the mother/ father woundology fall short, become isolated and are ultimately insufficient in the integration of the whole. No amount of IFS work on your inner protectors will save you if you sit on a cushion or with your therapist, find equanimity and then walk outside and get bonked over the head. No amount of regulating inside of the comfort of a studio or on an app will make a hill of beans of difference if something in the culture puts you into fight or flight some 30 minutes after. Dont get me wrong, these practices are beautiful and serve a purpose AND without a certain amount of truth telling on one level, and an attendance to consciously curating and cultivating a kindness culture, on another- and both in tandem with said practice- it all falls flat and perpetuates the systems of entitlement, disparity, and haves/ have nots.
Transparently, in these last 2 years, I have been in a season of grief (more on this in the book/box). The fog finally began to clear this summer but my micro has mirrored the macro in ways I cant begin to say at the moment but that have not been pleasant. I know this is the story also for many of you.
I have been looking around me with genuine confusion- trying to understand why we aren’t all talking about what is flailing and falling (I must say, in the last months I have been having increased numbers of conversations doing just that). Again, I understand that it is all overwhelming in this moment, but also again- little by little, and t o g e t h e r …. Last month was suicide awareness month and it feels we might all benefit from looking into the trajectory of this civilization and where we might be contributing to our own slow-motion demise.
For example, how it is that we are .1 degree celsius away from the 1.5 degree shift that is irreversible in terms of global warming? Here are some staggering numbers - The upper middle class contributes 34% of the global carbon emissions and the middle class 43%. Together that is 77%. Give or take. We’re talking planes, automobiles, physical goods, diets and services (think supply chain and all things ‘fast’), and the sneaky one- investments like 401k’s, mutual funds, and real estate portfolios that flow directly into carbon intensive industries like fossil fuels, heavy manufacturing, and industrial real estate. We demand legislation and yes, that is important, but where might we be dissociating from the fact that demand fuels industry?
I’ve heard folks say that we will wait for the technology to deal with the mess, but that feels incredibly irresponsible and in reality is ultimately not effective- unless you want to rebuild a synthetic world. When I started researching what that tech looked like and why we hadn’t imposed a standstill yesterday, I read all about these gigantic hoovers that suck carbon out of the air and shove it underground. I also read about how disastrous and toxic that is for the ground and how it takes more energy just to run the thing than they are eliminating. If there is one thing that I know well from healing various health ailments, and working alongside patients as a health advocate, it is that assisting nature and body processes to do what they do best, as they do it, is far more powerful than any other approach. Yes, a jolt of modern medicine when needed but preventative (the kind of medicine my dad practiced often) and amplification of what is straight-up miraculous, is far more effective. If we get out of our own way.
Three things here- speed and ignorance and lack of love. If you need to rush through because life has you moving at breakneck speeds, you are less likely to find and cultivate the more harmonious approach.. The second and 3rd- knowledge & love... when I teach Anatomy as Anchor, or spend my own time dorking down about this body, I fall so deeply in love- not with me as a person but with the design of such a marvel.
The same thing happens with nature. Every little detail brings a tear. And when we practice with that information and weave it into our cells… we cant help but all fall in love with this untouchable expression called life.
And so, there might just be some things to “do.” —>
Intentional slowing of selfing and deepening of attention to miracle-made minutia are your ticket to ride, I promise… if in fact, we want to examine and do an about-face away from this pattern we’re living out that is so adhered to a history of colonization and barbarism from times gone by.
I am going to double click on the 3 colliding forces I mentioned above in separate letters, but what I will say is something about grief- moving into it and not away, has a creative forcefield the likes of which we can never know until we drop in. And our inherited dissociative ways keep us clear of its grasp but also away from its nourishing gravity. But this~ it needs accompaniment. And culture. Especially if it is hitched to original fractures and attachment wounds (or ancestral ones) which is where much of our practices (or triggered truamas) have left us~ Dropped us off right at the door of the biggest mac momma/daddy doozy of them all.
Back to grandma~
I am happy to see such gorgeous land projects and grief rituals and deep therapeutic modalities, and if that is your calling, by all means, keep on, but at the same time, knowing that this moment needs cultural care and weavers of webs, we can act encouragingly if there is an elder in your midst, or even a younger one that carries that medicine, or a practice that weaves such dispositions through us all. They are often the unsung, lesser knowns. Although, many have widening voices, root children that they are. There are also some ways to know if that voice has integrity, and ways of fostering that knowing.
I can tell you that for myself, I knew instantly when I took a class with a teacher that was out of alignment- sometimes if was decades later that we found out. For some odd reason, I couldn’t bring myself to read the The Wild Edge of Sorrow and I tried for 2 semesters to attend Naropa University but felt the origins of one who abused his power so dramatically that I could not continue. I dont doubt that there is wisdom to be gleaned from any number of these places or people and there is undoubtedly a net positive to their contribution but for one that is sensitized.. it was impossible…. until I began to talk about it. And that doesn’t mean that I won’t revisit either, but it is worth noting that my body knew there was some transgression going unnamed. And naming and reparation are everything.
There are a few ways of coming to this antenna-like awareness- undoubtedly my own trauma and those of my ancestors as well as the inherited gifts of those that came before me. There is also a lot I have missed or gotten wrong but the foreseeing has been vast. I am not alone in possessing these deeply instinctual ways. The one thing that I believe has allowed me to sniff a genocide years and miles before it has taken place and know that its dehumanizing effects and actual investment in, would lay the groundwork for allowing dehumanization in the form of icey agents scouring our lands, the rounding up of wild horses, and the obliteration of sacred lands…. the prophetic dreams that have tried to tell me things ahead of time and answered questions my conscious mind could not have come close to articulating… all this I believe came about due to those traumas/gifts but also from something else worth noting:
A somatic practice synthesized in Philadelphia that I’ve been engaging now for over 25 years.
It is a way of weaving nature- remembering that we are nature- in our selves, our souls and our cells, each and every one. It attends to the fascial webs. Which is a direct mirror of the web of intelligence of mycelium, of cultures that care, and of all of nature herself. Thanks to the pause of the pandemic, I have a steady stream of recordings of these nature-remembering practices that I’d love to share, and so share I will (also below). There are many such ways, but this might be one, should you like.
I am not here to judge or tell anyone how to travel or what to do with their money and in fact, I understand the benefits of travel to broaden our horizons and as a gift for those that have spent their years giving relentlessly and that come to a place of exhaustion and need a soul level reset. I know how beneficial it is to be among people and culture that is so different from our own. And that in itself is a practice of gm/gf scope. But I do encourage us to start talking about that 77%. About the ways we can reflect on how to collapse the destructive aspects of patriarchal acquisition and little by little bit by bit, rebuild. It can be easy to point to a politician or a group and there are instances when accountability is all too necessary, but what also is our part here at home inside of community?
We are on a trajectory that might not be great and could have disastrous or even show-stopping consequences.
Wendell Berry believed so vehemently in care for his environment that he wrote only during the day and refused to use any form of light for his writing other than natural light. He said that writing by daylight with a pencil allowed him to break his "direct dependence on strip-mined coal.” And that is just the beginning with this robust-of-heart human.
As is the case for each of the others I mentioned above.
Each with their own flavor. I would describe the shared contribution as expanding the circle of what deserves our attention, empathy, and moral consideration.
They were all, in different ways, saying:
You don't have to accept the world as it has been handed to you.
And even more importantly:
The way you live your ordinary life is itself a form of cultural intervention.
And all of them, ALL of them stood up for what is vulnerable, overlooked, or easily erased. Operating across ecological, social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions, they protected and gave voice to forms of life, experience, beauty, and possibility that are easily overlooked, dominated, or erased.
But you find the bits that light you up.
And so…. You have homework ;) I invite you to deep dive, libraries over AI :), any one of these giants mentioned above, and/or enjoy one of the classes in the following email that weave their words and ways into your blessed being.
I will drop one of your gifts/ offerings here but be sure and see more in Part 2 ~
Dialogue with Reuvain Bacal : : Eldership and culture for now-times ~
