STEWARDING YOU (THE COMMUNITY RESOURCE)
YOUR BODY MATTERS: A SOMATIC SESSION FOR DISEMBODIED BODIES PART 1
January 3, 2018
YOUR BODY MATTERS: A SOMATIC SESSION FOR DISEMBODIED BODIES PART II: HONOR YOUR SURVIVAL STRATEGIES
April 5, 2018
Greetings, teachers, healers, activists, changemakers!
Greetings, wounded healers, your wisdom forged in the crucible of suffering.
I have something to say to you:
So many have called you into being.
Your plant and animal friends;
The wind, the moon, the stars;
Blood or foster families raised you, kept you alive for years.
So many have invested in you.
Mentors have invested in you, shared their finite time and energy [Have you told them how much they mean to you? Best to do that soon.].
Who else invested in you?
Who else called you into your power?
Your community (communities), your precious, precarious, ever-morphing, far-flung team, your crew, your chosen family-
Those folks who bailed you out, cried and laughed with you. Held you to your integrity.
[Have you told them how much they mean to you? Best to do that soon.]
Your learning communities. Generating wisdom, gathering and dispersing,
[Have you told them how much they mean to you? Best to do that soon.]
Your activist communities. Conspiring for freedom, shifting and rifting.
(So much rifting! <Sigh>)
[Have you told them what they mean to you? Best to do that soon.]
–Speaking of Rifting…
Did you hear the one about, “Every being has been your mother?” or,
“Every being has been your child, over countless lifetimes”?
“Impartiality (tang nyom in Tibetan) means giving up (tang) our hatred for enemies and infatuation with friends, and having an even-minded (nyom) attitude towards all beings, free of attachment to those close to us and aversion for those who are distant…
…In former lives, those whom we now consider our enemies have surely been close to us…giving us unimaginable help and support. Conversely, many of those whom we now call friends have certainly been against us and done us harm.”
~ Patrul Rinpoche
Even in one lifetime, our enemies can suddenly become our friends, and our friends can become our enemies!
Given all this relational shifting and rifting, rifting and shifting, can we expand our sense of “community”?
Greetings, healers, teachers and changemakers!
I have more to say to you:
Many individuals and groups have shaped, challenged and midwived you (yes, and also harmed and betrayed you);
Family, communities, teachers, opponents
(chosen and unchosen);
Each one who acknowledged your existence;
Everyone who hoped you would thrive;
They are with you still.
So what you embody does not “belong” only to you.
“You” are composed of many lineages…
…Part of many generations:
“The generations we are sworn to protect and revere are the seven we are most immediately connected to…
…many of us have known or will know our great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren…
(or we) have stories, songs, and photos that have been shared so that we feel a connection. We also want to make sure our kids and grandkids are healthy, safe and aware of where they come from.
So, counting our own generation—ourselves, siblings, and cousins—we are accountable to those seven generations, not some imagined futuristic peoples two hundred years down the road.”
~ Vine Deloria, Jr.
Greetings, healers and teachers and changemakers!
You who appear now, midstream between ancestors and descendants.
This is your moment to be the movement.
Thank you for showing up. For offering your time, skills and wisdom. For uplifting and grounding the world. We need you.
I ask you, for the sake of all, to steward the hard-won resources you embody.
You are the steward of your resources;
The best one for the job:
You know your temperament and limits better than anyone.
You know the resource and wisdom you embody.
(If you don’t yet know your strengths and limits, you are in the best position to observe and find out.)
I urge you to study stewardship, to take it on.
“Stewardship is “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care.”
You are entrusted to your own care!
“Stewardship is the responsible use (including conservation) of natural resources in a way that takes full and balanced account of the interests of society, future generations, and other species, as well as of private needs.”
You are a natural resource!
As steward, you choose how to share and value your gifts, your spoons, your lifeforce.
As steward, you set the tone. Your boundaries cue others to respect you-as-resource.
Beloved healers, artists, organizers….I urge you to think about this!
While we still live within capitalism,
How will you share your gifts sustainably?
Many exciting experiments, local and global, are remaking how we work, live and exchange.
Yet many of us who strive to create a sustainable way of working and living find ourselves on our own.
The new economy is a work in progress; work innovations are not yet inclusive and accessible to all.
In the meantime, how will you care for you? [Best to think about this now.]
Steward yourself, for your sake. For your joy.
Sustain yourself, for the sake of all who taught and supported you to become the creator and change maker that you are.
For the sake of the youth who will inherit this beautiful mess.
In honor of them all, it’s time to steward the teaching, healing and organizing resources that you embody:
Learn how to take care of your money.
Ask folks to pay you what you are worth. Ask folks to pay you in a way that honors all the elders who invested in you, all the future generations that you seed and nourish.
Learn how to take care of your body.
Make friends with your mysterious, finite body. Learn it’s natural pace.
Learn how to take care of your heart-mind.
Turn off your phone and go outside.
Sit down and stare into space.
Cuddle a human or furry or feathered friend.
Healers, teachers, activists, remember!
You are our work in progress.
You carry history and hope.
Take good care of us: Take good care of you.
