BOTH-AND BABIES
The Space In Between Our Work and Our Practices, Journal Prompts, Living School Meets Project 444, RIP Phillip Baker Hall, and More...
Hi, Y’all!
I’ve started this week’s newsletter to you multiple times. I can’t seem to land exactly where I want to be. I think there’s too much swimming inside this brain-body-spirit of mine. Let’s see where it leads.
This past week was like drinking from a spiritual fire hose.
I just wrapped a June intensive with The Living School through The Center for Action and Contemplation. It was the online equivalent of a week of sitting at the feet of your wisdom teachers. My teachers this week were: Richard Rohr, Brian McLaren, Barbara Holmes, Mirabai Starr, and Jim Finley, as well as the other students and staff of the Living School. If you are familiar with any of these wisdom teachers, each a luminous teacher on their own account, you might begin to imagine the depth and breadth of their combined knowledge, and what an impossible task it would be to even try to summarize the cumulative effect on my mind-body-spirit.
I am still sitting with all that was shared and transmitted and all that I experienced in the past week. I am marinating.
I can tell you how I am feeling.
Inspired, humbled (in the true sense of feeling connected to the humus) a deeper sense of belonging; less rushed, less driven, less determined to achieve or perform, more easeful, more connected, more embodied and energized. I am also beginning to see the ways that “the curriculum of my life” is beginning to weave together threads of purpose while gently unstitching patterns in my life where I still have dualistic thinking. ( I don’t sew, but there it is.)
The week prior, you might remember, I was leading a 4-day writing challenge for women to write, heal and share their stories. It was an intense work period preparing to share that offering and also creating a 4-month container for those ready to move into a longer commitment. Because this idea kind of dropped in my lap unexpectedly, I was running hard for about 3 weeks straight to create the project.
Looking back, I’m feeling grateful for the opportunity to step into this work of leading more women into a process of healing, restoration to self/Self, and transformation. Believe me, you cannot write your healing stories without undergoing some level of transformation of heart.
THE SPACE IN BETWEEN OUR WORK AND OUR PRACTICES
With the yin/yang of these two weeks back to back, I’ve come to see that I benefit from both my super productive labor-intensive work periods or pouring out, as well as my intentional non-work periods of receptivity. This may seem like I am stating the obvious, and I’m sure I am, but for so long I thought it was about getting to a place where I didn’t have to work so hard.
Raised “working class” in the USA, I learned early to “work hard and strive for more,” “to make something of myself,” “ to earn my right to be here,” and that my work success equaled my worth. Then in my mid-life adulthood, I embraced the opposite idea of “ease,” and that work should be effortless and simply flow. I was trying to undo the work-work-work pattern and ease sounded like a lot more fun. No more striving. I had to learn the difference between working for something - choosing to pour my energy into a project, and striving against something - trying to fill an empty hole inside.
I’ve given up that last part.
What I am seeking to learn now is how to establish life rhythms that sustain me when I am at either end of that dualistic approach as I recognize and move into THE SPACE IN BETWEEN. It’s knowing that it’s both/and/ and not either /or, although I just expressed it that way. I find this hard to talk about. Anyone else?
Ok, let me break it down using my life and see if I can help us both understand what I’m trying to express, deal?
MAKING BOTH/AND BABIES
Each time Spirit gives me a new assignment, it starts off with an overwhelming sense of gratitude followed by a high-energy creation period. Consider this the exhilarating lovemaking stage. It’s orgasmic, really. Yet when the daily, consistent work on the project begins, I sometimes feel exhausted by what it takes to bring it forward. THIS is the period when I start to question what the hell I was thinking.
New projects are like new babies. From conception to gestation to actual birthing of the offering is a lot of work. Sometimes when I am in a labor-intensive period, I get tired. I get stressed. I lose my more embodied connection to myself to the work. I live out of my head more. I start wondering what in the world made me think that this was a good idea in the first place. (Wow, this really does echo what a pregnancy feels like in so many ways. ) I said I wanted this baby, right? I asked for it. It’s an incredible gift. And then, oh hey, wait, what did I just do? Everything will change about my life as it currently exists and it was easier before. And there’s a LOT of work ahead.
But really, it’s a blip on the radar, or in this case, the sonogram. Because deep within myself I know that I am on purpose and that it’s not always easeful, no matter what anyone says.
Pregnancy is one thing, birthing is another.
Look at nature as another example. That majestic mountain didn’t burst into existence overnight but evolved through eruption, and upheaval, and storms, as well as soft breezes and warming sunshine.
How do we live both/and?
What if we stop breaking things down into twos and polar opposites and move into a world of threes? The luminous space between the two. Am I saying the middle way? Yes and no. HA! ( there is is again!) As my teachers say, INCLUDE and TRANSCEND.
This feels different to me than seeking “ balance.” Through the relationship between the two we find a new third thing. Through the connection of the two a “both/and baby” is born.
This is opening up new territory inside of me.
I am becoming increasingly aware of the space in between the two extremes of work and play, exertion and rest. Both my practices and my productivity have something important to share AND neither are the full picture.
While I still periodically visit both of these spaces as if they are separate “islands” I am learning that they aren’t islands after all. There is a whole lot of lush beautiful land that connects them and that’s really where I want to live and build my treehouse and birth my both-and babies.
Questions for journaling:
What is the space between expression and receptivity, between pouring out and pouring in?
Where is the intersection inside myself?
How can I embody that space more consistently?
UPDATE OF PROJECT 444 - Enrollment extended through June 24
The program launched on June 4 and we have 17 women inside. I have been astounded by the love, care, and tenderness of this sisterhood as they write and share their stories with each other. I have been amazed by the depth of what they are already sharing with each other. It’s as if we’ve been together and built an intimacy of many years. It’s incredibly beautiful to bear witness to each and every one of them.
From a current Project 444 Participant:
I share this with you now because there is still room for a few more women in our circle. You can jump in with us now and still have access to the writing support from the first two weeks. Our first live gathering on Zoom is Saturday, June 25, and therefore I am closing the container on June 24.
This is inspiring, soul-tending work we are doing. There is a place here waiting for you if you want it. Reply to this email or reach out via my website at marythoma.com I’m happy to set up a call to answer your questions and see if this is a fit for you.
Join the sisterhood: Your stories are waiting.
5 THINGS WORTH SHARING:
Alan Rickman’s 27 diaries will be published on October 18, 2022. I am so ready.
Isabel Reitemeyer’s Uncanny Collages for collage lovers like me. Talk about both-and-babies.
3. Walking around downtown Loveland, this mural made me stop in my tracks.
4. When two of your personal symbols converge. Magic.
5. RIP Phillip Baker Hall. Here he is in one of my favorite scenes of his from Seinfeld. Books and coffee and Mr. Bookman.
See you next week, loves. xoxo Mary