40 Days

This week’s movement mantra.

This was first shared in my private Facebook group, Circle of Trees, but I felt like it might help others outside that group.

I go back and forth reading from A Year with Thomas Merton daily and right now I’m back at it. Today he was writing to me from 1964.

The Vietnam "war" was escalating and there were all kinds of other terrible things going on all over the world (he lists a bunch of them).

And he is exhausted and overwhelmed by all the things he feels he should be reading because "in good conscious" he wants to stay informed.

And he will read... but he decides he can't possibly read deeply about every single thing.

Then he says that Lent is about to start and he's so thankful for that and I GET IT.

Lent starts next Wednesday, and for the first time in a long time, I'm diving in deep.

Thanks to some important discussions with a good friend about folk Catholicism and my remembering of what I love about my devotion to Guadalupe and more, I feel really ready to integrate this more into my life again.

Lent is 40 days where we can kinda step out of human time (not completely of course) and into focused spiritual time.

I am going to give up some things...

I will be giving up added sugar and that might seem like the old "giving up chocolate" crap but this is really important to my health and I need this sort of commitment (lent) to make myself do it.

Even more importantly, I'm going to be working on giving up lethargy and apathy and I have a bunch of rituals/routines that I'll start playing with to do that.

Anyway... my larger point here (for me anyway) was that even a mind like Merton's often found the world just to be too much, but he stayed committed to witnessing regardless AND he took care of his spiritual needs.

Something to think about...

Because even if you don't "do Lent," 40 days is the traditional "sadhana" in Kundalini yoga too... the 40 day thing is everywhere and I think that it's a key timeline to creating change in human minds and bodies.

Practice as safe space

I used to tell people (when I was first embarking on this somatic dance journey and felt like I had just conquered two Mount Everests in a row by dancing my way to the least amount of depression in my life that I had ever known)… I used to tell people that their own bodies in the now were their safe space. Because right this minute, nothing is happening.

I still believe we can get to that point and that it also fluctuates depending on psychological triggers, freaking life life-ing, and things like overall health and the weather and so many other variables.

But… and this is a big but… your body as safe space just doesn’t work for a lot of people and it never will.

What do I mean by safe space?

Safe spaces are places and people in which and with whom we can be totally ourselves and be held with care. This can mean that we are tolerated through annoying times ((ha)), witnessed during big changes, and encouraged in growth. It can also mean we are called out on our own bullshit but we know that calling out is coming at us with love and compassion.

Safe spaces and people are not all sunshine and rainbows. Spaces that are too sweet are actually not safe, because the number one component of safe space (and people) is honesty.

If our bodies cannot be these safe spaces, where does that leave us?

What are the other options?

Movement As safe space

This is another tricksy one.

As I have said for a very long time: as long as there is breath, there is dance.

And I believe that. To my core. I have watched people with very little mobility left find so much beautiful dance.

But to say that movement itself is a safe space is unrealistic in light of what many will encounter via disease and aging.

Movement as safe space can feel like an insult in those contexts.

Of course, we too narrowly define movement and that is a large part of the issue, but that narrow definition is how most people understand it. To lose our favorite way of moving can be devastating and transitioning to a new way of understanding movement can take many years if it happens at all.

So no, movement itself is not the safe space we’re looking for.

Community as safe space

Ugh. Sadly this one can be too… fragile, too changeable, too… unrealiable.

Communities are made of humans and humans are unpredictable and we need something somewhat predictable when it comes to creating safe space.

That’s not to say that some communities are not our safe spaces. I myself have a few communities that I would put in this category, but even then, I have experienced moments when it didn’t feel that way. (Luckily they were safe enough to even contain those moments and move beyond them.)

And the grief that comes with dissolution of or betrayal within community is intense. Not safe (or at least not always).

Practice as safe space

After all of these years of observing all of these phenomenon, I have finally come to practice as safe space.

Practice as safe space contains all the other possibilities — bodies, movement, communities, other individuals.

Practice is malleable over our lifetimes but it also (when approached in the way I mean) is a constant companion, even as it and we change.

Practice is devotion to your own awareness and a commitment to living a life of noticing and learning and growing.

Your practices may change but you doing them does not. You coming to them in times of joy and grief does not. And though it may be profoundly challenging to maintain, your practices truly are your safe space — where you can fully meet yourself, challenge yourself, and learn an ever deepening love of yourself and therefore of others.

We are safe in our practices so that we can go out and meet a world that is often unsafe. We then go back to our practices for repair and rejuvenation to be effective in our lives. And that cycle goes on and on…

An invitation to a 40 day sadhana

You know I'm no longer a "practicing Catholic," nor am I really any kind of practicing anything at this point. But Lent has always spoken to me DEEPLY.

And through some conversations with a dear friend from Chicago, we came to agree that going into Lent consciously and with open hearts was something we both needed.

And I thought maybe others would need it to.

I see Lent as a period of entering the dark spaces in our own minds and hearts. Not to immediately get rid of that darkness but to be with it... to ask it questions... to learn from it... to simply sit with it and allow those spaces of fear and sadness and rage and grief to simply have safe space to BE.

So I will have my Fat Tuesday donut later today and then I will enter into this journey.

I am open to being surprised. I am open to the idea of feeling some sort of faith again.

I will be reading the two books (see photo) during my morning tarot and intention/contemplation time.

And I will do periodic check-ins in the Circle of Trees to see how everyone is. (If you’re not in the Trees, just go to that link and ask to be added.)

And perhaps you would like to share an intention for this 40 day sadhana via email or in the Trees.