Rest, remember, wonder, gather, and then imagine

I found these words while following a deer path through tall grass in the shade of some Douglas fir trees just outside of town. Over time, I've learned that I'm a gatherer of words. A forager of wildness and wilderness. I never know everything that the words I find mean. I'll do my best at a summary here, but I was not built for summary. I was built for wending. For leading and following people off of far-too-warn paths toward the magic of not knowing.

The words that follow may be about better noticing and remembering ancestral best practices. There are certainly foragers, wandering poets, and tellers of wending tales in my ancestral line. People who wandered and found what they needed, as they needed it. People who gathered and shared what they found all along the way. Because what they needed most was friends, way stations, laughter, and a bit of found community no matter where they wandered. The words that follow were found in that same tradition– found when needed– at a time when the very act of imagining something better together is under attack, and not just by the bad guys.

We're living in a time when many people we know, including ourselves, have settled for less than what we used to be and do. A time when so many are feeling isolated, anxious, depressed, scared, or are suffering, being attacked, disappearing, or dying at the hands of people so hard, so drowned by hate, so disconnected from life that they really don't seem to care about life, or the living, at all.

And, we're at a turning point. A collective pivot. So many of us feel it now it's hard to ignore. You're going to have to wander around here with me a bit– leaping from stone to stone together– to pivot with me. Let's get going!

Rest

The first stone is rest.

It's summer and the flowers are blooming. We get to sleep with windows thrown wide open now, as long as wildfire season doesn't descend to darken the sky and lungs. We've been lucky so far. It's also finally warm enough now that we get to take Mom outside– a task that brings joy to all involved and that also takes a village of hands and patience, a wheelchair, and a sun hat when you've lived with Alzheimer's disease for 23 years and counting.

D and I have also been spending our early summer days learning to be a 2-person + 1 cat team of collective catchers of field mice and voles, because our young cat has morphed into a community builder. She's a fast and mighty gatherer of fun rodent friends who she catches, brings inside, and releases under our couch or bed so they can play together on a more even, less stressful playing field, for the mice and voles, that is. Released under heavy furniture where none of us can reach them. D and I both work from home, so it's usually a 2-person team that removes them. Althought when we lose them entirely, which is easy to do with beings so tiny, then Ms. Community Builder Cat is invited back into the room to help us locate them for removal. Good times.

Still, it's warm here, safe at the moment, and we have enough to eat and share. It feels like the whole world is burning to the ground. And yet its summer. Musicians are still making music. Farmers are still bringing produce to farmers markets, though we all feel the tension of our dear neighbors in our hearts and necks. We all feel the unshakable self-loathing of our oppressors now. But neighbors still plan summer picnics. Families and activists and attorneys and judges old and new are kicking ass and taking names. We have a roof over our heads. And even having one cat with a rotating menagerie of tiny rodent besties coming in for playtime and sleepovers and another cat so fully immersed in retirement that he just purrs and smiles as his humans and mice race around the room in a frenzy together feels way more silly, lucky, lovely, and even holy, than bad.

We are within and often aware of the present moment, and we know how good life is/can be, and how beautiful this planet and universe or multiverse are. We know that humanity doesn't sit at the center of the universe and that the U.S. doesn't sit at the center of the universe and that fascists and white supremacists are definitely nowhere near the center of the universe, any more than we ourselves are.

We are held by this place. All of us. It took us a long time to get here, but now we can feel everything and even work hard to weave our tiny corner of the tapestry of life, while not also trying fruitlessly to be responsible for everything. To fix everything. To hold everything all the time. To change everyone. To speak in a voice that is acceptable or comforting to everyone. To orchestrate everyone else's experience or meet others' imaginary expectations all the time.

We can ask for and receive help when we need it. As creators, artists, and teachers we need community help often, and we understand that needing help is nothing but good for community. We offer help when it's asked for and we have the capacity to give it. We gift and swap and barter.

We can set our old selves down. Pick up far less exhausting new selves. Here comes a wending example.

My 38-year-old self decided to lean on family and friends, quit a lucrative, fantastically ego-boosting job, and instead pursue far more loving dreams for humanity than lucrative jobs and big egos. My 40-year-old self turned artist/poet after the death of a loved one and learned to love creating so much that she happily learned to also love tumbleweeds of dog hair and dust bunnies and to love people so much that they could now be fully trusted not to run screaming from the house if dirt and fur happened to be present (I was late to this game, I think, because we didn't have kids). My 42-year-old self learned that needing things perfect means you'll never get the book published. No such thing as a perfect book. My 50-year-old self learned to adore weeds as powerful neighbors, friends, food, and medicine. Wow do you save a lot of time when you stop weeding because you need weeds around for nutrition, first aid, healthcare, and companionship– like all the wildlife need them too. My 51-year-old self realized that if she could love all weeds, even those on somebody's noxious weeds list, that she had the capacity to love all humans too. Talk about a time saver. My 53-year-old self learned that even the good guys elected into power in the U.S. government happily fund genocide. Today I can't figure out how I ever believed differently.

My 55-year-old self, well. We'll see. I know she doesn't fear or apologize for rest.

In some places on earth, rest is imagined as a resource and a privilege reserved for a tiny few. We're taught to pursue it by working harder and harder. Or by scheduling it. Or by paying huge sums of money for it. Some are taught to believe that they deserve rest and others don't. We hold those poison ideas within us here in the U.S. Luckily, rest is so much more than that.

Rest is foundation. Rest is soil, deep and rich and dark. Rest is play, love, and laughter. Eating and learning. Weeping and grieving. Evolution, innovation, and revolution! Rest is also the thing that happens in the wake of being braver than we thought we could be.

We can let smaller, stale ideas about resting go. We can deepen. Get to know rest better. Even here, even now. As we can, in big ways or small ways. We can draw rest into our seasons, into our days, into our relationships, not just try to cram our rest into too-short nights and too-busy weekends. We can learn not to begrudge anyone rest, including us. Learn not to give up hope or call people out for not visibly screaming constantly about everything we're screaming about.

We don't have to become a cruel country ourselves. Cruel people are not the boss of us anymore. Not when it's only on us to become loving countries. We are already free. We rest to feel that.

Living beings need rest, yes. Creative, innovative, loving, learning, imagining beings need rest. Maybe only the well-rested can create sanctuary and rest for all those they care about. But maybe not. Maybe we just do more things not feeling bad about being tired, snippy, and cranky. Maybe that's rest too. Being unprepared, unmasked, unmade up, unkempt, undone...

I've tried and failed to find many nearby rest role models in the human world to apprentice with, so I've learned to do what cats do. Take rest when you need it. Bask in sun beams. Make– and expect– no apologies for resting. Definitely don't clean the house when doing so doesn't feel restful. Find the feeling of rest before you clean the house. Ignore all rushing humans who are too busy or judgmental or foolish to understand or appreciate what you're doing.

That's rest too.

Rest is also freedom from self-limiting and violence-causing delusions. It's a doorway. A bringer of wider selves and different dreams. Some days, rest demands a loving circle of human faces around you. Listen to rest.

Did you feel the rest in any of that? Shoulders relaxing a bit. Breathing deepening a little. For me, rest requires a bit of wandering.

We are rest.

If you don't feel rest here with me today, don't give up. That just means I'm not for you today. Rest elsewhere.

I've tried and failed to find nearby rest role models in the human world, so I've learned to do what cats do. Take rest when you need it. Bask in sun beams. Make and expect no apologies for resting. Definitely don't clean the house. Ignore all humans too busy or foolish to appreciate what you're doing.

Remember and wonder

The next stone is remember, then wonder. Leap with me.

Our own internal voices telling us to rest right now, and even the cats + mice + people circus happening at my house right now, are preferable to everything that's happening at the hands of the fascists and con men trying and spectacularly failing to run the U.S. federal government now. Catching and releasing mice from the house daily is so much easier than what's happening to our friends trying to survive in active genocide zones too. To the point that what once would have bothered us about our own lives (yuck, so many mice in the house) we mostly now just roll our eyes at (Go Gen X!), shake our heads at our former foolish selves, and even giggle about. Honestly, last night, as D gracefully and expertly captured a mouse literally the moment it dropped from the cat's mouth, I realized something. We've gotten good at this. And.

This summer I've come to envy all cats and all mice their wisdom and non-wealth-hoarding species and prowess and their glorious indifference to humanity's structured and stale nation states, governments, tired old systems, pointless mass terrorizing and mass murdering violence, and our impacts to the planet herself now. The cats and mice are fully present in the room. Focused on the right now. While I can't help but look more closely at the delusions, violence, and disconnected folly of some of my own species now: globally. I can't help but feel it all. I'm aware of so much now. And I can't help but see subtle reflections of those same disconnected ways of being within myself/ourselves now. I can't help but see how who we all were in the past brought us to where we all are today. It makes my head hurt.

You know you've been successfully humbled when you catch yourself wishing you were a field mouse.

I was writing poetry on my phone last night in front of the TV and looked up in time to see the moment that D grabbed a mouse-catching container (an old Tupperware bowl), brought it down to the cat's mouth, and startled her into dropping it just below the container. He contained the mouse as I rose, grabbed a piece of cardboard to slip beneath her tiny feet, and then opened the door for D and the mouse to exit. That mouse was caught outside, brought in, caught again by us, and then gently taken out under a tree to be released– all in less than a minute. We've become the Indy 500 pit crew of mouse catching and removal! It was glorious. Glorious! Wonder and awe was fully alive within me in that moment.

When wonder and awe are present within us, anything is possible.

Anything is possible here now, too. Don't let anyone or anything make you forget that. When you start to forget, rest. And remember, you don't always have to stop what you're doing to rest. Rest can simply be a state of being. A slight slowing down. An awareness:

I am human. I am here. My feet are on the ground. I can see the sky. That tree is beautiful. The universe is beautiful. The planet is beautiful. I'm not the center of the universe. I am, however, a total fucking bad ass right now.

Why I include "however" in my mantras is anybody's guess. I definitely think that mantras should include more cussing though. That's likely the American Gen Xer in me. Though I suspect some of my Irish ancestors agree.

So anyway, after we gracefully removed a mouse from the house like a pair of gold-medal-winning couples ice skaters, I sat back down, full of wonder. Then suddenly, instantly, magically into my mind leapt a new perspective. A new perspective on the derogatory use of the word Woke. A considerable leap, yes. That's me. And it was a new perspective just outside, just beyond, what I believed and knew before. An idea beyond what I'd learned from others. Beyond gender, beyond racism, beyond white supremacy, beyond patriarchy, beyond right versus left. Maybe even beyond old notions of right and wrong. Still with me?

Full of wonder, I wondered.

When wonder and awe are present within us, anything is possible.

What if people who use the word "woke" in a derogatory manner just want us to be fully present– fully real– and in the room with them? Seeing them. Hearing them. Do people like me– take your pick: global empaths, too-busy small business owners, dementia care partners who don't get out as much in person because our beloved people can't go out anymore, highly educated, or extremely lucky and mostly happy white people– do we feel absent to them? Disassociated? Not present? Not engaging? Not listening? Putting more value on books and education and expertise and science and on our own lucky lives and well-supported-by-research opinions than on simply being present together in community? Can we have some manners– at least try to deepen the relationship and enjoy each other's company first– before we tell folks how wrong and how horrible they are?

Shit.

Could they be right? Not about everything. Only deeply deluded people are right about everything. But could they be right about me?

What if showing up in person more, being fully present to what's happening in the room (tough for Daydreamer/Mind Wanderer/Whole Planet Lover Me), and doing so regularly enough that we get really, really good at it together is all it will take to change things for the better? Can we co-develop the true community skill of sticking with each other until we get better at life itself– together, not individually– because we don't have a choice now? Like how D and I have developed the capacity to catch and release voles and mice in under a minute gracefully, like pros, because we don't have a choice in the matter?

I wonder. And when I wonder, my fear sits down.

Gather

The next stone is gathering.

This might be the main point here today. It's feeling very pointy to me. Who can say for sure anymore?

At some point over the past years, we started skipping a step: gathering in person. Good old-fashioned friend hangouts, neighbor gatherings, and larger community gatherings. I mean, we gathered where it was absolutely necessary. As people who love spending time with my parents, and care partners for Mom who has Alzheimer's, we're with my parents every week without fail, for example. But between D's work, my work, our move to an island at the same time my parents needed far more support, and just getting the basics of living done– and then a pandemic that taught us it was unsafe to be together for years– we stopped gathering in person with friends as often. How did we let this happen?! We used to hang out with friends every week, often several times a week. Hell, we had friends who lived with us– friends as housemates and renters and partners in crime. Now we see most friends and family via text, zoom, or google meet, or via social media, and maybe in person once a year, if that. We haven't seen some of our friends in person for years now.

I'm seriously rusty on the whole regularly gathering-in-person-for-fun-and-support thing. The thing, I suspect, that will most likely to help us shift beyond the experience of chronic worry and loneliness and maybe even shift humanity past its former need for billionaires, fascists, genocides, energy-draining tech, and other violences and abuse-worshipers. What if gathering more regularly, in person, is the pivot that gets us back to loving each other again?

Eight sentences: a practice for gathering

I made this for myself so thought I'd share. Complete one or more these eight sentences for yourself. This is a reflection practice for noticing and honoring your own innate gathering nature. I wrote a ton here for myself, and then I deleted most of those words. You need your own words here, not mine. Finish these sentences for yourself if you want to better understand and strengthen your gathering self.

1. Today I gather...

2. I think it's so cool (or, fire, if you're young) that I gather...

3. The groups I'm part of are remarkably...

4. The first two images that come to mind when I think of myself in groups or at gatherings are...

5. When it comes to gathering in person, I struggle with...

6. When it comes to gathering with others, I shine at...

7. My role or roles in human groups that I'm part of is/are...

8. My gathering mentor this month was...

For me this month my gathering mentor was our young cat who is an expert gatherer of friends who match her energy. She watches carefully, does her best not to hurt anyone, and brings them in gently, one by one, to release them somewhere they'll feel safer, even from her. She's an extrovert and far better at gathering many beings together than I am. If we haven't closed the doors to outside, and we're not paying attention, she could have four mice and even a lizard, frog, bumblebee, butterfly, or bird inside by lunchtime. My other gathering mentors have been wildlife. Creatures that come to her as they wish, within a fenced Catio and high-fenced garden that she rarely leaves. Built, ironically, in part, so she doesn't catch wildlife. Fencing keeps a cat who loves us in. It can't keep all wildlife out. We're so thankful for wildlife. Whenever they're present, we know we've been chosen.

We're so thankful for wildlife. Whenever they're present, we know we've been chosen.

Imagine

The last stone we're leaping onto here is to imagine.

It's a big ask, I know. Asking you to imagine now. As the world seems to be burning, asking you to re-prioritize something all human children do without fail and so many adults give up on out of sheer exhaustion. The amount of manipulative, extremely well-funded fear, pain, terror, and suffering being pushed at humanity right now can be overwhelming. The cruelty is the point, we hear. I hear that all the time now. The cruelty is the point.

Friends, I respectfully disagree. Think about dogs for a minute. Are there cruel dogs? Why would a dog ever be cruel? Imagine it. See it. Can you see it?

Why would a dog ever be cruel?

Are people really so different from dogs?

Cruelty is a cry for help. It's deep-sunk, hidden, almost unshakable, festering fear and pain. It's a last resort by beings trapped and tortured in abusive situations or systems. Beings who can imagine no help coming and no way out.

There are human beings trapped by cruelty. People so abused and hurt by others that they bought into the belief that their only choices are to receive abuse or to dish abuse out. Harm or be harmed. Kill or be killed.

We're not those people, you and me. People who can imagine together don't have to be cruel. And when we don't have to be cruel, we aren't. Cruelty is no more part of our nature than it is a part of a dog's nature.

Humanity as a whole can step into, through, and past cruelty together. I've seen it. Most of us have seen it, experienced it, or at least seen it online or read about it.

Cruelty is not the point.

Cruelty is not the point. Not the point of life. Not the point of humanity. Not the point of community or relationships. Not the point of Earth herself. Not even the point of people deluded enough to believe that we need to be protected from ourselves or that they will be happy by making others miserable. That there are still a few remaining handfuls of people on earth who believe– as grown adults– that perpetrating cruelty will somehow keep them, or anyone else, safe, sucks. It sucks. It's horrifying. But it's not the point.

I learned today that people are quitting ICE– our American gestapo– in droves already. Many were deputized correctional officers. Many of those who have stayed in ICE say they're staying now just hoping to get their student loans forgiven as promised. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's so remarkably fucking sad. God bless the USA. Some of the men I hate hate themselves, too, and are just trying to get their students loans forgiven.

What if cruelty is not the point? What if the people you're terrified of are just remarkably fucking sad? Like you.

And better, what if you get to imagine the point? What if we get to imagine the point together? Let's do it.

What's the point of all this?

What's the point of what is happening in the human world today? In the U.S. or somewhere else where nation states themselves have gone way off the deep end, doubling down on mass violence against themselves, their citizens, visitors, and nearby others.

Why is this happening now?

Why is this happening while you are here and I am here?

I know some of my own answers to these questions. I wrote pages answering them. But what I want to know most is this: what are your answers to these questions? And what happens to these selves and ideas of ours when we gather in person?

Take back your right to collective imagination! Imagine differently now. Gather in person with others to imagine. Imagine alone, yes, great, and. Gather to imagine!

We have to gather to imagine what comes next. Sharing 8 million horrifying images, videos, and memes on social media, day after day, while feeling helpless, outraged, and alone, just won't cut it anymore. We deserve better. We all do.

In conclusion

So much unimaginable bad is happening now, yes, and.

Dropping our delusions, being more real and honest with each other, being more aware of how lucky or blessed we are, gathering in person, helping those most in need, putting our livelihoods and bodies on the line for each other, and all of us being aware again that we need each other to survive and thrive: these are all good things. Great things! Remember that we're always surrounded by beings and people from cultures, and even artists and ancestors, who rarely, if ever, forget these things. Even when we do forget. We can listen. Learn. Support others. Receive help.

It feels like a ridiculously complicated time to be alive. My own community's imaginings have led me through the muck of now again. I think our way forward here is that we rest, remember, wonder, gather, and imagine together, in person, as often as we can. Stubbornly, consistently, bravely, messily. Hosting potlucks whenever possible. Aware that we cannot leave the next generation what we ourselves don't imagine together and live and play into ourselves.

My own community's imaginings have led me through the muck of now again.

I think our task at the moment has just two parts:

1. work together to make sure as many of us survive this difficult time as possible– It's not the end of times, but it is the end of humanity's delusions and tendencies of abuse, born of isolation, and the always-running-away-or-looking-away-from-others-we-can't-face that sits at the real foundation of empire. Isolation, abuse, and empire are falling away together now as we make our stand for our planet, our countries, our regions, our communities, and our families together. We are turning toward each other. We are done looking away or running away. To survive here, we have to face each other, help each other. And we will.
2. gather, imagine, and then live and play into new ways of being together. We'll play and talk across old boundaries in a new country, or countries, or regions, or tribes, or whatever comes next for us. The world we're building now won't be new to us because we looked away or ran away from those suffering or because we hid who we really are. It'll be new to us because we stay and we share. Stay with the fear. Stay with the suffering. Stay with learning. Stay with emotions. Stay with those shaking too. And share. In person. Who you are. If you think the rest that I spoke of at the beginning is silly or pointless or impossible, know this. Rest is staying present long enough to hold everything. Rest is taking the time needed to expand to hold everything. Rest for all is our new foundation. We will hold the fears of our ancestors and former selves, by facing what they couldn't face and by staying with the pain the whole world is now feeling. Surrounding it with our ever-expanding hearts and selves. When that seems impossible, rest, gather, share– or volunteer to work so someone else can rest.

I split these two apart to make them clear, but the truth is, right now especially, the second task cannot happen without the first one. We need all of us. We need everyone present. Every background. Every story. Every family. Every dance. Every food. Every job and profession. Every idea. Every feeling. Every way of being and path to hope. Every insight into resting, remembering, wondering, gathering, and imagining. We need all of us. That's not possible when masked men are dragging some of us away and when proud, unmasked men are committing genocide.

Deep breath. We can do this. When danger is present, touch the earth, take a deep breath, and center who and what is most vulnerable. When not in danger, center on humor, wonder, learning, creating, or love. When all else fails, let go and rest. Or, like wiser beings than me, you could just start there. Start with rest.