[Liminal Letters] Weave yourself into life through relationship
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Not into weekly newsletters? You can opt-out of the weekly newsletter without removing yourself from other updates HERE! Hey, Reader! Next week I am running Cultivating Connection, a free experience of springtime spiritwork to help you create or strengthen your relationship to the earth. And that has my thoughts turning to what it means to be in relationship with the other-than-human, with earth, with spirit. A big part of the way I think about these sort of relationships is that these relationships weave us back into the current of life that is all around us. But this current of life - the cycles of seasons, the ecosystems, the invisible and yet essential connections that thread themselves through all life - doesn’t really register to the consensus reality of Empire, where the individual reigns supreme. And that the capitalist, white supremacist notion of the individual, one that elides the complex weaving our personal histories, roots, and connections, can make it hard to see the ways that we as individuals are actually far more complex than the common notion of “individual” permits. There is a way in which we as individuals are not one alone, but are a fractal expression of the relationships and webs of care that we are woven into. The individual as an utterly unique intersection of the collective they find themselves enmeshed in. This reminds we of something we discussed last year during Pride Month in Queer Ancestor Coven: the self as an ancestral microcosm. The self as an ancestral microcosm is a little bit like the mycelium of the mushroom where you are the mushroom. Your ancestors, your community, your past selves, your lived experiences - there are all the mycelium. Or perhaps they are mycelium and dirt and rain and all the other interwoven beings that fungi are connected to. Either way, the you that you are now is the blossoming of those myriad connections and influences. You are individual and singular AND you are the fractal expression of all that you are connected to. We can explore the difference in between individual as a separate and whole unto themselves category, versus an extended, fractal, enmeshed sense of individuality, through the lens of queerness and transness. With modern LBGTQ+ identities, those identities are about the individual specifically. But alternative views of queerness exist. To illustrate this, consider this quote from a translated interview with a Neapolitan feminiello, CiroCiretta. (In case you’re unfamiliar with feminielli, they are a third-gender group in Southern Italy, particularly in Naples & Campania.) The interview begins with an expression of identity that perfectly encapsulates this fractal microcosm of self: “I’ve always thought that it’s not the person but the geography that is central. It’s Naples with its many souls that makes the
femminiello different. People who feel that they are not women or men but are both can be found in many different cultures; it is our land that makes a femminiello who s/he is. The human being is not at center stage, in fact a person is simply something covered in skin. It is the territory, the culture, the history that makes a femminiello embody the Neapolitan spirit. We often put a human being at the center, but it is the place that is central and enables the person to absorb its energy.”
This is the self as more than an ancestral microcosm. The self is a microcosm of place, of ecosystem, of community. And, personally, this understanding of queerness and transness really resonates for me. I might never have admitted I was trans, might never have started HRT, might have never begun to understand or embrace this quality about myself without the ecosystem that I live with in - the Great Black Swamp. It was the Swamp that showed me it was ok to shift and change. It was the Swamp that showed me that you can be a walking path one day and find it flooded the next and yet dry or flooded it remains the Swamp. And the multitudes of my queerness all have place-based stories like this one. The different aspects of my identity can all be seen in this place-based lens. All parts of myself as an individual can be seen as a microcosmic expression of where I have been, the places and the people I have loved. (Here I’m definitely thinking about the modern sick or chronically ill body as an expression of a sick earth (something I learned from Sophie Macklin’s class Ungovernable Bodies).) I think there is tremendous power in this fractal expanding identity beyond oneself as understood by Empire’s individuality, of seeing oneself as inherently a manifestation of intimate relationship to every aspect of the world around us.
What then is our responsibility to place? What allegiance are we asked to offer when we see the threads of our individual beings as having their roots in a collectivity? How does it connect us to the power to behave in ways that challenge Empire? I think of my ancestors who immigrated from Naples to the US and I think of the ways they left behind this way of orienting to place & people. They did their best to assimilate into individualism & capitalism. They succeed in some ways and in others ways they didn’t. But in the ways they did succeed, they moved themselves and their descendants (ME!) far enough away from that worldview that I now wonder if and fear that it cannot be recovered. But also…I think it must. Years ago, when I was first diving into spirituality, I did a short daily meditation. Every day, I sat with my coffee and I connected to spirit and I asked “What is my purpose?” It took weeks, but eventually the answer came: “Re-weaving connection.” Since then, my practice has been dedicated to that re-weaving of connection, that re-building of relationship in all aspects - relationship to self, relationship to earth, relationship to ancestors, relationship to magic and enchantment and possibility. It’s the foundation of all that I do. I have seen that this re-weaving of connection, the re-rembrance of the fact that we are immanently in intimate relationship with the world around us, truly weaves us back into the current of life and living. It weaves us back into relationship with what it really means to be a live in this world. And each spring, I feel a pull to deepen into and recommit to that practice of relationship building, particularly in my relationship with the earth. And I know I‘m not the only, which is why next week I’m gonna be running a free mini-workshop series of springtime spiritwork for creating personal relationship with the Earth! If that sounds rad, you can sign up for Cultivating Connection HERE! Cultivate Connection with Nature this Spring!Cultivating Connection is a FREE springtime spiritwork experience starting on Earth Day, April 22nd. In this free experience you will learn: ✨ What it means to relate to Earth and how you are already in relationship with the earth ✨ Strategies for communicating with Earth and nature spirits ✨ How to cultivate your own relationship with Earth this spring! ✨ How to respectfully and reciprocally cultivate that relationship, and ✨ How to deepen your connection to the magic of this planet in a way that is meaningful and powerful for you If you’re ready to embrace the magic all around you this spring, deepen your connection to the earth, and weave a life of enchantment, then you can sign up for Cultivating Connection HERE!
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This Week's Joys & Gratitudes
What's bringing you joy this week? Where are you finding magic? Feel free to hit reply and let me know! Until next time! In Joy, Magic, and Solidarity, P.S. Know someone who would find magic in this newsletter? Please forward it on! Word of mouth is one way we weave connection & magic! |