Ask With Love
Hey There Friends,
Sending so much love and care to you all.
So much generosity and loss here, in Oregon. Fires and smoke and pandemic.
I just wanted to check in and share a bit.
I started this out trying hard to be cheery and to be a day-maker but alas the truth won out.
I hope you'll continue reading and find some nugget to take with you.
In case you have some similar thoughts and feelings.
You'll know you aren't alone.
Since the fires began another layer of recognition of all my privileges and blind-spots has been revealed. The past three years have been a stripping away, and the onion continues to be peeled.
Lifelong practice.
My lack of awareness of the subtleties of what I have taken and received.
In particular from the more than human world.
Living in Central Oregon for 31 years and all the play time and recreating and my ignorance of the impact on the planet and other human beings.
I’m not blaming myself or any of you. I am developing a fresh sense of responsibility for self and systems.
Past and present.
Accountability and Care.
Facing it with kindness and wonder as I dig in. Most of the time.
Not to say I shouldn’t have enjoyed the outdoors. Just that it would have been helpful if it was in tandem with the consciousness of inequity, white supremacy, and climate change. And including reverence, inter-connectivity, and our interdependence with all living beings.
I do know nature has it's way of renewing itself. And that death and rebirth exist in it's systems. That perhaps these fires are long overdue. And of course it's more than that. Simple and complex. We know so little really.
That said.
I want to offer a simple practice.
I’ve been using these seven qualities as a daily check in. For how I can participate and care in an ever widening circle of community.
Giving. Receiving. Taking. Offering. Sharing. Asking. Stillness
I write a bit under each one every day. My commitment to attend outside my private life to three things a day. Here's my list from yesterday.
Give: Donated to a relief organization in Medford.
Offer: Regular childcare for two friends teaching their own children and working.
Take: Time to connect and reach out to three people I haven't been in touch with since the fires started to check in and send love. Time to write letters for Vote Forward.
Share: Working on this newsletter to put out. Working on a podcast with Casey and Taran!
Ask: What's needed of me?
Stillness: Sacred moments to fill up. Read a poem. Did a loving kindness meditation.
These qualities are the river we are in together.
They are the water molecules that run through all bodies of water, including human bodies.
They flow through us, through all living beings and out into the world.
However, the river of these qualities is dammed up in many parts of humanity.
Not all of us. But likely many. Me for sure.
Undamming the river.
Part of which is the deep recognition that we are all in this together.
None of us will get out alive. We all are born and we all die.
As is often the case for me. More questions rain down!
No right or wrong answers. They are meant to be pondered.
Questions...
I do know that the asking and the wondering about them begin to break things up in me.
Undo the knot of branches stuck in the heart of the river.
How do you receive right now if you are in need, without giving back or feeling guilty if you don’t?
How do you offer with a full heart and no outcome expected?
What have I taken? How much have I taken? When I need can I take?
How do I unpack the subtleties of taking due to privilege, and race, and capitalism, and all the isms?(I am deeply in process of unpacking this one, it may not be a fit for you.)
What am I giving? How is my giving tied to taking or receiving?
What does sharing really mean in adulthood?
How important is ASKING? And have I forgotten how to do that in our self-reliant culture and hence created a culture where asking is seen as a weakness?
Ah, and stillness. The lost art of it. How is it possible that sometimes lying in a hammock all day is of service to the world?
Take the qualities.
Receive the questions.
Share as you see fit.
Give with heart.
Sit with them in stillness.
Offer what you learn.
Ask with love.
We are on a precipice. Or, as some say in the birth process.
Whatever it is.
As Mary Oliver so beautifully says in Upstream; "we are each others destiny"
Much love to you and yours.
In deep appreciation for your listening!
Carol
P.S. My favorite poem to lean into this week.
P.S.S. A delight to watch
P. S.S.S. Turn your eyes away from your screen. Cup your hands over them. Your eyes that is. Rest them. Just for a minute. )