Part of the Mountain wisdom practice was creating–co-creating, really, within guide and circle holding of the whole–an I AM statement or conceived purpose into which you would live and listen during the three days’ fast. I’ve written about that practice-journey elsewhere. Its fruit, these weeks later, remains grounded in my cells, bones:
I am the speaking red fire(s) of loving, freed in the waters of Wisdom, found in Forgiveness, healing and willing now to tend as invited from above, welcomed from below, enough as I am.
These are the words I intend to live into for the next ten years (at least), bookended in my root tradition’s name of Godde (I am … as I am) with the Spirit-spirit journey I’ve lived into the world so far. Waters of Wisdom nod to the F/feminine healed and healing within me. Found in Forgiveness speaks to the initiated journeying in those years, deepened in the Fire&Water leadership work I did in 2020-2024. [It’s ongoing, of course, but I have no explicit space-holding work in the F&W community any longer]. The next phrase speaks to my receptivity to the sacred work that will find me, without my strategic grasping, with a lively discernment as I move, slowly by slowly. Ultimately, I am living into the reality of being enough as I am, refusing to know who I am primarily through a project or my work. My hope is to disrupt my ancestral lineage proclivities there. I am practicing being enough as I am, however I am. [You can pray for me, as my husband has not chosen this practice yet for himself, nor does he need to. But living with an overfunctioning pastor can be a toxic environment for my own practices.]
The first phrase of this statement landed in me upon awakening the morning after my circle-process the day before. I love the poetry of it, even as I don’t feel like I claimed it as much as it claims me now. I don’t quite know what it means, in other words. ‘Speaking’ is the word that jolts attention for ‘red fire(s)’. Does fire speak, per se? ‘Fire(s) of loving’ feels known to me, undergirded by Jean Luc Marion, Dr. Maya Angelou, my women’s circling webs. What does it mean to me to be a fire who speaks?
I named my first sense of it ‘my reluctant surrender,’ slowly facing up to the reality that writing is my gift, my practice for sense-making, my work. But resisting it at some level too. A fire who speaks clearly uses words out loud. At some subconscious level, I hold such writing work with a sense of disdain or impatience. I mean, the world is on fire now. Who needs more words? Shouldn’t there be something more I should be doing? Asking it this way feels progressive, virtuous, of course. Self-deprecating. But this way of phrasing the feeling also allows me to stand at some distance first. To not tie myself into any foolish or bodacious imaginings. 'Reluctant surrender' is dignified and detached until I know more... That's an old soul-posture, for sure.
As I’ve floated this phrase–reluctant surrender–and my sense of impatience or impotence with wordsmithing, I’ve received encouragement and confirmation of the sacred importance of writing. The gift of words given to me that the world needs right now. Not only that, one spirit-friend wisely poked my use of the words ‘reluctant surrender.’ Why not “a fully grounded "Awake" place of standing in a more simple kind of Truth-Writing?” ... “a blossoming shout of roaring happiness”? She wondered whether my choice of words was an ancestral echo in my own lineage. Like an ancestor (or many) carried an inherited disregard for the gift of words, even though many in my lineage are clearly immersed in such gift(s). My lineages are both self-deprecating, to our detriment often.
What might my own writing become were I to lean into it as a “blossoming shout of roaring happiness”? From where in my body would I write, to feel that and write from there? What would a “fully grounded ‘Awake’ place of standing” lead to? How do I know when I am in that kind of space?
The gift for me here is in speaking those last two phrases, letting them take root in my bodysoul with invitation to write from there: fully grounded Awake place of standing; a more simple kind of Truth-Writing; blossoming shout of roaring happiness.
It seems like my body is inviting a more deeply oxygenated, simple voice. Don’t worry about trying to make connections across polarized chasms. Don’t work so hard to feel the energies of others while you write what comes to you. Trust others to do their own work in what emerges, as you enjoy the play of words, the play of light, made available to you in sensation, breath, song.
Deep breath. Big smile. Time to release the first phrasing and practice into the second, third!
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