Messages From The Walkway
I see you, my friend.
I see you piecing together the fragments of life to make beauty. I see you wondering whether the undercurrents of life will hold you. I see you working harder than you wanted to. I see you wanting to feel held as much as you hold.
Allow a moment of silence for settling into the breath before the next step.
.
.
.
This last month, I needed to be held tightly by the Great Hands beyond. This body I carry is changing in tough and promising ways. This body we carry is changing in tough and promising ways. I imagine these Great Hands working something like this, behind the scenes, for each of us:
Steadily they undo, weave, sort through, and sustain us for these conditions of life. There is an urging in life itself, wanting to hold us and call us back.
A few weeks ago, sitting amongst the Mohican mountains, I received unexpected wisdom from a new comrade. It turned out her work explores the very conditions I am navigating with my health. She offered me a new language, new resources, and a community to call in. Just two hours before we met, I had called out through my journal entry for exactly this. And there she was: a beautiful Black woman handing me precisely what I needed to call my Spirit back. Life was returning to me.
I wonder how we might cultivate such regenerative devotional practices. As we walk in sacred practice, we acknowledge our position within the hands of life. These are hands that lay the foundation for the next step we take towards eternal unification and liberation. Perhaps this is the essence of liberation: Life returning to life. Life calling out to life. Life being held by life.
I returned recently to Joy Harjo's poem, For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet, for guidance with this inquiry. Some excerpts (and my reflections) from this poem's wisdom:
"Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there without time."
I wonder how time, at least the human-interpreted confinement of it, acts as both barrier and doorway through which we are called to return to the hands of life, our guardians. This was true long before empire dared to try (and fail, over and over, might I add) to keep us from knowing who the hell we are.
“The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.”
I believe waymaking is in our bones. Some ways give to more life. Some ways splinter, attempting to separate us from ourselves and from each other. Can we endeavor to witness the splinters in our own hearts and in the hearts of our kin? Can we see how that splintering enacts misdirection? A new mapping is forming from this season. Harjo offers:
“When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.”
Perhaps we will discover how we are both the keepers and the kept, mirroring each other in syncopated response: I've been waiting for you all along… I've been waiting for you all along… I've been waiting for you all along.
I am deep in this exploration through this season of life, calling back the fragments to transmute them into nourishing particles of light. They allow my mind, heart, and belly to steadily take their place as the beacons for this time. I am inviting you to call your Spirit back to do the same. This is tough work, but we know new maps form with each contemplative step we take. The direction reveals itself through your movement.
So walk that walk, my friend. Walk that walk.
For Your Inquiry
What are you feeling connected to as you move, shift, and shape in this season?
What are you wanting to slow down to, rely on, relinquish?
If capacity allows, I invite you to take a walk/move/journey with no phone and no music, just you. Try not to have a goal or path in mind. What do you notice guides you? Is it the sound, the feeling, the presence? What if you go with them?
