What risks are we willing to accept?

The Grail Maiden is a card I pull often. “ The Grail Maiden guides all who go in search of the vessel, offering them to drink.” That sounds simple enough. Lovely, right? How helpful and kind. But, let me draw your attention to the little word after guides, “all.” The Grail Maiden guides ALL who go in search of the well, offering them to drink. She does not only guide those she chooses, or those who are nice to her, or those who understand. She does not only guide those who respect boundaries. And so, often, she risks having her boundaries crossed. In the legends, the grail maidens are raped and otherwise mistreated by King Amangons and his men.

It’s interesting that in our cultural context, someone is considered strong in their compassion until someone else hurts them. Or they “allow” someone else to hurt them. And, then, sometimes we admire the fortitude and ability of those who can keep their hearts tender and loving while in distress, however, we don’t seem inspired to place any cultural priority on developing this skill.

Did you think the Maiden’s kindness was misplaced when you heard it put her in a vulnerable position? Think back, what was your inner dialog and internal response when you realized harm came to her through her open-heart?

When we talk about boundaries there is a lot of confusion, as if having “good boundaries” means you will not be mistreated. This isn’t the case. Having good boundaries means you will be more respectful of the organic boundaries that exist in the world. These boundaries don’t “belong” to anyone, they grow organically around needs. They are disrespected when we neglect elemental needs like life and the components of life, including loving-ness. They are neglected when we choose convenience over the Earth, when we choose our own comfort over another’s access, when bombs drop on families. Every war that has ever waged, every displacement of people, every employer who took more while their employees had less. Every system concerned more with bottom lines than wellbeing. Every bomb that drops on families. These things are all connected by so many tightly woven fibers, and through all of them runs a thread of disrespected boundaries. It is not the responsibility of an individual to protect themselves from harm, it is the responsibility of an individual to try not to harm. The entity with poor respect for boundaries is the one causing harm, not the one being harmed.

When we work with learning to be more respectful of boundaries, we are not working to control others so they will not harm us. This is impossible. We are working to understand, to feel out, where the needs are and how to attend to them in the context available. The Grail Maiden is a beautiful example of this in action. She was not protected from physical harm, however, she also did not forsake her spirit to protect her body.

Now, remember, not to slip into binary thinking here. I am not advocating that we not try avoid being physical harmed. I’m asking us to consider what we are willing to do, what actions are available to us, and to place priority on protecting our spirit. If the actions I must take to protect my body sever me from myself, they were not valuable. They are disrespectful to my own innate boundaries that grow around the need to be true and whole and connected to myself. If I must become a tool of oppression in order to protect my personal body, but not my spirit or the body of humanity, what is the point? Have I not already lost all I sought to protect?

Non-violence and compassionate action are about fidelity to our spirit so that it can maintain its connection with the whole. When we activate from a place of compassion we are engaging a promise to remain connected to our spirit while facing risk or danger.

The faith claim that joins me in serving individuals and communities is that connection and attachment are protective. We, humans, are tethered by these attachments to self, others, Earth, and Divinity so that they provide the optimal environment for us. When we maintain connection and attachment, we can navigate barriers or issues from a place of optimal well- being. These attachments do not resolve or prevent all problems, however, they make the risk of being alive easier to accept and navigate without falling into the trap of disconnection, disassociation, severance. I hear the call of this severing, it is like a searing scream, and I answer that call from individuals and the collective because Us collectively living without a deep sense of connections and attachment to self, each other, Earth, and Divinity feels (physically in my body) like an unraveling of all that holds everything in the universe together. It feels urgent that we attend to those disconnections as we would attend to someone who was not breathing.

If we really want a more compassionate world, we need to figure out how to be as concerned about the spirit of a person being unable to “breath” as we are about physical harm. We need to develop the capacity to take physical risks for the protection of our spirits. For generations we have been taught that we can protect our bodies at the cost of our spirits. And this simply isn’t true.

Celebrating in times of great sadness . . .

Maybe you are feeling less festive this year. That would make sense. The human world has been perpetuating particularly awful atrocities and we have borne witness to many of them. Some of us have struggled to bring an end to this human-on-human violence and our struggles continue, and will, for a very long time. We live in a polyconflict era. Really, we humans have been pushing the conflicts through the generations for some time. Pushing troubles into the future, and now, many of them ( ecological, political, social, economic) are too big to push further. And, its been years of these conflicts disrupting the lives. Lives we had become accustomed to living with these conflicts simmering rather than boiling over. These boiling-overs, though, have captured more of our collective attention. And, now we are more aware. We collectively see suffering where before we had not. More of us are committing to be a part of making the world a better place.

And, while it can feel weird to be festive and celebratory while holding such deep suffering for the world, I encourage you to stay with and explore that feeling.

Maybe it is valid. Maybe you have realized you were celebrating something not in alignment with who you were, or who you are becoming. That is very valuable to investigate. Rather than not celebrating when we feel this discomfort, lets find out what it is all about.

When we look closely, celebration is not about the exclusion of suffering, it’s inclusive of it. Inclusive of the risk inherent with life. In honor of it. And it recognizes that there are many barriers to peace.

In the late fall long nights, as I celebrate my festival of light, it is not about some perfect joy or some perfect magic. It is about honoring the difficult tasks that have been accomplished to prepare for winter. These celebrations honor that there are barriers to peace. What we celebrate is the light within us that recognizes peace and Love. We celebrate the desire to protect them. Here in the longest nights of the year, we know the winter is coming with its worst still ahead. We prepare ourselves to enter into that worst courageously. Prepare to meet spring again on the other side.

We humans can find so many answers to our own problems by remembering we are part of the greater world, not alone on this planet. The seasons, the plants, the stars, animals, and sea- they all have gifted us so much wisdom. The best way to honor nature in our spirituality is to accept our belonging, that we are part of these wisdoms. It is not just the seasons that are changing, it is us. It is not only the snow and fiercest winds that are coming, it is us again.

Even if your spirituality is not aligned with nature, even if you belong to a more formal religion, it is true that celebrations are about honoring what is good and what is hard. Authentic festivity comes from the embracing and participating in this risk of being alive. We see this in holidays, weddings, birth and death rituals. In all of these we humans, across religions and cultures, find ways to highlight love and its ability to soften the barriers to peace. We know life is hard, but in all these celebrations we recommit to doing the hard things together.

When we listen deeply, we find the meaning within each of these rituals.

They are about our ability to overcome the challenges. And I need more of that every year.

I’ve attached the Intentional Traditions planner below, it is designed to support us in finding intentional and meaningful ways to celebrate what is important to us. May we all have a season that supports us in bringing about more light and interconnection.

Intentional Traditions Planner

In Support of Peace . . .

October was a long-short blur of a month. November calendar days are slipping by like water under the bridge, and we still feel a sense of being in the same place. As if the water is running by us, around us, maybe even over us. While, this may present us with a feeling of grounded-ness, while stillness may feel more safe than motion- it is an illusion. We can be grounded and present in motion, actually, it is the only way. For time is always moving, and all is always changing. To be truly present with what is, we too must move and change.

We wish we could make transformation happen as soon as we feel a need for it. And that wishing is full of goodness. Please do not be discouraged by how little those wishes seem to affect the world. When we put those wishes into our every action- they do have an impact. Remember, we are the descendants of many, and the ancestors of more. We come from folks who have participated in the problems and the solutions. Those who have been working for peace have passed their wisdom through the generations, woven into volumes of literature, whispered into lullabies, passed through advances in all sorts of disciplines. Humans want to care for each other, and we have proven this by still being here. We also have, due to a great many unfortunate events, managed to get ourselves into a very violent cycle that isn’t in the best interest of ourselves, each other, or the rest of the planet.

We will not overpower the oppressive people. We will not ever have enough money to buy solutions. The systems we have will not offer us the solutions we seek. We will need to circumvent these systems for them to become obsolete. We will need to dream up new systems. We will need to prepare ourselves for that. And we will need to accept that it will not be fast. It will not happen fast enough. But our wishes do support that future, when we marry them to our actions. When we hope with our bodies. Hand in hand and don’t let go.

Three actions to support Peace :

My role as a coach and a teacher is to lend you tools and support you as you learn to use them yourself. I have faith in you and Us. You can use this list everyday for the rest of your life. Peace is a process. Not an outcome.

Educate yourself:

Understanding the history of the world, various regions, human development, world religions, governing and leadership styles, and concepts of oppression, liberation, and non-violence will make you less susceptible to misinformation and misunderstanding. It will make it less likely you are misused to abuse others. However, this is not enough on its own. We can never know everything. We must learn :

• to Interrogate our own reasoning and worldview

• to Synthesize information from diverse perspectives and sources

• Where to turn when we don’t have enough information

• How to lead and how to follow

Expand your emotional capacity:

Compassion is a prompting to relieve suffering. It is energizing. Compassion is an evolution of empathy. Empathy can lead to compassion or codependency. Co-dependent behaviors are sneaky, they can undermine our well-being and the well-being of others on the path to false comfort rather than true wisdom or security.

Expanding our capacity for compassion is protective, it involves also expanding our capacity for presence and all the elements that support presence.

Being overwhelmed is nothing to be ashamed of. And, we can build our capacity so we are able to stay engaged or rest and re-engage with conflict and suffering.

Being with suffering is an active state:

Can you be still in this action long enough to find the wisdom of the moment?

Plan to tend your body, mind, and spirit:

Accept and anticipate that peace requires our participation.

What supports can you offer yourself?

How can you anchor around your values?

Where do you turn when you need tending?

What brings you a sense of connection?

In what ways can you build new systems to meet basic needs?

How can resources be used differently to create new solutions?

Implement plans, structures, and supports to tend connection to self and each other.

You do not need to have answers in order to seek new solutions. Having more questions than answers is how we ignite transformation.

Finding our way . . .

War is always a failure of leadership. Violence, always a failure of creativity.

When we can experience failure without judgement, we will be closer to overcoming both.

A failure of creativity comes from a lack of resources. Not just a lack of basic need resources, we can still be highly creative without those ( it is an awesome and potent human quality). No, it’s a lack of deeper resources, inner resources depleted from the outside by other humans through imbalance of power.

Some times the only way to rebalance the power, is through the use of force. And, force is dangerous. It’s one of the most dangerous tools we can access. It takes great skill to use force lovingly. We must always be careful when we use force to rebalance power they we don’t become what we were trying to escape. That we don’t take it inside us. It takes great wisdom and skill.

The current evidence would indicate we do not collectively possess this level of wisdom and skill. We must find the courage to practice. We must concern ourselves with the safety of our spirits, must do more to protect against the separation from self. And from each other. And from Earth. We will never find the peace or security we seek otherwise.

These are not leading questions. I don’t offer them with a pre determined answer. We will and do encounter countless complex conflicts. These are orienting questions for when we feel confusion, or when we need more information. Like moon light in the dark of night, these questions help make sense of the shapes we see.

They also reinforce our sense of connection. Help us recognize our own position of power. Positions of power change with context. If we are practicing presence we are more likely to recognize these changes and support ourselves. Our goal should always be powering with. Remembering that protects our cause and our spirits.