The Call for CONNECTION  

 

Hi friends

 

I hope this finds you easing into 2022. We made it through another turbulent year!

 

 

A confession: I spent hours on a completely different version of this newsletter — a long reflection on grief. It made a lot of sense and had some smarty-pants deep thoughts: that the trauma-scape of these two years (plus the preceding four here in the U.S.) have produced immense losses for all of us, that we have yet to mourn all that’s passed, that there’s a difference between grief and mourning, that there are fewer and fewer collective rituals for the latter, that we should learn from cultures that expressively mourn (especially wailing), that without these processes we can get stuck in our grief, that, that, that…

 

What I wrote is all true (and I vote for a future massive, communal mourning process — a global wailing to acknowledge and release our many griefs), but that newsletter did not meet my renewed intentions for how I want to engage with you. In these moonly messages, I aspire to connect from my heart not my head, to write from experience not concepts, to share authentically where I am at in that moment. As a t-shirt I recently saw on the subway said: the world is changed by your example not by your opinion.

 

These days, I continue wintering — I am slow, reflective, and less outwardly engaged. Sometimes I have guilt about this. Whenever I feel I should be “doing” more, I ask myself this question: What is mine to do not because I think it’s the right thing but because it feels entirely mine?

 

Feelings of guilt and duty are not new to me, and it’s not the first time I’ve looked at my conditioning. It takes ongoing practice to get curious about my patterns (from family, culture and the dominant society), break the ones that are no longer helpful, and instead identify my unique core needs, desires, and talents. For me, this type of inquiry and investigation requires a substantial amount of time alone which means saying no to external distractions. I can only answer the question of what is mine to do through practices of deep inner-knowing. And inner-knowing takes inner-noing.

 

Not everyone has quite as much time for this work of inner -knowing as I currently do. I am in a (cancer-induced) period of particularly intensive transformation. I have been feeling, contemplating, journaling, drawing on my many years of meditation and dharma study, also – simply drawing, collaging, stretching, listening to music, reading, feeling some more, working with a teacher, working with a coach, watching the sky, talking to Frederic and friends, studying astrology and tarot and numerology, crying, laughing, listening listening listening...

 

I was working with my amazing coach this week and we were talking/laughing about whether or not we are in end times (I highly recommend only working with folks who can joke about Armageddon while leading you through profound personal development). She asked what kind of response I would hope to have if there was a great disaster. The first thing that came to me was the Cellist of Sarajevo. During the siege of his city, after a mortar round had killed twenty-two people waiting for food, he took his cello to the ruined square where this tragedy had occurred. Everyday for twenty two days, under threat of sniper fire, he played Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor. (In thinking about it these past couple of days, I realized that, inevitably, he was playing for the soldiers as well the civilians.) I told Chela, “I hope I’d be like that guy.”

 

Of course, I don’t mean I hope I’d play a cello; that would be terrible for everyone involved. I mean that when the worst difficulties come (and, again, maybe these are them), I hope I would do my version of “playing the cello in the midst of war.”

 

I hope I am.

 

Frederic and I recently watched the disaster movie satire Don’t Look Up (not going to give you a big spoiler here but skip this next part if you hate knowing absolutely anything about something you have yet to see). To me, the most interesting character was the seemingly lost youth played by Timothée Chalamet. His response to imminent destruction came from a place of inner-knowing. He definitely did not have any traditionally useful expertise (not like the scientists around him), but, in the end (times), by being exactly himself, he provided the most profound solace that could have been offered in that moment.

 

I don’t have solutions for the massive challenges we are facing, that we will face. But if my life so far offers any clues, I can’t imagine awareness and kindness ever not being useful. Humor seems to help. I strive always to cultivate love. And I will continue to ask myself, What is it that may seem as useless as playing the cello during a war but feels absolutely necessary for me to do?

 

May this year bring our world many needed blessings.

 

With love,

Sebene