Tag Archives: culture

Earth Ethos Food Philosophy

decolonising, values, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Lukas
 
At Earth Ethos retreats we’ll do our utmost to provide you with nourishing food that aligns with your personal needs. But I thought I’d provide a little more detail to give you a sense of what this means to us practically in terms of values and intention. 

Food as decolonising and reindigenising 

Like everything we do, decolonising and reindigenising is at the heart of our food philosophy. We define it quite simply as: where possible, minimising our reliance on the transactional industrial food system, and where possible, consuming food that has been raised, caught, harvested, gathered, or traded in balance and harmony with nature. Practically, this might mean:

– Growing as much as we can right here on the property including fruit, vegetables, berries and eggs; 
 
– Serving locally caught seafood (or better yet seafood we caught ourselves!);
 
– Sourcing meat from animals that are overpopulated and/or feral, like venison, or wild/indigenous, like kangaroo or wallaby; and
 
– Trading food for other goods and services with local people.

Clean 

Clean is another concept that could mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but in our case it means food that is minimally processed, with as few industrial non-food additives (gums, fillers and the like) as possible. 

Creative 

I generally don’t comport to written recipes. I also find it fun to mirror our interconnected and global world (and retreat participants!) by playing with fusion flavours.

On the other hand, being in rural area with often limited access to certain products, being creative can mean being resourceful in cooking culturally authentic food with what’s available. 

Hearty

Doing hard spiritual work and ceremony is draining, and our retreats will usually involve a fast of some kind. It is therefore one of our food values to serve meals that I would describe as “hearty”, particularly at night when it’s cold for dinner. Think stews, curries and the like. We need to fill our bellies sometimes to sit back and process things and feel grounded. It is also a way of connecting with ideas of abundance. 

A final note on the “middle way” and avoiding neuroticism. 
 
It is a faith and conviction of mine that despite some very clear ethical and practical dilemmas in the world — animal welfare, climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution etc — my best contribution to the world is to show up in my body and heart, and not get lost in grinding “fix-it” thoughts and neuroticism. 

In short, this means that if I’m doing the shopping and I get overwhelmed looking for right cut of the most ethical chicken for a reasonable price, I might just grab whatever is there and move on. Whether we like it or not, the collective consciousness or karma is also ours, and putting ourselves into a state of overwhelm and neuroticism won’t change this. In practical terms, I will often default to the “middle way” when the ideal is not available, but as a buddhist lama once said, “the middle way is a 8 lane highway”! 

Reach out

Please advise us of any food needs or preferences prior to retreat, and we’ll do everything we can to accomodate you and leave you feeling nourished. =) 
 
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Graceful Leadership

Culture, decolonising, Spiritual Skills, values, , , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Lukas

There are many different ways to reflect upon the tumult of world right now. Indeed, the very sense that things are particularly tumultuous is in some ways a mirage, and like all mirages, is  born of perspective.

Reflecting to a fellow millennial about the relative tranquility of the 1990s of my childhood, it didn’t take long to think of some examples that demonstrate the extent to which this was not true for everyone. The Rwandan genocide and the war in the Balkans immediately came to mind, as well as famine in Somalia, the Oklahoma City, Port Arthur, the Japanese death cult that released nerve gas on the subway. The 90s weren’t really that tranquil.

But like all things that feel deeply true, and therefore should not be dismissed outright, I can’t ignore the sense that there is something different about this moment in time. I think this is especially so for those of us who live in the Western world, but if we expand that out to people deeply impacted by the goings on in Western world, it seems pretty clear that everyone is affected to one degree or another.

The key to making sense of all of this might be to open ourselves to the possibility or multiple truths, dualities and both/ands. This may need intentional nudging given that most of us have been socialised to believe in one overriding and logically derived ‘truth.’

Perhaps we can simply say that things are different, but also the same. In Indigenous science, the practicality of this might hinge on where we are, who we’re talking to or what we’re focusing on. In other words, truth as something fluid, and relational. Or it could just be a duality.

So what IS different about this moment?

Of late, I’ve been struck by the extent to which so many of the problems in the world can be put down to poor or unwise leadership, and by extension (though I’m not sure in which direction this flows), real eldership.

Bad leadership is of course not new. It is so not new that many people speaking from a modern perspective utterly saturated in bad leadership for hundreds of years, argue that it is more or less innate and inevitable. Such a perspective sees greed as omnipresent, force as the strongest power, and power inherently leading to domination and corruption. I cannot stress how wrongheaded and unwise these kinds of maximalist perspectives are in my opinion, but suffice to say, I do see it as useful to see this darkness as an inevitable part of human nature.

The potential to play host to the psycho-spiritual virus of greed (beautiful elucidated as a concept called Wetiko/Windigo in some Native American cultures ) and putting one’s own needs too far above those of fellow humans (and ultimately, the planet), is clearly endemic, and in a sense, a permanent potentiality of the human shadow. But it does not have to be so dominant as it is at present. Many cultures knew and understood this, and created environments to fortify against it by actively nurturing and fostering wiser ways of living (including of course good leadership), and also creating taboos that served to suppress it.

So again, what’s different about now compared with recent history? I feel the need to answer that question with other questions:

To what extent do the performative aspects of good leadership actually mean better leadership and less Wetiko? And is it better to have the symptoms and impact of bad leadership show themselves more subtlety and insidiously, inviting more trickery and deception into our lives, or is it better to have things boil over and fester openly, destructively and chaotically?

Here are two stark examples of these ways of being: the US President sending the Secretary of State to the UN Security Council to make the case for the 2003 Invasion of Iraq (and then doing it anyway when they said no) versus the US President not bothering with anything of the kind before taking the President of Venezuela; Israeli leaders throughout most of its history officially espousing a two state solution to the ongoing violence (even when actions belied this intention) versus the current Israeli Prime Minister declaring his open hostility to the idea, and arguably therefore, any hope of peace or freedom and self determination for Palestinians.

To me, of the many concepts that we can use as an easy synonym for ‘wise leadership’, the simple act of being graceful during hard times, especially with rivals or people who threaten you, is one of the better ones.

Grace is defined in the dictionary in two main ways:

    • smoothness and elegance of movement, and
    • courteous good will.

Its proto Indo European deep root is *gʷerH (don’t ask me to decode that!) and relates to praise and welcome. The possibilities for a rich tapestry of wise leadership and eldership under such a concept are profound. It means responding, not reacting. Welcoming not just people, but events, which means not rejecting things existentially. It means being grateful for hard things, not just easy things.

But back to the question. How much does what I’m going to call ‘performative grace’ indicate real grace, and how much do we need it?

To start with, ‘performative grace’ is on a continuum. Not as good as something more real, substantive and completely embodied, but meaningful, and better than no attempt at grace. And of course, we need to be on the lookout for genuine intentions versus pure trickery. Trying to do better versus merely pretending to care.

When the current US President was elected for the second time, I chided someone I know for saying “he’s no worse” than the other candidate. I had the benefit of a close up perspective of life in the United States as a social worker and knew that many vulnerable people were about to suffer even more.

But reflecting now, I think even beyond the direct impact of destructive actions, there is a clear difference between current leadership and what has come before in terms of the intention, or performance, of grace. And this matters.

To me it is clear that even a pretence of grace results in less short term suffering. The mechanisms for this are too innumerable and complex to be fully explained rationally. We just know it when we experience its impact, including in our own individual lives. Intention is an impactful force in and of itself.

So the more grace embodied in our leadership, even if it’s mostly intentional, the less short term suffering there’ll be in the world. But it’s beneath us — beneath our potential — to be forever stuck at only performative grace. Perhaps we need the most toxic and graceless leadership elements in our midst to dominate for a while in order to expose more vividly those blocks stopping us from having leaders that genuinely embody grace more fully.

We can grieve that we will all be hurt by this, and at the same time we must not only grieve, but allow ourselves the natural instinct of struggle to make things better right now. This might mean settling for genuine performative grace if that’s truly the best we can do. It often feels like the best I can do in my own individual life, with my own self-leadership, as depressing as that may feel.

However difficult, holding the paradox that we can both accept the need for harsh medicine whilst also striving to ease suffering along the journey is an important spiritual skill, for any person, culture or society.

Reflection: How can we be better at accepting where we’re at whilst also aiming for better, all from a place of grace?

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Parenting with Indigenous Science

Culture, decolonising, Indigenous Science, relationships, spiritual skills, values, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Blog by Valerie
 
There’s so much parenting advice, and so little I resonate with, so I thought I’d share my perspective.
 
Parenting is about building relationships through developmentally appropriate leadership (which is related to a previous post on governance and the YouTube video below on sacred leadership/eldership by Tjana Goreng Goreng, PhD). Kids, whether our own, family, or community, challenge us to confront triggers, fears and insecurities, as well as allow us to more clearly see our strengths, values and capacity to connect. 
 

 

When babies cry out we give them instant attention and soothing, but that is not always a good idea with older kids, much less adults! Often we set patterns into motion because of our own limitations (read about some of mine here). I knew a mother who considered her adult daughter mentally and emotionally fragile (which I didn’t). She martyred herself to avoid her daughter feeling pain and experiencing certain struggles. But some of that seemed to me (and the daughter’s therapist) necessary growing pain for the daughter’s development. And I felt the mother was projecting her own mental and emotional fragility onto her daughter because she felt unable to hold space in certain ways. They both seemed a bit stifled. 
 
I say that with deep compassion, because we all have limits and struggles. Part of the fulfilment of any spiritual work, and certainly parenting, is bringing our deepest challenges to the surface so we can make peace with ourselves (and our ancestors, younger and older!) to become even better leaders — i.e. more powerful, grounded, centred and humble human beings.
 
When I look at my child, I see some struggles she’s come here with, some that feel linked to her father and that ancestry, some linked to me and mine, and some connected to her context and the land and ancestors where we live. (Ie ancestors of spirit, lineage, and land). When I am able to shift something that she’s also carrying, I expect her to have a big emotional response because we are connected with very open hearts. My shifting innately moves her heart and affects our shared ancestors, and she has to process it too. All of that emotion is likely to also affect my husband, because we’re all very sensitive. So when I feel something shift, I both feel excited and tend to brace myself to be able weather some emotional storms that my leadership has set into motion. 
 
I’m very aware that being committed to deep spiritual work asks a lot of myself and people who choose to be intimate with me. I don’t feel like I have a choice, though, in the way a singer can’t (or ought not!) stop themselves from busting into song throughout the day. To stifle it is to self destruct and snuff out my life force. Parenting feels the same in that it’s not a choice, it’s an honour and responsibility that defines the structure of my life.
 
I remember a book that made news years ago about parenting being all joy and no fun. To me, that says the parent is overwhelmed and may not know any other way to lead and set up their life. I’ve seen quite a bit of a so-called ‘gentle parenting’ approach, which feels like a reaction to authoritarian parenting and actually seems to me to stress out the children by giving them too much leadership space and not enough containing and consequences to uphold values and norms.
 
I appreciate some elements of the ‘sturdy parenting‘ approach and agree that there’s a big difference between punishment and consequences (Image from here).
 
And I add to that an Indigenous worldview in which there’s a huge difference between deeming behaviours as unacceptable and judging a person as unacceptable.
 
It seems to me in an effort to limit the destructive impact of the existential judgment and punishment wound in the western worldview, there arose a popular idea that yelling at kids destroys their self esteem. I do not agree. I think expressing anger and showing that it’s an intense emotion that we all experience is part of healthy leadership. And after I express anger, I offer a cuddle. I tell my child that I love her no matter what I’m feeling, and that there’s nothing wrong with her. (And if I was angry with someone else, I make sure to tell her it wasn’t about her and still offer a cuddle if she wants.) She now says to us, ‘Sometimes we get angry’ with the same tone as ‘Sometimes we get sad’ or ‘Sometimes we get wrinkles’ (referring to what happens in the bath). It shows me she feels that it’s okay to experience intense emotions within herself and with others in her environment (Image from here).
 
Recently I sat down and cried before bed and told her that I felt sad because she had been very hard on me that day. It was the highest defiance and worst day of listening yet. I could tell she felt bad. She came over and hugged me and said, “It’s okay, I love you no matter what, Mommy.”  That helped fulfil me both as a parent and helped my inner child feel safer than I had with my mother.
 
Parenting, like other forms of leadership in Indigenous science, is an exercise in unconditional love and existential acceptance, while embodying core values and cultural norms and creating consequences for breaching them. I hope it resonates with you, and thanks for reading!
 
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Trickery of heartfelt words

culture, decolonising, healing, relationships, spiritual skills, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

Many of us are familiar with the four (or five) agreements concept of spiritual teachings Miguel Ruiz wrote about based on ancient Toltec wisdom. The first is: Be impeccable with your word. It is much easier to be tricky with our words than our actions. Actions require lack of awareness, sneakiness or even betrayal at times to follow through on a trick, whereas being tricky with our words seems to have become so common that it’s often forgotten a few minutes after we’ve done it.

Unless you are in intimate relationship with someone like me who has an elephant’s memory for words. Growing up, watching how well someone’s words were aligned with their actions helped me judge how safe I was with them, because my home environment was so dangerous and my nervous system so often triggered that I couldn’t rely on feeling safe in my body to discern which people were safe to be around. Even now in my forties after years of estrangement from my family of origin and many healing experiences, I am still uncovering layers of feelings of unsafety and relational dynamics where I was tricked because I loved someone and gave too much benefit of doubt when they told me something I wanted to hear and their actions didn’t quite align…

I had a conversation with a friend about colonisation a few years ago, and she said an elder told her that the British didn’t have superior manpower or military strength when they invaded; they overpowered the people with their words. I have written before about unconscious sorcery, and it continues to be something I experience and witness regularly. But this blog is about the way we use our words, and the tricks our minds play on us and those we love when we believe what we say (at least in the moment).

I have had experiences with people who are in their hearts in a moment, but then dis-ease such as Wetiko takes over and their minds get to work changing the story and tricking them. How many of us say something and mean it in a moment, then think about it later and realise we don’t still feel that way, then go back and correct it with the person? It’s hard to do that. And yet those words sit there, and we may not realise how much of our relationship is built on them and the emotional power they possess.

I see this as one of the greatest tricks playing out right now in the world; on a big scale, there are people saying things like: “[Y]ou always want to go with what’s come out of his mouth rather than look at what’s in his heart” about Donald Trump’s incongruent words and actions. On a small scale how many of us say “I’m good” when asked how we are, when in fact we do not feel good, or at least not wholly so. It took me a few years to work out ways of navigating these interactions gracefully in shops and places where people are meaning to make small talk but I don’t want to smile and lie and build that energy into my day. I find saying something I  like tends to work, e.g.: “How are you today?” “I’m appreciating the sunshine outside.” “Oh yes, it’s a hot one.” (Image from here)

Some friends have told me I expect too much from people. That bums me out, because I don’t expect more than I ask of myself. Others say, just take people at their word and decide if they’re safe or not based on actions, but it feels too harshly black-and-white to me to put people into categories labelled ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’.

I had a conflict with a friend many years ago, and we talked about it and made up, but I felt insecure with her for years afterwards. When I brought that feeling up a few times she told me I was being crazy; then when another conflict arose and I said I felt hurt by some of her behaviour, she immediately brought up our conflict from five years prior and said she had forgiven me for that so I had no right to bring up something else, I had to just forgive her as well. I certainly didn’t feel forgiven! I felt like my insecure feelings had unfortunately been vindicated. A few months later when she wanted to meet and put everything behind us, I felt like I couldn’t trust her anymore, so there was no point. Without the potential for building trust, I can’t feel safe in a relationship. So even thought it really hurt, I had to let it go.

I do believe that she believed she had forgiven me. And I don’t know if she didn’t know how to or what the block was, but when it became clear she was still upset about the first conflict and was denying it, I lost hope for healing together. And that friend who talked about colonisation being a conquering of words, well, she conquered the doors to my heart with some powerful words that it turns out were not impeccably used. I can accept that we both were tricked in good faith, and I can rebuild trust by talking about it, so the words between us change and we can do our best to be more impeccable this time around. The responsibility of using our word belongs to each of us to co-create a healthy world together! (Image from here)

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Clean & Dirty Pain

Culture, decolonising, healing, relationships, spiritual skills, values, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

I recently came across the concepts of clean and dirty pain. This is a well written deep dive if you want to read it before I share my perspective. I’ll describe it as follows:

    • Clean pain is when we accept and move through what life gives us in fullness of emotions and experience; and
    • Dirty pain it when we resist, deny, and layer shame, blame and guilt on top of the pain life has brought us so that we multiply our suffering and so as to punish or even torture ourselves. (Image from here)

It’s been my mission for some years now to honour all energies, feel all feelings, and witness all thoughts with acceptance, love and compassion. It’s been especially important this week as we’ve been a target of some online abuse, as well as rejection from a few people we care about who have become bogged down in shame. I am used to being a presence that some people find it hard to be with, but that doesn’t make it easy! I have purposely been to many dark spaces, and I have honed some fierceness through some soul-wrenching boundary-setting, and I understand that not everyone wants that mirror. Yet more and more of us seem called to move through intense pain, and it seems at times that our only choice is how clean or dirty will the path we take be.

I think about how those who are brave enough to share something soul-led, something real, in a world that is so often about superficial image and illusion, in a world that is so quick to judge, to dismiss, to be outraged and unkind, are those who will save this world…To be able [] to be ourselves, to share of ourselves, to have access to the dark parts of Self to bring forth what we will from our personal Underworld is perhaps the point of the human quest, or at least one of the main bullet points.–Mary Shutan on Facebook

I’ve written a few times about trauma being neurobiologically encoded in our brains at the intersection of disgust/aversion and terror. That Western science knowledge has really helped me to judge when I need to move through something painful and when I’m potentially re-traumatising myself. After many years, I now feel like my instincts and flow are trustworthy. It makes the pain a lot easier to be with when I trust that it’s valuable, and I trust when I feel moved to shy away or go into it directly.

Accepting clean pain might sting for a day or two, but it doesn’t linger or fester.

So, to the people who have been sharing disrespect and rage with us recently, we feel your pain and pray that by grounding your projections and reflecting compassion back as best we can, that you are able to feel something more than overwhelm.

And we want everyone to know that however overwhelmed you feel in a moment, you’re not carrying it alone. With thanks to Shannon of Providencia Waco for sending us this song by Alexandra Blakely, we invite you to close your eyes and receive this musical medicine:

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Transitions

Culture, Decolonising, Healing, Relationships, Spiritual Skills, values, , , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

Years ago when I was practicing restorative justice/discipline in schools, what consistently came up as the toughest aspect of change were periods of transition. Teachers said, when the kids are in class we can get into a good space together, then the bell rings and they transition into the hall and it’s instant mayhem and reverting to old patterns. They reported a similar struggle with teacher staff meetings getting into a good space, but interactions in the break room not feeling great. Transition spaces were the last to be impacted by efforts to change the school culture and embed restorative values. (Image from here)

2º- LA MÉTÉO | Le Baobab Bleu

We’re in a period of transition at the moment of shifting boundaries with people, some we have known a long time and connected with deeply; shifting visions of how we’re spending our time day to day getting ready to facilitate retreats on the land here; and recently shifting our last connection with commercial or Christian Christmas to a simple seasonal solstice celebration. The past month has brought up feelings of increased freedom, loss and grief, isolation, and a witnessing and cleansing of deep roots so that we ground where we are with as much integrity as possible. (Image from here)

The Mythmakers - Nanda Maiki

I understand the trickiness of transitions; we tend to find it easier to do things by habit. But what if we have habits that we don’t like or don’t feel great? Removing oneself from collective habits, such as getting together and giving gifts on December 25, if one realises that such a habit doesn’t feel authentic, is hard work. And while it feels good to be more in alignment, it doesn’t initially feel great to purposely do mundane things on such days. It’s like a come-down from a collective program. It helps to remind myself that we’re always in transition, and being attuned to the land and seasonal cycles of the Earth means being flexible and ready to engage with sudden change. (Image from here)

Milankovitch Cycles – Obliquity | Green Comet

In social spaces it seems like people with means can pay to insulate themselves from having to experience unwanted transition. For example, if it hasn’t snowed and your holiday is already booked, you can expect snow to be manufactured and needn’t rely on winter weather or worry about the effects of climate change. So when some celebrities criticise California for not having enough fire fighters, while simultaneously hiring private ones and trying to avoid paying tax, I feel a sense of relief that class, entitlement and material privilege doesn’t insulate anyone from the need to transition and adapt to change. (Image from here)

4.5 Phases and Motions of the Moon – Astronomy

Lukas and I have been reflecting recently how we don’t have many people in our lives who could see us when we were younger and still know us and can see us now, as we have changed our lives and identities have evolved quite a bit as we’ve grown up. I realise that isn’t everyone’s journey, and I think it is more common than we tend to collectively admit. I find it deeply valuable when we allow each other to change and remain in relationship and make an effort to witness each other throughout seasons and cycles, whether in human-human relationships, relationships with a place, with animals or plants or ancestors. I invite you to reflect how much you value that.

Exercise: Think of someone you witnessed change their life and sense of identity. How have you supported that transition? How have you projected a ‘past self’ onto that person and had to change/challenge your perspective?

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With Dignity and Respect for All

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Blog by Valerie

Earlier in my ancestral healing journey when I set boundaries, I would tell ancestors who couldn’t support me and my core values to go. I had heard a few people advise to only work with healed ancestors, though I’m still not quite sure what that means. All our human ancestors are somewhat healed and somewhat wounded. Sure, some are wiser and more healed than others, just like people living now. And even ancestors we may refer to as ‘enlightened masters’ have blind spots and things to learn. No one’s infallible.

It felt important for a while to build my strength and skills to take space and even reject some behaviours and values, to avoid certain conflicts. But I find that what we reject tends to comes back to us seeking deeper acceptance. And since I don’t believe in existential judgement, I needed to learn to coexist with all my ancestors. If there’s a crocodile in our environment, we need to learn to live with it, how to protect ourselves and avoid it as best we can. Because that’s where we are living now, and that being has just as much value here as we do, whatever feelings we have about them. (Image from here)

Aboriginal people, through thousands of years of living with crocodiles never have considered that they are dangerous animals. We have always lived with them. They lived their own life and we lived our own ways, as long as there is common respect for each other.

–Gularrwuy Yunupil’u in Living with crocodiles (ABC documentary)

How do we respectfully, even vigorously disagree when we feel that others are acting in ways that are disrespectful and undignified? From arrogant ‘I know better’s to moral judgements, to shameful denials to self serving greed or even something as deplorable as genocide, so many of our behaviours are rooted in existential judgement. Such judgements take us out of the web of life and create existential hierarchies. Wetiko creeps in, and we start to believe stories of supremacy. If we want to embody connection, then we have to make space for really tough stuff like experiences of existential judgment from others and the painful impact of destructive behaviour.

I have written before about estrangement from my family of origin. I still have dreams about many of them and experience connection. Sometimes I feel like we have worked through things in dream states, and other times I feel like the same dynamics that I walked away from are still present. 

For a few years I took space from some members of Lukas’s family due to unacknowledged behaviours that had destructive impacts on both me as an individual and us as a couple. We started slowly reconnecting after our little one was born because Lukas wanted her to get to know them, and I respected that. I don’t feel that different than I did before, but I feel like we are better equipped to maintain boundaries and protect ourselves than we used to be. 

Interestingly more of Lukas’s ancestors who have rejected me have been coming to me in dream states and telling me how they feel and why they’ve been so hard on us, that I’m not Christian and pull him away from Christianity, I’m not focused solely on his career and have one of my own, I took too long to have a child and am only having one, I ask too much of him around the house–all sorts of criticisms. In another culture (like my Jewish-Sumerian lineage), someone would have yelled at me about all that, but the Anglo Celtic culture struggles to speak directly, and often struggles to speak their truth. I now have more stories for what I’ve been feeling and behaviours that still play out, whether it impacts me directly or helps me witness patterns and struggles in the family with more clarity and compassion. I don’t yet feel like I’ve been welcomed into the family or have social belonging. I feel overall like I’ve been begrudgingly accepted, especially since I’ve had ‘their’ child, so that I’ll always be in the family tree now and there’s no point trying to break our marriage now.

For a while I resisted working with Lukas’s ancestors. I felt like that was his responsibility, and I was pretty full working with my own. As work with mine calmed down and we decided to get pregnant, I figured if some of Lukas’s ancestors would rather work with me that I had capacity. I want to support healing and prevent my child from inheriting intergenerational trauma as best I can. It’s been interesting if pretty unpleasant for the most part. But making space for such experiences feels important in the inner and outer world right now. Grace and compassion are so valuable. There’s a lot of conflict in the world. I think it will be a lot easier to work through it when we collectively accept as a baseline that all of us on the planet, human and nonhuman, are inherently worthy of dignity and respect.

Existential judgment may be the most destructive behaviour we humans engage in. And when we do, we add to our sense of shame. I have been noticing lately how efforts to avoid feeling such shame seem to be linked to an increase ghosting behaviours. So much to make space for and pray for healing about. We can be very spiritually enriched at the moment if we can avoid overwhelm! (Image from here)

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On Gossip

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Blog by Valerie
When you hear the word gossip do mostly negative images of talking about people when they’re not there come to mind? Does it make you feel uncomfortable? Like everything, there’s a dark and a light side to gossip, and it’s something I’ve been reflecting on lately.
I remember years ago reading a story about gossip in an African community being vital to controlling the spread of HIV; a few men were denying they had the virus but their former partners knew otherwise and spread information through women’s gatherings. Gossip, when used with care, can be used to warn and protect and to build trust.
Gossip | telling some secret.... what secrets can there be b… | FlickrI have found in numerous cultures a high level of judgement towards gossip, and a number of times I have felt like someone in such a culture has let me down by not warning me so I could protect myself. A few years ago I was sent to facilitate Aboriginal community consultations outside the city where I lived. I did not know the local politics, but my manager and other staff did. No one told me to expect a former executive with a vendetta towards the organisation would show up and cause trouble. He took the microphone we were passing around for comments and attacked me and the work. Someone stood up for me and pointed out I was indigenous too, not Anglo Australian like he accused me of being, and I tried after he stormed out to get the group back on track. It was tough. Afterwards when I called my manager, she said oh, he always does that, he hates us. I was floored she had an attitude of now you know, you’ve had your trial by fire with him too and hadn’t warned me. (Image from here)
If it were a hot piece of metal, she’d have told me ‘don’t touch it, it’ll burn you’. But for many, if the concern is about a person, it’s silence and watching and only sharing experiences after the other person has been hurt too. I would much rather someone warn me, and not just watch me learn the hard way, whether it’s about a concerning person or object!
Duty To Warn - Free of Charge Creative Commons Handwriting imageI tend to err on the side of sharing things that feel like warnings about concerning behaviours or values conflicts. I also share things I find especially hard to witness and want help with when I feel that others might be able to hold the story with compassion or offer me insight. I see many people who are averse to gossip both titillated with taboo interest in it as well as acting nervous. Interestingly, people who lean into caring gossip sharing I find tend to be less judgemental than those who shy away. It’s as if those who avoid it are scared of being judged so they want to protect themselves and others from that, even at the expense of improving protection. (I say caring gossip sharing because intention matters, and it feels different than spreading rumours or not letting someone live down one poor decision.) (Image from here)
I feel a sense of responsibility to share some personal experiences. And for behaviour that’s dangerous, I may also share a story from someone I trust. Some years ago I attended a spiritual group, and after a while brought a friend along. After some months I started seeing the leader misuse power, and by then my friend was a regular. I talked to her about concerns it was starting to feel cult-like to explain why I left. I still felt a bit guilty I had brought her into it, but at least I had shared my process so she could make up her own mind. (She did leave eventually.) But I found it hard to talk it through and reconnect with her afterwards though we tried.
Avoiding talking through things is really hard for me as I struggle to rebuild trust, but it’s common in some cultures to practice forgetting or face saving. When I worked in clergy abuse healing, I met a number of families who had gossiped enough to know which priest was an abuser and who in the family had been abused, but had not yet talked to each other directly. To me that is a dark side of gossip – there needs to be some direct follow through if something concerning comes to light, not just gossip.
Secret | Everyone has a secret to tell....what's yours? | val.pearl ...A friend recently asked members of her family if they had noticed concerning dynamics between her and her mother when she was growing up. They said yes. So she asked why they didn’t say anything at the time. And to they responded that it was between the two of them. I do not agree. I feel that social responsibility is more complex than that. (Image from here)
I once lost a close friend of eight years when I told her I was concerned she was in a domestic violence relationship with her husband, and that she was feeding that dynamic out of guilt that she had cheated by putting him in a position to punish her as she kept the secret. She did not speak to me for five years after I really that, and when she got back in touch she said she heard others say something similar a few years after I did when they didn’t think she was listening, and that she had recently divorced. She said what I did was really dangerous and risky. I told her I felt that as a friend I needed to be willing to risk ending the relationship to speak loving truth. The next step after gossip can make all the difference in demonstrating our values of protection, care, and believing in each other’s strength. As is discerning when it’s appropriate to gossip and with whom. Some secrets are meant to be kept, others are not. (That’s a dark side of loyalty, a subject for a future blog maybe!)
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Honouring lack

healing, Indigenous Science, relationships, values, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Blog by Valerie
It is autumn here, and at the recent equinox we did a ceremony of thanksgiving. I like to read the Thanksgiving Address of the Haudenosaunee peoples. I find it really beautiful. We also asked for a few things, which later felt wrong to me, like it was the season of giving thanks for what we had, not to plant seeds and ask that they grow; so we did another ceremony expressing gratitude for what is working for us related to the area of life where we asked for change. That felt more balanced.
Lack of Support and Destruction of Health and Life - Symbolized by Word ...As much as I have and am truly grateful for, this experience highlighted how much lack is in my life at the moment. I started to reflect on that. I realised that I have had a belief that ‘I always have what I need’, and so if something isn’t present in my life, then I must not need it. But that belief doesn’t feel like it is honouring my life. It feels like trying to reject or mentally trick myself out of being in lack. In new age-y and positive psychology thinking, ‘light’-ness is privileged, and we are pushed to look at the bright side. There is value to that, but not, in my opinion, if it feels forced or rejects our lived experiences. Sometimes life feels heavy and dark, and it’s important to make space for that. (Image from here)
Dams and water supply schemes suffer due to lack of rain | Utility MagazineOn the planet right now, so many plants, human and non-human animals are lacking safety, security, healthy food, clean water, shelter, etc. Why would I be any different? I would expect there to be some lack in my life given our collective environment. Lack teaches me to appreciate what I have, and to cherish what comes into my life when lacks are transformed. (Image from here)
There are some areas of my life where I feel so deeply in lack that I feel pain and impatience even as I experience them healing. It is as if I’m coming from so far behind what I need that I can’t yet relax and feel at ease that it’ll keep going in a healthy direction. I need to keep it on my radar to pray about and act to improve within my power.
lack-of-motivation | Born RealistAs I am still breast-feeding and being a full time carer, Lukas has been looking for employment for a few months. That struggle has brought stress, fear, and lack for both of us, along with moments of finding deeper faith and trust, as well as gratitude and joy for extra family time. Another example: the more I parent my toddler, the mirror of my own childhood continually brings up grief and lack for me to be with, along with the joy and relief of breaking patterns as best I can by giving my child what I didn’t receive. (Image from here)
The love of money. stock image. Image of crumpled, quarter - 76482929In the Jewish family and the secular capitalist culture I was raised in, people believed not in reciprocity and gift economy, but in transactions. As a non-Zionist Jew, my understanding from my family was to place faith and trust in accumulating gold, jewelry and money for survival, not land, because we could carry those things with us if we were forced to move. They saw me as a commodity too, which felt incredibly de-humanising. It confused me for a long time, how I could feel so much love and pain at the same time. It also existentially denied my spiritual gifts and strengths. But that’s how they saw the world and what they believed in. And I’m not in the business of trying to change anyone’s beliefs but my own. Beliefs are very personal things. (Image from here)
So I have decided that I no longer believe that I always have everything I need. It feels untrue and unkind to carry that belief. I believe my responsibility is to discern my needs as best I can and act within my power to meet them; and that dignity requires me to honour Life by allowing all energies that arise within me to be celebrated. At the moment, that means honouring lack, and so here’s my blog celebrating that. I hope you find value in it.
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