There is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness, some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive.

— Frances Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow via Dean Spade

Listen to this month’s offering as a podcast

Here in the Catskills, I heard the first peepers of the season on my morning walk the other day + it’s still below freezing at night. My little cottage is surrounded by snowdrops + the mergansers are paddling along the Esopus. I wonder how this deepening spring is finding you?

This month, I’m offering two sections of Tarot 101 to accommodate all the time zones, as well as Using Tarot to Work with the Dead—part of Atha Yoga School’s Let’s Talk About It: Death series. I would love to see you there!

For those who’ve expressed interest in the Study Tarot Series, I’m starting a new cohort in May, meeting two Sundays a month at 10am EST. You’re also welcome to join the cohort already underway…we’re taking up the High Priestess + Minor 2s in Trusting Beyond the Binary on April 10 + 17 at 3pm est.

Fingers crossed for pre-orders of my forthcoming book—Tarot as Questions—to start next month…stay tuned!

My books are open for readings in April.

Thank you to all of you who continue to support my work in so many amazing + generous ways.

You Might Be Interested

• Mary Porter Kerns, who created the The Flowers Are Speaking oracle deck that I use on every new + full moon, is writing a book about flowers. It’s not what you think. The flowers are talking to her.
• Peg Conway + I talk everything ALTARS on The Ritualists podcast…check out the episode notes for a link to a page of our altar images!

Let’s Talk About LIBRARIES

Libraries are some of the last indoor public spaces left. Anyone can walk into a library + use the bathroom, get on the internet, get help with a job search, attend a program, + yes: check out a book. Or movie, or fishing rod, or medical equipment.

They are one of the few—if only—places left where young people can gather + hang out without being surveilled. They are perhaps the last indoor public space where people can do work or read or rest without having to buy anything.

In short, libraries are essential to the continuation of our public life.

Libraries are also under attack by organized extremists. From Florida to California, Michigan to New York, book ban attempts are swiftly followed by efforts to defund the library. Missouri legislators recently voted to defund public libraries in the state.

Libraries have always been sites of struggle. Now is a moment where what we do to maintain the publicness of this unique public institution really, really matters. As progressives, we must be as organized as they are, putting libraries on the top of our organizing agenda.

So what can you do?

• Watch this talk by incoming American Library Association President Emily Drabinski. If you only have 90 seconds, go to 1:08:00.
• If you live in New York State, take 90 seconds to contact your legislators about increasing library funding
• Check out this visual exploration of A History of the American Public Library by Ariel Aberg-Riger
• Run for your local library board
• Join your library Friends group
• Make sure everyone in your life knows how important the library is to you so that when local ballot measures come up for library funding (did you know that NINETY PERCENT of library funding happens at the LOCAL level?), your community knows that a vote to increase library funding is good for everyone.
• USE your local public library—check out books, attend programs + events
• The ABCs of Getting Involved in Your Local Public Library: an online teach-in happening Saturday, April 15, 2-4pm est. How can you get involved in your local library as a trustee, board member, or as part of a Friends of the Library group? Hear from current elected officials and candidates about the ins and outs of seeking and holding public office and learn about how to get started in your community.

What’s Inspiring Me Now

• Flower paintings by Joy Taylor, whose work I first encountered at a really beautiful show happening at the Olive Free Library right now through May 6th. (If anyone would like to purchase Taylor’s “Red + Cerulean Rose,” 2021 for me, just let me know! 🤌🏻)
• the Close Readings podcast: “One poem. One guest. Each episode, Kamran Javadizadeh, a poetry critic + professor of English, talks to a different leading scholar of poetry about a single short poem that the guest has loved.” Loved this episode!
• this short video about artist Cecilia Vicuna: “I go into a state of naked joy”
• What if climate change meant not doom—but abundance? by Rebecca Solnit: “A monastic once told me renunciation can be great if it means giving up things that make you miserable. This vision, I think, is what has been missing when we talk about the climate crisis—and how we should respond to it.”
• This 4-part conversation with Zoharah + Michael Simmons, centered on Dan Berger’s new book Stayed On Freedom. Zoharah + Michael Simmons fell in love while organizing tenants + workers in the South for SNCC at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. In centering their lives, historian Dan Berger shows how Black Power united the local + the global across organizations + generations. Gripping history by the people who made it.
• Machaela Cavanaugh: “I will burn this session to the ground over this bill. I have nothing but time, and I am going to use all of it."
• Proof the Dead Are Real (But What If There Isn’t Any?) by Perdita Finn: “The problem is that we don’t know what’s real anymore—and the kind of solid proof we want is exactly the kind the dead don’t tend to give. Instead they send an unexpected gust of wind, a flock of starlings, a whiff of forgotten perfume that only we can sense, a dream, an intuition, an intimation.”

Thanks to those of you who continue to send me your inspirations!

3 of Pentacles: sacred work

Everything worthwhile is done with other people. —Mariame Kaba

In a DIY, survival of the fittest, every man for himself culture, the 3 of Pentacles is a reminder that when we come together + share our time, space, effort, money, care + attention to create life, work becomes a sacred activity. Related to Major Arcana 3 the Empress, this arcana is about how we create + nourish life through collaborations + collectives.

This arcana corresponds to action-initiator Mars in its exaltation in practical strategist, get-it-done Capricorn. We see vivid + powerful examples of this arcana in the networks of abortion access that were being built for years, led by Black women in the reproductive justice movement, in anticipation of the fall of Roe. We see it in college student + organizer Maisie Brown’s bringing folks together to deliver water to disabled + elderly people amidst Jackson, MS’s ongoing water crisis.

As state + federal governments continue to leave people to manage crises of increasing severity + intensity by themselves, our capacity to mobilize with those we share place + time with becomes imperative. There’s a particular kind of alchemy that occurs in group settings when we bring our resources, skills + experience together with others, + when what’s bringing us together really matters.

* Who are you in collaboration and/or collective formations with around creative, spiritual, logistical, political work?

* What are your feelings about/experience with collaboration + group work?

* What has been your experience of political organizing and/or mutual aid work?

* In groups you are a part of, what is the common value/activity that brings you together?

* What specific skills, experiences + resources do you bring to a group? What are the kind of skills, etc. that you *don’t* bring?

* When a crisis comes, who are your people?

Find out more about my tarot work

We have subtle subconscious faculties we are not using. Beyond the limited analytic intellect is a vast realm of mind that includes psychic and extrasensory abilities; intuition; wisdom; a sense of unity; aesthetic, qualitative and creative faculties; and image-forming and symbolic capacities. Though these faculties are many, we give them a single name with some justification for they are working best when they are in concert. They comprise a mind, moreover, in spontaneous connection to the cosmic mind. This total mind we call “heart.”

— Kabir Helminski quoted in “The Way of the Heart,” by Cynthia Bourgeault in Parabola’s Spring 2017 Issue, via Rob Breszny’s weekly newsletter

WHAT’S INSPIRING YOU NOW?