April 2020: I Made Something For You

Dear Friends,

It’s been a month!

In addition to staying connected (at a distance!) with my circle of friends and family, I’ve spent the last few weeks offering some online classes through the Phoenicia and Olive Free Libraries, hosting a nightly Metta Sutra service with my dear friend Mary, doing tarot readings by donation to raise money for the Phoenicia Food Pantry, and painting like mad.

For the next month, I’ll be donating 50% of the proceeds from the sale of all paintings in my shop to the Phoenicia Food Pantry.

I continue to be inspired by the creativity and activism that I see in communities near and far. I continue to believe that we could build a society centered around communal care and justice instead of profit and greed. I continue to double down on life, love, community and belonging.

You are all very much on my mind, and I’m sending lots of love to you and your families and communities. Let’s take good care of ourselves and each other, and continue to discover ever more deeply what that means.

Wishing in gladness and in safety: May all beings be at ease.
— from the Buddha’s Words on Lovingkindness

What’s Inspiring Me Now

• My Phoenicia community and all of the large and small ways people are supporting each other. I feel so fortunate to live here!
• Do you know the origin of the Metta Sutra (the Buddha’s Words on Lovingkindness)? It’s a story worth checking out!
• adrienne maree brown. If you’re on social media, you should be following her. Author of the books Emergent Strategy and the NYT Bestselling Pleasure Activism, and creator of the Relinquishing Patriarchy Resource List, brown also hosts a podcast with her sister called How to Survive the End of the World. This title is not a metaphor; it’s a great gift. She is the teacher I am watching during these times.
• Just in time for the global pandemic, Brene Brown has created a new podcast called Unlocking Us, and it has me and all my friends crying. In a good way. I’d recommend a single episode, but I really think they’re all amazing!
• My friend Bethany’s book Strange Situation comes out on April 21st!!
• Thank you to my dear friend Jiryu for turning me on to Amanda Yates Garcia’s memoir Initiated: Memoir of a Witch. Also known as the Oracle of LA, Garcia also hosts an amazing tarot podcast called Between the Worlds.
• Silvia Federici’s book Caliban and the Witch. My dear friend Jordan and I are reading this together…putting the pieces together about how we find ourselves in this current moment.
• In short: WITCHES

What’s Inspiring You Now

• Thank you to my dear friend Joshin for this incredibly tender and beautiful poem, “Love and Dread” by Rachel Hadas.
• Thank you to Brian for the heads-up about an exhibit at the Guggenheim (we’ll be able to go to museums again, folks!) called “Marking Time: Process in Minimal Abstraction.”

What’s inspiring you now? I would love to hear about it and include it in my next newsletter…

New in the Shop

My art practice really helps me emotionally regulate and sublimate my anxiety. It also gives me a way to create the world I want to live in—a world of beauty and interconnection. I’ve been painting a lot lately, sometimes in silence, sometimes while listening to music (Chani Nicholas’s Horoscope playlists on Spotify are AMAZING), or a podcast, sometimes while “visiting” with a friend via FaceTime.

For the month of April, I’ll be donating 50% of the proceeds from the sale of all paintings to the Phoenicia Food Pantry.

Card of the Month: Four of Swords

Fours in the tarot minors relate to The Emperor (IV in the Major Arcana)—a card of stability, structure, boundaries, protection, and order. We’re in an Emperor year right now. (2 + 0 + 2 + 0 = 4). We are seeing on a mass scale the impact of a sick Emperor—of patriarchal white-supremacist “leadership” and the crime against humanity unfolding in real time, like a nightmare. An Emperor does not have to lead this way.

For us to harness the healing power of the healthy Emperor archetype—stewardship, communal care, structures based in justice, or: the healthy masculine, as problematic as that framing might be—we need to divest from patriarchy, from white supremacy, and from capitalism. These three forces braid together to create conditions that are fundamentally and essentially anti-life. I’ve been uncovering a lot of my own conditioning around these systems lately, especially with respect to the world of non-human beings. It’s painful, and necessary.

So here is this little lamb—cozy, with what looks to be a slight, mysterious smile on her face. She rests bathed in cool light, a golden sun radiating from her wisdom eye. Above her hang four evenly spaced swords. Are they a threat? Is she worried? Sure doesn’t look like it.

In tarot, the Swords suit is about the mind and the cognitive realm—thought, intention, attention, awareness, communication, speech, wisdom, insight, and also truth and justice. Like Manjushri Bodhisattva, a well-honed sword wielded by one who is well-trained can slice through bullshit, delusion, and noise with one swift stroke. A dull sword flailed around by someone with little training or experience can create a bloodbath. Our minds are incredibly powerful, as we may be discovering during this time of social distancing.

There’s a nuance here between the “power of positive thinking” and getting sucked into an anxiety/rage/despair vortex. (And I want to acknowledge here that for those with mental illnesses, this vortex can be a painful reality on an ordinary day, never mind in the midst of pandemic and social distancing. It’s not available to everyone to just “shift your mindset.” It’s a privilege to be able to work with and train one’s mind.) Here, I want to echo my sister Robyn Ikyo Love, who in a recent blog post threaded this needle beautifully in a way that was helpful for me: “When we leap to expressing gratitude and sending the love and light, we are missing something—something important. We are missing how we actually feel.” Hallelujah.

So this little lamb begins by sitting with what is real for her—her fear, anxiety, grief, rage, despair, numbness, scatteredness AND her joy, delight, longing, and love—without turning away and without diving into a vortex. Sounds simple; not so easy. But because she has attended to and ordered the swords of her mind, she trusts in her capacity to experience what’s real for her without getting lost. Those orderly swords also help her establish clear boundaries to protect her time and energy and to discern what is hers to hold and what is not.

Meditation is an ancient spiritual technology that can help keep those mental swords orderly and sharp. Sometimes, however, it may be too hard for us to sit still in our most difficult feelings. In those instances, other kinds of practices can be really helpful and soothing. My favorite ways to do this are art practice, conversations with friends, tarot, long walks, sitting by the river, writing, dancing, liturgy, ritual and magic. I’d love to hear your methods!

Finally, all that being said, if the past few weeks are teaching me anything, it’s that there’s no “right” way to mentally and emotionally navigate a global pandemic. Some days I feel inspired. Some days I feel numb. Or enraged. Or focused. Or despairing. Or frenetic. Or a little bit of all of that in a single, long day. It’s like being in a small boat tossed about by waves big and small. It’s easier to ride the waves when I feel connected to others.

I am deeply grateful for 15 years of Zen practice and training and a year of Al-Anon for helping me learn to navigate the labyrinth of my heart and mind, to remind me to trust all feelings, and to listen to my needs. And to trust that through loving and caring for myself, practicing positive self-regard, and staying in contact with my deepest longings and values, that I will naturally find the ways I can best show up for others.

Find out more about my tarot work, or schedule a tarot session.

Card of the Month pulled from the Wild Unknown Tarot Deck.

WHAT’S INSPIRING YOU NOW?