Category: General Learning

Five of us gathered. Zoom. Two hours on a Monday evening.

Men in ritual was what brought us together. A workshop for learning from two weeks ago. Some of us have been friends over the years. Some of us are new in friendship, yet somehow feeling the way that good sincerity and connection makes us feel like old friends.

Sometimes
the
Simple
is
the
Super.

I offered format last night, a call-back on material I offered two weeks ago.

• “There’s what we know. And then there is everything else.”
• Ritual brings us to relationship with such reality (and then there is everything else…)
• When / Why Ritual
  • when we need help / relationship with what is invisible
  • when we need help / relationship with something too big for us
  • as regular work-out (I added this one last night; why not practice for practice sake)

And then Check-In. I invited each to bring a candle and then light it when their turn for checking-in.
– Who are you, really? What is it that you are hungry for with Men in Ritual?

Men (humans) checking in is ritual. Listening…intuiting…sharing…

Then Stories. Of the big stuff. Of the small stuff. Of the nailed it stuff. Of the messed it up stuff. A couple of rounds of this — sincerity grows sincerity.

And then Check-Out.
– What has been important to you tonight?
– Pause — blowing out our candles together.

Oodles of insight. And delight. And beauty last night. And, well, spice of ritual. I’m glad for it. Moved by the men. Glad to offer. And to have it called out of me.

Sometimes the Simple is the Super.

My friend Kinde reminds me today of this Rumi passage, oft-quoted. That’s Rumi, the Sufi Scholar and Persian Poet of the 1200s.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.”

It’s a passage that points to another way. Another expression of the heart. It hints beyond the popular, but narrow, versions of what is passed off as necessarily either wright or wrong. It points to something more rich, textured, lovely, and inviting. It points to an invitation — “I’ll meet you there.”

So rich.

And so much, the work of the day.

I’m glad to carry this into a Monday (thx Kinde).

Thx to my friend Jeremy who shared this poem recently. The words of the poet, James Crews move me. This living juxtaposed with cruelty and kindness, with “bonfire of fears” and “scent of peonies” — well, this is the discipline of the open heart, isn’t it. And the invitation. And the insistence.

And Jeremy, well, it’s good to have soul brothers. That share the fire and share the bouquet.

Enjoy.

Small Pleasures
James Crews

Some nights, the ache in your chest
for all that’s wrong in your life,
for all the cruelty of this world,
will wake you with its crackling
bonfire of fears. But other nights,
you will fall asleep to the scent
of peonies left breathing in a vase
on the dresser, that bouquet of burst-
open hearts the last thing you see
before closing your eyes. You live, 
as we all do, between the extremes, 
learning to lean in the direction 
of whatever small pleasures you can 
gather from your own backyard.

Reflecting on a recent Becoming & Belonging offering (Flow Group), my friend Nadia reflects on the eight of us together and what was shared (thx Nadia).

“These are bold things, indeed.
To show up and share.
To listen and be touched.
To connect and weave together.
These are brave, wild, learning things.
Each time again.”

Yes. Bold, through the simple.

Jump in as inspired for B & B. For one offering or for several. We are getting to the heart of it, “brave, wild, learning heart.”