Human to Human

My friend, Pastor Kate Kennedy, writes of rethinking sheep. From dumb followers to sharp organizers. She touches some of the evolutionary instinct to go together.

I enjoyed the read and the rethinking. Perhaps you too.

Says Kate…,

“I’ve always assumed that sheep were a bit dumb. I’ll admit, I fell for the cliché. To be fair, among all the friendly farm animals, sheep don’t seem particularly bright. Certainly not compared to clever pigs, who are as smart as your dog, or strong horses with their wise eyes. Case in point: once I saw a YouTube video of a flock leaping over a wall that wasn’t there. The farmer had removed it after the first sheep cleared it, but the rest kept jumping, just to be safe.  If you asked a sheep, “If your friend jumped off a cliff, would you?” that sheep would say “of course I would.”

But recently, I researched sheep and learned more—not just about them, but about myself. One shepherd put it this way: “If you pay attention, you cannot help but be impressed by how smart they are to have survived domestication since 10,000 BC. Although many think their flocking instinct is a sign of ‘dumbness,’ it is in fact a community-based survival mechanism where they have learned that their strength is much greater in numbers and their comfort and survival is enhanced as a group rather than as an individual.”

That made me wonder—did I think sheep were dumb because I feel a little bit dumb when I need other people? Have I internalized the message that relying on community is a sign of diminished capacity? Honestly, yeah, almost definitely. I don’t need to tell you we live in a culture that glorifies independence, that insists it’s morally superior to need nothing from anyone.”

This book by Bruce Springsteen continues to move me. I seem to read a couple of pages and then put it down. And then let myself be moved by the story in my day to day. I love his artist journey that he describes. And some big wisdom. I love his reflecting back to the days when it wasn’t so clear.

From p 299…

“I want the music to feel like a waking dream and to move like poetry.”

Yah, I’m connecting that to group facilitation. And retreats. And little pockets of reflection. I want the gathering to feel like a waking dream and to move like poetry. A dream has surrender in it. To what flows. Poetry so often has ease to it. And simplicity.

From p 300…

“All popular artists get caught between making records and making music. If you’re lucky, sometimes it’s the same thing.”

Yup again. I’ve entered a phase (I think it will take me all the way home) of making music. Cultivating becoming. Deepening belonging. Hosting myself and others in flow. And in the deep claiming that so many humans wish. I’ve done my share of making events. I’ve also been lucky — making events while making the music of intuition and insight, story and Circle, purpose and practice.

So, thx Bruce Springsteen.

Wanna explore more? I’ve got a few invitations.

This poem seems to be in a regular orbit for me. It comes around every now and then. This time from my friend Jeremy (thx Jeremy). The poem lands in just the right ways, invoking simple things that we do and that we often receive.

Enjoy.

Small Kindnesses
By Danusha Lamaris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

A bow to Shawna Lemay’s blog, Transactions With Beauty.

I enjoy Shawna’s writing. She’s much more of a curator than I will ever be. Her words are quite beautiful. And informative. Her photography is really moving, I find.

I’ve learned and known rituals primarily in two contexts.

One, with Soultime Men’s Group, where on our weekend retreats one key aspect is creating ritual. It’s saved for our last full day. Sometimes it takes us the better part of a day to discover what the ritual will be. Soultime ritual is journey to the non-linear. It is resonance, so often with the unseen. I find it moves my heart and belly in ways that last. We rely on things like a drum, sometimes stones, sometimes notes to be given to a fire. Sometimes song. Sometimes sage. Sometimes silence.

Two, I’ve learned and known ritual in Circle, which has meant bringing objects to the center, to the hearth. And sometimes, to a fire. Christina Baldwin embodied this at a time when I was really ready to learn. She was offering advice — “Become a ceremonialist.” It was instruction for the heart, to go to ritual. Light a candle. Carry a stone. Wash hands in the ocean or the pond. Release something to the ground. I’ve done quite a bit of this over the last 25 years. Speak an intention. Let go of a wound. Invite a new birth.

Ritual dislocates us from the linear, rational mind. Ritual relocates us to the heart, to the flow and resonance of a much bigger story. Ritual alchemizes. Ritual opens. Ritual reminds us that we are not alone.

And, and…

Back to Shawna’s blog. She wrote recently, some of her learning from reading a book by Byung Chul Han. Her words move me. In mind, and in heart. In the great story that is timeless. And in the day to day that requires commitment and navigation.

From Shawna…

— I’ve been reading The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han. Rituals stabilize life, he says, and he quotes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry who says rituals are “temporal techniques of making oneself at home in the world.” He talks about how things can be stabilizing points, a table, a chair. But today, things are consumed, taking away the mode of lingering. He talks about how smartphones are not things because “lingering” is “impossible.” There is a “restlessness inherent in the apparatus [that] makes it a non-thing.” We are compelled compulsively by our phones. “They consume us.” 

— “Ritual practices ensure that we treat not only other people but also things in beautiful ways, that there is an affinity between us and other people as well as things…” (Byung-Chul Han). 

— “Digital communication is extensive communication; it does not establish relationships, only connections.” (BCH) Digital communication is disembodied, but “rituals are processes of embodiment.”