Human to Human

Digging in to this one today (thx Krista Betz).
Unraveling Religious Leadership: Power, Authority, and Decoloniality
by Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi

I love the opening quotes:

Martin Luther King Jr.
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

And, Albert Memmi, author of The Colonizer and the Colonized:
“We have seen that colonization materially kills the colonized. It must be added that colonization kills [us] spiritually. Colonization distorts relationships, destroys or petrifies institutions, and corrupts [humans], both colonizers and colonized.”

And I’m sparking on the contents:

• history that points to the lasting effects of colonialism, capitalism, slavery
• differences between what individuals can do and what institutions can do

And then asking the most basic of questions — What could religious leadership also be? In the immediate of now, and, in the slow moving evolution of what is next?

Working with a group of pastors / religious leadership later this month who will be asking such questions together.

To draw cards.
Together.

That’s what we did in yesterday’s B&B session — for insight and intuition.
And, well — for tenderness in words and in quiet.

The cards — Wild Chorus, created by Abacus Corvus (Thx Lisa Hess). I love the images and words. I don’t think of them as oracle cards — but they sure point to a lot of opening.

Becoming & Belonging — Picking A Card is one of the practices that I most enjoy. Sessions are monthly, online.

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).