When’s the last time you actually created something – just thrown yourself headfirst into the process of simple, radical creativity?
There are a lot of videos out there lately, and a lot of people talking about how necessary it is to make things right now—especially at a time when there’s so much turmoil, and so many people who seem to be bent on destroying things.
The act of creation is a balance to that…
“Are you as human as the rest of us?”
“Are you doing everything you can to keep your heart open in a world that seems to be going out of its way to shut it down?”
I’ve been praying really hard for clarity lately. I’ve been praying really hard for guidance. And in that, I’m probably not too different from a lot of us.
A good many of us feel this urge to do…something.
But not all of us are going to be called to protest. Not all of us are going to be asked to bleed to death in our cars or in the snow. Not many of us are going to be asked to write anthems; to energize millions of people.
For a lot of us, that calling is something simpler, but just as difficult. We’re going to be asked to go deep inside ourselves. To find our wounds, and to heal them…
Grandfather Joseph Rael teaches us that ceremony begins as soon as you say “Yes” to it. And I really become aware of that about a week or so before our gatherings occur, which they do on the first Saturday of every month. I start to slow down. I start to pay attention to what’s going on inside me, what’s going on in my environment. I start to take a little more notice of what I eat, what I drink, how I move through my day.
And then, as time draws closer, especially on this last day, it really begins to wind up. And the simple chores that we have to do, like putting an extra leaf in the table or taking out the plates and the silverware, getting the crockpot ready for the potluck after the ceremony, raking out the firepit, making sure that we have enough chairs…all those things that go into it, they tend to become more like prayers…
If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
As we’re getting down to the last few scraps of 2025, it’s probably a good time to do a little bit of reflecting on what this past year has been like.
Speaking from the perspective of my own emotional recovery – my own spiritual healing – the work’s been pretty difficult, and at times, it’s just been downright exhausting.
But there’s one thing I’ve learned these last many years, and that is, that when you plow deep, you’re going to hit some big stones. It takes a lot to dig them out, but when you do, buried beneath them, you can usually find some pretty good, rich, fertile soil. And that’s definitely been the case this year…
If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
As we progress through our healing work, there are parts of us that are going to kick and scream at every attempt that’s made to heal them. They see this work as a fight to the death.
We know that you don’t stop falling until you hit bottom. When that happens, something’s going to shatter. But the only thing that shatters is the lie. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. But that’s what breaks.
And what gets up and walks away, the truth, is a little more healthy than what hit bottom.
Really living through that experience; coming to terms with it and allowing it to be what it is in all its glory: the light, the dark, the love, the hate, the anger, the joy… all of it, that’s really the only way we’re ever going to heal. That’s really the only way we’re going to come through these things and to find the gifts that they carry wrapped inside them…
It’s the day after Thanksgiving. I stepped out onto the front porch at 4:30 this morning to catch a few breaths, and noticed Orion, prominent in the West – undaunted despite the orange glow of a streetlight in front of our house.
I’d already been up for a couple of hours, but the sky was incredibly clear, so I stood outside a little bit longer, then went back in to brew a pot of coffee.
Now it’s a few hours later, and I’m hip-deep into three big kettles of soup stock.
It’s a known fact in certain circles, that I plan on making soup stock every year on the day after Thanksgiving. The family pitches in with turkey carcasses, and my wife and I scrounge up every mushroom stem, onion skin, and vegetable scrap that isn’t composter-worthy. I also collect the juice from most of the meat that I cook, and strain it into ice cube trays.
Each year, preferably on this date, the entire mess goes into as many kettles as necessary, and what follows is a process that’s best described as equal parts alchemy and chaos.
When it’s simmered long enough, I strain everything into a single kettle, and render it down to somewhere between two and three gallons.
The ingredients vary from year to year, so it’s always a mystery until it’s done.
My wife affords me plenty of space, which is either deep consideration or a keenly honed sense of danger on her part. Truth be told, it’s probably a little of both. The first time I cooked in our kitchen, she took one look at my mandala of spices and oils, and an army of bowls filled with various ingredients – all laid out in the order in which I’d add them – smiled, and said, “I’m just going to walk away now…”
It’s been years since then, but as I write this, I’m thinking the exact same thing:
“God, I love this woman…“
Amongst the things that get passed down to us from our families – the things that continue to support us, like family traditions or pictures or stories, heirlooms like China, wooden spoons, or upholstered rocking chairs, there are other things that can continue to structure our lives, like fear, shame, and guilt, and some of the darker, more intense stuff like hypervigilance, codependence, or toxic self-reliance.
When you’re raised with dysfunctionality, you learn very quickly how to read the territory. You learn to check the temperature of the air around you. You look for changes in expressions, changes in tones of voice… the slightest clue can give you a read on the environment.
And you learn how to adapt, how to adopt certain behaviors like people pleasing or hiding, never speaking your own opinion but constantly copping to the opinions of others. Or you learn how to constantly challenge authority, to yell back in order to make yourself bigger, so that the threat becomes less.
That was a favorite tactic of mine for many, many years.
These patterns provide a sense of structure and carry us through difficult situations. They can cause us to pick certain types of romantic partners, or repetitive dead-end jobs. They can drive us into reckless spending or self-destructive lifestyles.
Left unchecked, these things can continue to shape the way we live our lives. And so, in their own way, they, too, become family traditions…
There was always something that kept me just on the edge of it. I always felt like I never quite fit in…because the truth of the matter was, I didn’t. But I didn’t know that was because Something much larger than myself was looking out for me. In my own despair, I saw myself as always being just a little out of touch…
Sometimes in this work, we’re not aware of just how strong we really are; nor will we ever be aware of that strength unless we’re called upon to use it.
Other times, we claim strength – we claim power – that isn’t really there. And it’s brittle. And it’s arrogant. And it shatters at the first sign of difficulty.
Whichever the case, we’ll have a clearer perspective based upon how we react in moments of being tested…
Yes, there is a spiritual part in all of this, but we’re here in a physical world. And there are certain aspects of moving through this world that we simply can’t afford to ignore.
I like to think of it as an electrical circuit; more specifically, as a circuit powered by a battery. If you connect both ends of the wire to one terminal on the battery, in this case the spiritual or the physical, the circuit doesn’t work; the energy doesn’t flow.
When you stand rooted in both worlds, and you connect one end of the wire to each of the terminals of the battery, then the energy can flow. The energy of the spiritual can enter the world through us and flow out into the world for the service of all.
So, in essence, we become the wire…
Bonja the Bodger 