Yes, these are two separate audio links – one below, one above. My reading of this essay is right before the opening “Hi friends” 👇🏾. A guided meditation is at the top of this email 👆🏾 — an archive of meditations lives here. Enjoy!
Make Sacred Space is back for four Sundays in June!! Come spend soulful time in contemplation and creation. June 6, 16, 23, 30. 7–8:15 pm ET. Registration and more info here.
Listen to me read this essay:
Hi friends
Blooms. Blooms. Blooms! The flaunting flowers currently reign in Brooklyn. I’d love for spring to stick around for a bit, though I know many are suffering with this new super-pollen. How are things in your piece/peace of the world? I hope you’re finding connections to beauty in meaningful ways and sourcing solace for any suffering.
It’s a strange thing to write emails with the moon. A while ago, my bestie Peter gave me back some real letters I’d sent him in the mid-nineties when I spent a few months in Eritrea and Ethiopia. Y’all! I felt horrified reading them. Those letters straight-up stank. I transcribed trite news and mailed it to the other side of the world... more than once. [I’m sorry Peter.] I hope this decade of practicing news-letters has helped my writing. Thank you for being here to honor these lunar cycles with me. May I never (or, at least, rarely) send you a boring letter. May any news herein provide you insight and inspiration… with a sacred spin.
Actually, Sacred Spin could be an alternate title for this Substack. I planned (and promised) to write about my meditation retreat with 100 Black women for today’s new moon. Not that anyone keeps track – that is coming soon, and it will explore the sacred paradox that we are not separate AND we are not the same. You know, my usual yakety yak –except blacker 🙅🏾♀️. Actually, today is my usual too. News Alert: It’s All Sacred (#alt-title2).
While I was on retreat, I was reminded once again of how yanked around I am by my own mind. I may believe myself to be an autonomous adult human lady, however, like a baby, I repeat silly patterns provided by my family and the larger society. During one of the meditations, I recalled the seventies film Bugsy Malone. It’s a gangster spoof set in the twenties. It stars an all-child cast, including Jodie Foster. And it’s a musical (the seventies were so weird). A bunch of kids pretending to be bootleggers and dancing girls and mob bosses makes the power mongering and drama and violence seem absurd (it is a G movie, so the guns shoot whipped cream). Sitting in silence, I imagined people around the world, all in our own films, playing our assigned roles — babies, each of us. But, some of these babies have real weapons.
My friend Jocelyn and I recently texted about how sacred and scared are the same word, the c just moves. In You Belong, I wrote the same about creative and reactive. That potent c: curiosity, clarity, connection, compassion, courage… consciousness. These times are not easy, my friends. I myself require continual conscious-sacred-creative awareness to uphold my mature values and aspirations, to unravel my childish reactivity. Practice helps. Nature too. Also, community. And art.
This past weekend, my friend Tod and I went to Joe’s Pub to see Mx Justin Vivian Bond. For those who don’t know them, Vivian is a legendary singer-writer-actor-artist extraordinaire. I first encountered them in the early nineties when I waitressed at the iconic Cafe Flor in San Francisco’s Castro district. I worked on the food side. The majority of the white male customers saved their affection for the mostly straight (it was a weird time and place) buff boys who worked the bar side, largely ignoring our ragtag crew of lesbians, trans women, femme boys, and kooky straight girls in the tiny kitchen. But Vivian always showered us with charm and generous tips. They would come by on break from their shifts at the nearby bookstore, A Different Light. We absolutely adored their style and grace. A couple of years later, I saw one of the earliest SF performances of Kiki and Herb, the outrageous-punk-art cabaret act (words can never suffice for the lived experience) which they created with the musician Kenny Mellman. When I moved to New York in 1995, I followed Kiki and Herb from Cowgirl Hall of Fame and Fez to album releases and reunion shows. Their 2021 holiday show at BAM Harvey was the first pandemic-era live show I attended. That night, the duo brought me to tears with a soulful rendition of “Send in the Clowns” honoring Stephen Sondheim, who’d died the week before.
It’s Viv who introduced me to the phrase “gender illusionist.” Well, not her directly. I don’t actually know her personally (though, through Tod, she’s hung out with Finot — for the record, my sister’s always been way cooler than me). But Peter briefly dated Kenny way back when, and he relayed the idea to me. My twenty-something mind was forever blown. Yes. We can do that. We can transform things. Just like magic. With intention and imagination (and cabaret).
Of course trans people are at the forefront of this magical message.
Last Tuesday, in my current course, Let It All Out, we were exploring how Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ profound research on death and dying was collapsed into a five-step, same-size-fits-all process for grief — something she never intended but makes twisted sense in a culture that’s simultaneously death denying and death mongering. As we named this one particular misappropriation, we also acknowledged that society indoctrinates us into innumerable (deadly) delusions. Yes, gender. Furthermore, most of it. Race, caste, private property, borders, resource hoarding, structural inequalities, ideological divisions, relentless exploitation… war. These shitty systems disconnect us from knowing our irrefutable interconnection. This nonsense [gestures around wildly] is a spiritually anemic sham that drains us of our ability to feel awe and reverence for ourselves, for each other, for everything.
It’s not that I haven’t known for a long time how much the systems stink (a lot, they stink a LOT – way more than my long ago letters). At fifty-damn-three years old, I do not crave reminders of what’s wrong with them. I long for ongoing communion with conscious-sacred-creative co-conspirators.
Viv titled this latest show Rare Bird. She explained how reading this recent article about a half male/half female honeycreeper inspired the theme for the evening. The one contention I have with the article is calling this beautiful expression an error rather than an innovation. I mean, look at this stunner. I would love to pull off that color combo!
At the show, Viv sang an as-always-eclectic mix of songs. This time each one somehow related to birds. [Cute side note: Peter’s last name is Bird] Her light-honey-blonde hair elegantly pulled back and wearing a sleek black suit with a chunky jewel choker, she recounted once meeting Lena Horne before offering a poignant version of Horne’s 1971 Nature’s Baby. Do you know this song? Well, I did not. Now, it’s my anthem. Here’s how it starts (and how I’ll end for this new moon):
Arms of love engulf my being
I was blind
But now I’m seeing me
For the first time
Seeing me
For the first time
Now I’m nature’s baby
I’m swinging on a heartbeat of infinity
Yes, I’m nature’s baby
My astrological placements have been good to me
Colors and flowers collect and protect me
And hold me within
The circle of magic
May we rare birds always know ourselves (and everyone) as nature’s sacred babies.
With love,
Sebene
If we can't prioritize love for ourselves, how can we manifest love for our family, friends, communities, nature, and the Earth itself? Come join this dream team next month to explore self-love for personal and collective liberation. The Greatest Love of All at Omega, June 21–23.
Make Sacred Space: JUNE
Enchanting Time for Meditation • Intuition • Creation
A Soulful Start to Your Week * 30 minutes of guided meditation * 10 minutes of journaling prompts * 30 minutes of open space for dreaming & doing :: Four Sundays in June (6/9,6/16, 6/23, 6/30), 7–8:15 pm EST
Many of us long to bring more sacredness into our lives. But we rarely make space to do so. Come spend four Sundays cultivating enchanted time for contemplation and creativity.
HEY! There are less than two weeks until the May Meditation Party with Dan & Jeff! Join us!
(We will be back in October for an encore.)
🌑 Nature’s Sacred Babies