🌕 An Undefended Heart
it's a full moon in taurus 🌕
Image Description: Collage with the following type in the upper right corner: “Spring 2022” “1968, Edmund Burke School Magazine” and in large sewn letters across the page "IT'S GONNA BE OK" – Cutout images of women are pasted in various spaces between the letters and include two Masai women, a shadowy illustration of an antebellum Black woman holding a torch, an illustration of a South Asian woman in a sari squatting, a medium closeup of Nina Simone sitting at a piano, a bumble bee, and others.
Listen to me read this essay:
Dear Friends
Thank you for reading these musings. I would not write this newsletter if you did not keep showing up. Knowing that you will, that you do, inspires me. I need inspiration this week. 🙏🏾
How are you doing? I hope you are letting yourself feel whatever it is that needs to be felt. There’s a LOT going on. Especially today. Please give yourself space to pause, go inwards, sense, breathe, allow, nurture…
In the astro-world, there’s significant buzz around this full moon which is a total eclipse with multiple challenging aspects falling on election day here in the U.S. 😬 This lunation is not an In My Experience… but if I were to offer any advice for these coming weeks it’s to take extra good care of yourself. Emphasis on the extra.
The above “collage” is actually a few small images of women (and one bee) I pasted onto the cover from the magazine my alma mater, Edmund Burke School, sends to alumni. It’s an image of the fabric piece below, which was created this April when parents and teachers decorated the school after a sniper attack. Burke was closed for two weeks; on their return, beautiful murals and messages greeted the students — my godson, Soren, and his brother, Cassius, among them. A girl from Soren’s class was shot as was my friend Dalila’s👇🏾 brother-in-law who just ✨ happened to be a responding officer (both recovered). That I am writing this paragraph is bonkers. And it’s simply yet another violent news story only a few of us noticed because we’re closely connected to it.
Image description: Large vertical hanging rectangular tapestry with background fabric of dark red with pink flowers; large letters sewn onto it say “IT'S GONNA BE OK”
I do believe it’s gonna be OK. But, also, it’s gonna be ROUGH. Whatever happens with today's elections, we are already living in times of extreme polarization and devastating disruptions. It can feel alarming. It may also signal the cosmic alarm for necessary collective shifts.
Some would say we need to be spiritual warriors at this time. I don’t tend to use war metaphors for my spiritual practice. As someone who grew up in a diaspora haunted by armed combat (I lost family on both “sides” of the decades long conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea), I started thinking seriously about war at a young age. I was raised around revolutionaries — like, literally… Marxist guerrilla fighter revolutionaries. As bell hooks said (and I often quote): If you’re fucked up and you lead the revolution, you’re going to have a fucked up revolution. I witness this. Very intimately. It's why I always add: The revolution will not be desacralized. I practice that today. All days.
The word war originates from a Proto-Germanic word meaning “to bring into confusion.” War requires confusion about our inherent interdependence. As you know by now, I believe the fundamental purpose of spiritual practice is to remember the truth that we are not separate (so that we love and celebrate all life). Yet, I also know that unconditional nonviolence can be an ahistorical, naïve and even arrogant position. Ethiopia was never formerly colonized largely because of the defense mounted by its ordinary people – people unwilling to cede their lives, land and culture to Italian invaders who pillaged, murdered, raped, and terrorized with no regard for the sovereignty of the indigenous people.
🖼 Defender of His Country, Afewerk Tekle (1977) Image description: geometrically patterned painting of a bearded Ethiopian man with an afro and dressed in a traditional white shamma looking out to the right of the frame; he is holding a large spear in his right hand and a sheathed knife in his left; the composition is reminiscent of stained glass and depicts mountains, a tree and water in the background.
War is distinctly human and has been a hallmark of our species throughout the ages. In this sense, it is entirely natural. But war is a little word we use to describe many realities including basic attack and defense. In the animal world, conflict is not the same as war. Chimpanzees make deliberate raids on each other but they don’t form into opposing armies. Two animal communities do not ally to defeat a third.
Only humans make “war.” And when we do, we spread destruction. In the past seventy years, eighty percent of major armed conflicts have taken place in biodiversity hotspots. We are able to destroy the natural world through war exactly because we are able to make war against an “other.“ We make war amongst ourselves because we do not understand the fundamental interconnection to others and all beings. We don’t understand because we each make war against our very own heart.
I trust the power of spiritual work — our collective spiritual work of care, connection, joy, love, belonging, freedom — to undo this confusion. Beginning with myself.
I have been feeling quite emotional this weekend. As my home literally shifts around me, I am also experiencing some (hopefully minor but currently impactful) body challenges that are surfacing the profound physical traumas I’ve experienced this past year. And, like many of us, I’m also picking up on the exacerbated energies that surround us all: social, economic, political, environmental. Some of you may not be feeling things with this same intensity. For those of you who are: Yes. Yes. It is a lot. Please take extra good care.
My brilliant friend Dalila is full of great quotables. A recent one of hers: I’ve always appreciated vulnerability, just not my own. 🤣 Another I’ve shared here before: People want to be free in very particular, un-messy, un-awkward ways. She described this week as a riot o' feelings. 😭 She’s also the first person I heard speak of “an undefended heart.” Since I heard that phrase, it’s been an aspirational anchor that reminds me to feel all my feelings – even (especially?) the riotous ones.
Undefended does not mean unprotected. This year (and this week), I am learning a lot about the boundaries I need to care for myself properly — boundaries that are clear and kind. [And, as Brené Brown says: Clear IS Kind.] To me, undefended means that I continually choose love above anything and everything. A love that creates strong boundaries, takes a stand (not “a” side), defends the vulnerable, and demands justice. A love that also acknowledges that othering is not protection, all hoarding is mental illness, the suffering of the planet impacts every-body, and the feminine IS rising.
I have no pithy summary. Only musings. And heartbreak(-ing open). 💔 Also, glimmers of hope.
May we all live with vulnerable, loving, free, undefended hearts.
With love,
Sebene
P.S. Thank you for all your beautiful birthday blessings. I’m sorry I cannot respond to everyone. I do read every message with care and appreciation. And, I absolutely love hearing from you. 💞
Renee Sills of Embodied Astrology is co-hosting an Election Day Support Space tonight “to hang out, talk about astro, be scared, be hopeful, and be human.”
Chani Nicholas has posted a guide to this eclipse that includes tips for self-care amidst all the intensity.
My Irish love Paul Rowley is putting the finishing touches on his Gays Against Guns film. Thank goddess for our artists. 🙏🏾
The amazing Lindsay Fauntleroy has a new class starting December 1st (scholarship deadline is November 17th). Into the Depths: 9 Stages of Soul Healing is based on the Sumarian myth, Descent of Inana, with remixes of modern Goddesses like Beyonce, Moana, and Katniss Evergreen. This is the season for this work, and I know the journey with her will be deep and powerful.
People have always had abortions and always will. Bodily autonomy should not be criminalized.