☀️ Faith
it's the vernal equinox ☀️
Hi friends
It’s been intense times over here culminating in an earthquake level health crisis last week. And here I am. 🙋🏾♀️ Thank you for being with me.
It felt impossible and ridiculous to send full moon resources on faith. I’d have to chronicle all the myriad major and minuscule influences from my entire life.
Saved by the Equinox! ☀️
Of course, I could also just not send something. Or leave the cosmos out of it. This whole thing of sending newsletters on the new and full moons (alternating essays and links) — I made that up. It’s my construct. I’m an adult. I can change it. Or stop. Why do I even have “a newsletter”? I don’t know what it is, and that makes me feel vulnerable. It’s awkward most of the time. My motivations are often muddled. And I love doing it. Having the stars and planets help me out in my creative practice feels like prayer.
That’s faith.
Also, it gives me deadlines.
Deadlines like frames for paintings of what I’ve been processing. I’ve been paying attention to synchronicities (which means they’ve been everywhere). My bestie Peter recently clued me into listening to “liked songs” as a playlist on Spotify. This is probably extremely basic synchronicity practice, but it was a revelation for me. It also led me to unlike a whole lot of things, including a terribly cheesy album of dance track backed sermons from Michael Bernard Beckwith. I was always wary of him (and his association with The Secret), but a friend in the last years of his life attended his church in Los Angeles and underwent a palpably powerful inter/personal transformation. So, years ago, I had noticed when Spotify suggested him (the algorithm has gotten much better at infiltrating my brain). His “song,” One Day in Heaven, came up and the description of heaven as “a day in ever expanding good” struck me.
A day in ever expanding good. Sheesh. Current global devolutions demonstrate how impossibly far we are from that! With all our current resources and understanding, we could (the entire planet!) be living every damn day in ever expanding good.
Unimaginable?
That is faith.
For me, ever expanding good would be every single life (human or non) nourished into the fullest manifestation of its innate and unique expression (including in death). The fullest manifestation of my innate and unique expression apparently includes talking to you about my life and being free. I mean being as a continual process, not a destination. For me, being free is a path which includes (in fact, invites!) all the things that show me just how unfree I am. My dear, very wise friend Dalila wrote this to me a few weeks ago: “People want to be free in very particular, un-messy, un-awkward ways.”
People is me. And I have my specific “particular.” Whenever I label something that is happening as an interruption to being free (rather than exactly the process itself), I am being people. When I think my life should look or feel a certain way. When I get drawn into habitual patterns of rigidity & anxiety that equate productivity and survival. When I judge myself. When I judge others. When I envy others. When I cling to old ways of being out of fear of the unknown. When I doubt my desires. When I lose access to joy in my body. When I forget that I have never, not for one moment, not been loved. Essentially, when I do not remember that it is my divine purpose to fully manifest my innate and unique expression (and that this inherently involves trial & error, change & challenges, mess & awkwardness), I am being people.
Then something breaks. Sometimes literally! No, I mean it. My left femur broke. I know!! It’s not been easy. And it’s been all about being free. As you may know, I have been in a very extended period of illness and pain. It has also been a time of incredible growth and transformation... and freedom. Free not because the pain is all gone, but free because I am understanding more about my innate and unique expression: my inheritances (+/-), limitations, capacities, longings, triggers, talents, patterns, cycles, possibilities...
I texted this to a friend earlier this week: Finally home. I have a new hip! I am bionic!! And I am so happy to be out of the hospital. As wonderful as MSK is, it’s not easy to be immobilized, in pain, in a clinical and cold environment for five nights. I’m in our wonderful bed. Our cleaner came today. Frederic just made a delicious pasta out of dust, a can of tomatoes, and some capers – which we ate in bed. He oiled my left leg and feet (I will not be able to touch my left foot or lower leg for 3 months!!). I oiled the other leg with an herbal oil of redwood and mugwort. It meant everything to touch my precious body with such tenderness and gratitude.
That’s faith.
This has been a week filled with a lot of physical pain. It's also been flooded with synchroncities that I can't describe with any other word but magic. Faith for me right now is saying thank you for the multitude of blessings that support me.
Below are a few things this week that nourished me.
Much love,
Sebene
I've been oiling my hair obsessively since I've been home… This conversation on Black hair between Amintou Sow and Tracee Ellis Ross. And these text messages about it… Thank you Allison for letting me laugh at myself.
Jenna Wortham on the work of living.
Based on Richard Tarnas' brilliant masterwork, Cosmos and Psyche, the ten part documentary series Changing of the Gods is a somewhat repetitive, but nonetheless fascinating exploration of how planetary movements correspond to events on Earth. Detailing collective patterns across centuries, you can not watch this and dismiss astrology, nor faith.
The kids are alright: Pea the Feary.