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Lineage and Liberation
Victoria Shosan Austin and Maia Duerr, 2008 (photo by Renshin Bunce)
Walking, I am listening to a deeper way.
Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me.
Be still, they say. Watch and listen.
You are the result of the love of thousands.
~Linda Hogan (Native American writer)
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This is the time of year when the veil between the worlds is thin… when it feels like we can almost reach out and touch those who came before us and have gone to the world beyond this one…. when the chilly winds of autumn carry the voices of ancestral wisdom in an almost palpable way.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about lineage and ancestry, and feeling into what that means. A friend recently said that our lineage carries our greatest wounds as well as our greatest gifts. There’s a lot to unpack as we look at the people we came from and what we have inherited from them.
The Path To Healing Must Go Through Truth
Mandala at “Day of Heartfulness”
“I believe in reconciliation, multiple truths existing at once,
and moving tradition forward!”
~Jessica Eva Montoya
Earlier this month the city of Santa Fe celebrated Fiesta just as it has for the past 303 years, making it the longest running civic celebration in the United States.
Fiesta is a weekend of activities – masses, music, processions, historical re-enactments, and more – that commemorate the “peaceful re-occupation” (please take careful note of those quotation marks) of Santa Fe by Don Diego de Vargas in 1692, twelve years after the Pueblo Revolt.
This year, something very different happened at Fiesta.
The Tree of Contemplative Practices
Do you remember a time before the word ‘mindfulness’ showed up in what seems like every other news story?
I do. Back in 2002, mindfulness and meditation were on the back burner of public awareness, usually thought of as something reserved for old hippies and bald Buddhists.
I fell into neither of those categories and yet I was very drawn to a contemplative life. But I also wasn’t ready to check myself into a monastery. My particular path seemed to cut right through the middle of secular life, out of financial necessity and also because that is simply my temperament. For me, a life of the spirit is one lived in the flow of daily life and everything that goes with it – beautiful yet complicated relationships, the search for right livelihood, and even engagement with social issues like raising the minimum wage.
