when we truly open our minds and hearts, we become both nothing and everything all at once as we re-member we are part of the whole body of creation. when we experience this re-membering, it is like an old familiar place that lives deep down in our bones, long forgotten: we are but threads in a rich and vast tapestry of life, connected and held by all the universe.
and while this practice belongs to us, we have lost it. white supremacy, imperialism, patriarchy have stolen it from us and replaced this way of being with patterns of domination that are now in the DNA of our living. we must unlearn those patterns–notice them and then disrupt them–so that we can re-member.
re-membering is both born through and annihilated in relationship. relationships offer both the key to our liberation and the key to our oppression. as one of my teachers, meg wheatley has shared: “we are not broken people. it’s our relationships that need repair. it’s relationships that bring us back to health, wholeness, holiness.”
this weekend i participated in an intensive designed to build an intentional community of practice. coming together with other humans to unlearn these patterns of domination so that we could re-member…was holy. there was beautiful stumbling at first but within the container we created, there was slow and definitive movement as we practiced the dance of being that allows for the wholeness and re-membering we all seek.
i just love this prayer by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his daughter, the Rev. Mpho Tuto that inspired us in our practice:
A Prayer:
Can you hold that space open for me? Can you keep your questions and suggestions and judgements at bay? Can you wait with me for the truths that stay hidden behind my sadness, my fear, my forgetting, and my pain? can you just hold open a space for me to tell my story?
i chose openness. i want to re-member. i seek liberation.