i’ve just arrived home from celebrating the consecration of my dear friend, Phyllis Spiegel as Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Utah. it was truly a consecration, literally meaning “with-the sacred”.
sacred and sacramental: an outward expression of what already is. to make holy/ wholly. honoring reality by making explicit what was already implicit. Phyllis had already been ordained by God as Bishop and this ceremony simply evidenced that truth.
just over a year ago, Phyllis invited another friend, Jane and I to join her on a pilgrimage to Red River Gorge. the three of us were what felt like a crossroads in our lives, discerning the next step in our soul and spirit journey. Phyllis is a believer in the cloud of witnesses and there was a strong sense that each of us needed the others to listen and discern.
the day after we returned from that trip, she learned of the Diocese of Utah’s call. we’d return to those rocks two additional times over the next several months, supporting and bearing witness to Phyllis’ journey and in nurturing our own. in these soul journeys, it is never just one of us to whom we are attending; the interdependence cultivates our own individuality–a mutual and reciprocal exchange of giving/receiving.
we each hold essential seeds for one another’s dreams, for one another. the magic then, when a dream is realized is just that: the dream is not just the individual’s. it is a manifestation of our collective, authentic participation in an unfolding that is beyond our imagination. in these moments of witness, we are both humbled in our smallness and emboldened in our essentiality. we belong to one another; we are one another. Phyllis was not the only one consecrated on Saturday. we all were.
i write this on the eve of autumnal equinox, the beginning of the Celtic Year of the Soul. i had plans for this day, this Year of the Soul. i’ve been calling it The Journey Home. i imagined it being a series of gatherings across Kentucky for women creatives and dreamers on the equinoxes and solstices to journey inward and in relationship with the land and creation. before offering to others, i decided to make the journey personally this year…
…and as life would have it, the journey isn’t quite what i imagined. it is much more. tomorrow, after years of holding the seeds of our dream to be stewards of land in our homeland of Kentucky, we are closing on our property. we are officially birthing Wild Roots Farm.
this vision is not mine/ours alone. many have held the vision with us, offering essential seeds to its manifestation…and will continue to do so, undoubtedly. it’s already happening.
so, today on this eve of autumnal equinox, i give thanks for the dream seeds that we each carry, in heart and soul.
we truly are magical, together.