Enough(ness), Endurance & New Worlds

I've been noticing a pattern in myself and around me of late: to speed past, move hastily, impatiently forward, to get to the good stuff, to get to the outcome I desire, that joy, the pay-off, the thing that I say I want, a voracious Wendigo force tearing through life, like the devastating-for-so-many LA fires or Hurricane Helene floods, destroying all in their path, engulfing, consuming, erasing. But unlike the fires or the floods- products of/consequences of human activity, but distinctly elemental, this Wendigo force has forgotten it's place in the whole, serving nothing but itself, it's own insatiable hunger for more. And so it's never fed, it never "gets to the good stuff". I see the same force in the consumption promoting, self-strangling nature of the overculture. And I see the way it lands in me, in many--the systemic and the individual--the ocean and the fish. Oversized and undernourished- spiritually, physically, emotionally, psychologically.

I see all this in the context of my life, a life that largely, and certainly periodically and enduringly, provides. Even and often when the sick systems at large do not, and  worse, when they squeeze resources so tightly that most of us are pressed beyond an ability to recognize or even have choice at times,  I want to pause and to savor those meals and to create a world where more of us have more choices. There is opportunity for nourishment here. There is a choice that I can make, a choice that requires perspective, focus, intention, resource, relationship, community and a returning- returning power back to my womb, my gut, my heart, my core, my body, my home, my life. I can choose to recognize the moments, events, relationships, gestures, happenings, that are exactly what I want and need and then some. Sometimes a small snack, sometimes a grand buffet. I am being served and I can choose, even in the most unlikely and squeezed circumstances, to let those meals feed me. Through the plate of recognition, of relationship, and at the hands of slowing down, gratitude, and allowing myself to be held in community, I can choose to be nourished.  This feeding, becomes more REAL, FELT, seemingly alchemically, through the act of presencing, visioning and embodying. Feeling my uterus, the sometimes hungry hollow, the generative creator of All Things Human, and through the act of exorcising those voices, patterns, themes, paces, biases, entities, that get in the way of the meal and the nourishment it can provide, I can be fed. The defensive patterns, the critical patterns, the cultural patterns that serve the elite and leave crumbs for the rest of us, the pattern of shame especially, that tries to protect but often, ultimately starves- protecting only from a lived life, a well-fed life, from the goodness being offered, right under my nose, the meal, the elixir, the tea, that could fill my cup.

And as I sit and ponder these things, I am also reminded that a full cup is meant to feed, it's meant to pour back out, or further in when needed, to keep the waters flowing so not too much stagnates. At times the outflow is more like the trickle of an estuary or small creek, at times, more like a rushing river, but the water remains in cycles of flow, either upon the landscape- creek becoming river becoming ocean, or above and below- ocean becoming rain and snow, becoming lake and aquifer. These waters, in flow, keep us hydrated and well. And so, I think endurance naturally comes from enough-ness. Enough is a way to narrow the aperture of the outflow, or contain it for a spell all together, but not close it entirely, or contain it completely, just enough to recognize, for a bit, that the womb is well fed, and naturally ready to give life again- to share, to nourish, and nurture- in richness and gratitude, intention and love, in presencing, embodiment, in long low howls and high pitched cheeps and sultry, slow, enduring sways of the hips, and the babies that movement sometimes makes.

Enough so we may endure. Endure so we may enough.  Which sometimes looks like finding the bank, when caught in a wild current, and looking around at the river and landscape and the world we are burning, and building. A deconstructing and building anew.

It's time, it's time. We're building anew. And what do we want to be building?

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