^ cyanotype by Filippa Edghill
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The list of topics and ideas I want to explore here is immense – from quantum physics to fugitive ontologies, from mutuality economies to cellular memories. The ways in which this space will evolve is exhilarating. The investments being gathered to nurture this space are abundant. And I can't wait to open many portals of contemplation and co-creation with you and those who join us here. But before continuing to endeavor toward any of that, I want to say thank you.
Thank you for being here. I know the volume of metaphorical (and literal) radio stations to tune into these days is overwhelming, in addition to the more personal/intimate commitments, responsibilities, devotions, and processes we’re all navigating. As someone who often has her aperture open a bit too wide to an influx of information, who is available and “on” quite often, I know what it means to take in something new. I want you to know how much I honor your attention and your presence, how grateful I am that this place has a space in your world.
Thank you for your trust. As I'm known to do, I plunged into the depths immediately here. Many of you all don't know where this is going or what exactly you signed up for, some of you don't even really know who I am. Whatever the case may be, it means a lot to me that you were drawn in. Writing is my most sacred love language, it is the way I love without reservation, and it is a gift to me to share it with you, to be received by you, to co-create with you.
Thank you for your flow. This place is governed by imperfection and emergence, by proliferation and juxtaposition, by multiplicity, diversity, and mobile arrangements of consciousness. This place honors that time is expansive and elastic.
I don't plan out what I'm going to share, I don't agonize or toil over what comes through, I don't effort here, and all of that is by design because this is a place where we're not doing that anymore. Nope. We're saying no to pressure and performance and productivity. We're embracing the magical power of softness. We're writing a new language for our dignity.
This place exists in part because of my eagerness to shake off aches of struggle; to nourish curiosity, joy, and generosity of presence, to practice pleasurable liberation. The breath-extinguishing ways of white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalism fueling cascading crises is overwhelming, but I will not get sucked into despair exactly because we are finding each other and reclaiming the sacred. I am drawn here to build community, to develop a safe and inspiring container for creativity to be conjured, to get closer to the land and the Earth, to reciprocate in all the ways that I may in gratitude. This place is a devotion to more possible futures.
Thank you for showing up. This is a place for you. Comments, questions, feedback are all welcome. If you click on the post from your email, it will take you to the web version where you can chime in (and add hearts, which I cherish!). I am always thrilled to hear from you - whether you're affirming the vibe, offering nudges toward evolution, etc etc.
There is a lot more to say about Widening Circles Collaborative. This substack is a cluster of stars in a constellation in a galaxy in a universe, but for now we're floating on the outer edges. I look forward to sharing more of myself and what this ecosystem is, to getting to know more of you, and to shaping this space together (really, I have ideas coming soon if you're keen!).
To close, I am sharing two very fresh poems, and my hummingbird heart is fluttering at the thought of hitting publish because poetry is my absolute edge space, my deep end. I have no clue if my ideas translate through this medium. But here we go:
Shattered into wholeness
I drift between worlds.
The thin edges are where I speak with sorrow,
where my voice is the conduit for all left unsaid between the living and the dead.
What is the grief that lives here?
Exiled only to be exhumed by my restless, insatiable wandering, wondering,
my penetrating gaze, my unyielding commitment to see
all that lingers in the shadows of the forgotten landscape
where the truth lives roaming, remaining,
so far away.
Emptiness on all sides.
What's exiled starves in the hollow peripheries.
I starve too, when pretending my wholeness through fragments,
only to be left with the immeasurable ache
of trying to gather myself across spacetime.
How do I get free? Find peace?
When the sparks of my life are like shattered glass dispersed
across a galaxy that is stretching away from me and itself at all times?
When the truth was buried haphazardly, no proper accounting.
It hurts to be this far away.
But it is through the distance between ourselves and all things
that we sense the grief that also infuses our love with depth.
It does not mean there is less love,
it means there is a love that exceeds our capacity to be with it, to breathe with it.
A mad dash at a messy love is better than nothing.
Make sure it doesn't go unspoken even if it scares us.
This is how we are known to each other.
“You are here to write us alive into our fullness,
to be unafraid of love, to help others be less afraid,” an ancestor told me in a dream.
We contain and reduce love to pretend it is small and unnecessary,
when really it is what we burn for most of all.
I can't tell you, but I will try.
I come undone to save their lives.
I come undone to save my own.
A broken open heart is a sacred thing,
a sign of sensitivity in a world that prefers we stay
far away.
I bring it all in close.
Here is a woman, and here
is her undefended heart.
She will write to you of wholeness and infinite love.
She will try.
^“Self Love” block print by Filippa Edghill
More possible futures.
Spaciousness seeps into my compacted soils and softens me like clay.
Lush liquid love cracks the desert into bloom
like cactus flowers after the monsoons.
The desert is not death but life on slow timelines,
ripening under hundreds of days of sunshine.
I flood the plains of my landscape,
and bring centuries worth of feeling up to the surface.
I make myself a sanctuary. I hold the complexity -- terror and awe, love and fury.
Me and my ancestors meet in these waters that pool and swirl inside me.
A billion organisms working seamlessly,
a billion clusters of rebellion and starlight* orchestrating cosmologies,
And here we are together, breathing, just breathing.
And though the times are urgent, we slow down and listen.
We ask what our Earth needs, decimated by greed and destruction.
We hear what she calls forth for protection and regeneration.
We don't need new prophecies, when we remember sacred technologies
are living in the soils and trees, in our cells, in the vast mycologies.
Buried like seeds waiting to burst free.
We make ceremonies. We honor both dying and living.
We remember mutuality, reciprocity, and belonging.
We become so well we can never be contained.
A joy so full it can never be drained.
We speak Earth language, we expand the village,
we see ‘enemies’ in truth as distanced kindred.
Come close, gather round, we’ve got starshine to drink and galaxies to dance in.
More possible futures waiting to dream us into being.
*inspired by Keno Evol’s brilliant piece worth reading.
Til next time, with love and gratitude,
Rachel
Thank you for bringing us along with you in your journey through the loneliness wrought by the pandemic and connecting us back to the deep need for togetherness to thrive in the face of multiple crises. "I think the pandemic is living us into this question, is teaching us how to survive (and prevent) crisis by remembering that we are fractal and whole, not fractured and separate." So hopeful and inspired.
Thank you