Well, here we are at the beginning of 2024. I hope that you had a peaceful holiday season with your loved ones of all species. I’m also aware that for many people all across our planet, this time has been very difficult.
As we begin 2024, with all we are facing as a species and as a community of beings who share this world, I feel it’s important for us to be honest with each other about all of the things we may be feeling and experiencing. Grief, anxiety, anger, and fear are healthy responses to so much of what is happening in our world, and it’s important for us to acknowledge and honor these emotions as wise messengers.
These are not “inferior” or “less spiritually advanced” emotions; rather, they are vital sources of wisdom and intelligence that can guide us if we are willing to give them space and healthy attention. At the same time, it’s important for us to honor and acknowledge all of the beauty, connection, love, and possibility that is available and surrounds us as well.
Both are important.
I had another conversation with author and teacher Carolyn Baker this week, in which we talked openly and honestly about our perspectives as we start this new year, and the importance of honoring our connections and relationships with all of the beings, human and more than human, who share our world.
Carolyn and I are both survivors of fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity, and we both feel it is vitally important to talk openly about this experience, specifically about the idea of “dominionism” which is so pervasive not just in religion, but in our wider culture, and its toxic impacts on our lives, our communities, and our world.
Listen to our conversation here.
(If you missed last week’s conversation “Grief is Love”, you can access that here.)
Though this may not be a “Let’s Make 2024 the Best Year Ever!!” kind of message, for me, I feel it’s much more real, much more honest, and much more important.
In my view, it is essential that we examine, really honestly look at, our relationships with each other as humans, and with the other species who share our world, as we begin this new year.
How can we understand each other better? What is ours to do, and how best can we do it? Where are our voices needed, and in what ways can we best show up?
These are the questions I am sitting with as I begin this year, and I invite you to consider them as well. There is so much at stake. How we show up, how we connect, how we speak, how we act, how we love matters. These things always matter, and are always essential and important. And now, in this time, it’s essential, in my opinion, that we put them front and center.
So, no chipper cheerleading New Years’ message from me, but rather an invitation to join me in diving deep, feeling our feet on the Earth, as the animals teach us over and over again, and following the deep wisdom of the Earth, the trees, the animals, and our own wise, intuitive, loving hearts.
