Wild Nature Heart
Co-Liberatory Journeys Into Reconnection
Circles of the GReat Turning
Wild Nature Heart Circles are regular, free gatherings where we explore together what it means to be whole humans deeply interconnected with the world.
We gather in Circle to hear each others’ stories and experiences and allow conversation to emerge as a way to explore embodied wholeness and personal and collective shifts.
It is a fundamental human need to witness and be witnessed in our authentic truths.We find we are medicine for each other as we bring our unique and needed wisdom, heart, perspective, and creativity.
We gather in Circle to hold the uncertainty and ask new questions.
We gather in Circle to hold the breaking down of the old and the birth of the new simultaneously.
So may the sun behind veils and grief behind masks be invitations to new intimacies and wild remembrances. May we smuggle in contraband questions under cover of darkness in circles of remembering how to be human in relation to all life.
Currently, we are meeting monthly via Zoom on the Sunday closest to the Full Moon at 5pm-6:30 PST. So the next few will be November 29, December 27, January 31, February 28.
Circles are FREE.
Any donations will go to support the Wild Nature Heart Equity Fund, supporting scholarships for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ program participants. If you’d like to contribute and make the circle wider, you can send to PayPal.me/WildNatureHeart.com.
Please register here and you will receive information on joining the next Circle.
Some gatherings will be open-ended, and some will be themed.
Upcoming Circle Themes: Deep Belonging, Trickster Values of the Great Composting, Sacred Grief, Ecosensuality, Hopeful Activism, Missing Elders and Village Ache, Shadow Stalking
We Are Wild Nature Heart
The Era of I-Over is over. Deep We is calling.
Like you, we were assigned only human at birth—a severe abbreviation, to say the least. Too many ‘not-mes’ in us to remain an ‘I’, we surrender to the Immense We. This is us coming out/in as We.
Vast skies & deep soil live within—bacteria & bears, colors & con-fusions.
Most recently & disturbingly (in the best sense), Elder Fire & Ash Kin pierced us w/ questions we have no right to refuse. The midnight cries of the remains of those who didn’t survive flow through our nervous system, wiggling us towards liberation.
Though we try, we cannot flee our entanglements. The symphonies of howling disguise themselves as itching until we listen & accept them, offering refuge in our body-hearts. There’s no going back.
Prior to that—a kiss from, an indictment by, an apprenticeship to bear. It was from bear we learned to eat everything, to be with everything. We learned that if we didn’t learn how to embody the voices dancing inside, we would be destroyed—confirming the wisdom of Gnostic Thomas, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
Along the way rainbow eagle flew into our chest, tattooing the shape of sky in us. Dung beetle-dug in, turtle-moon paced slowly through our veins. Hermit thrush threw ever-widening iridescent loops asking us to keep opening—stretching w/ moonly silence.
Then came Riverever forever foriver—The ‘I’ was done for. We were born & are always being born. A cascade of unfolding co-becomings, erotic & eclectic.
We’ve relinquished mastery in favor of aspirational imaginaries beyond empire.
Impossibilities are emerging, as common as ants. Not just beyond the binary, but beyond the non-binary. Gender- & human-expansive. Trans-species, shapeshifting, micro-animist, archetypally-curious, Oneirogenic (dream producing), rhizomatic, symbiotic, omnivorous, and cosmic-fluid.
We are unmuzzling the beasts within. We R mutating. With-nessing something new. We are pulsating raw & riddled rhythms into the ecosystem of robust nows.
We are Wild Nature Heart.
the Full Moon Has Us – Deep We Is Calling
The Full Moon has us.
Let’s speak softly for a moment. Close your eyes & whisper your longing & belonging to the moon. Are you here with you? Are you here with the untold multitudes of our other-than-human kin?
Open all your ears. What do you hear that is not the sound of all the stale voices out there propping up the Era of Back-to-Normal & Power-Over?
The election is on everybody’s minds (in everybody’s bodies). Yet it’s not the biggest, nor the final, story, regardless of what happens.
Our longings go deeper, don’t you think? You know the village ache & sacred wounds of separation of which we speak.
What stories do we commit to, who will we ally with, what will we place on our altars, what vast co-becomings will we open ourselves up to?
The proverb shared by philosopher-poet-prophet Bayo Akomolafe, “the times are urgent, let us slow down” has been with me, sticking in my bones, coagulating my blood that sometimes wants to race to sure things. The trickster wisdom in it is counter-intuitive when the hills are literally on fire & we can’t catch our breath, when institutions and ecosystems are unraveling.
But slowing down doesn’t mean complacency. We’re gonna fight. But we be fightin’ like a dung beetles and autumn otters. We be accomplices with the wind & deep time. We’re talking Trickster Values of the Great Composting. We’re not here to do the same ol’ same ol’ – we got work/play/rest/healing/love to do.
What if we intentionally walked across this threshold of collective initiation, opening into the thick-we-post-humanist world?
The Era of I-Over is over. Deep We is calling. Saying compost the dead & dying body of the Over-culture, decolonize our hearts, & dismantle identity-prisons that have us all by the throats.
Tuesday will come & go. Trump, Grandmother Corona-virus, & Elder Fire are our biggest teachers right now. Cracking things open. The decolonial pilgrimage continues as we collude to try something different—conspiring w/ wild others to #compostempire & smuggle in impossible questions, opening up new/old portals of re-membering & enact our Deep Belonging.
Will we re-ally with earth & re-learn how to inhabit home?
-Ryan
Enwebbed
It is not a matter of whether or not you are caught in a web. We are all en-webbed. It is a matter of knowing which webs you are in, of knowing which webs you want to be and don’t want to be in. It is a matter of what gossamer threads you are casting and to where and with whom. The cosmos is sticky, choose well. What and who do you want to eat? By what and by whom do you want to be eaten?
October Full Moon Update
| Greetings from the Full Moon! The moon is pinkish-red above the horizon and my body is shaking with energy snaking through. Like you perhaps, I wish we could talk merely of harvests and river play, of moon dances and fall frolics. It gives us no pleasure to name that we are in a moment of open fascist ascendency and ecological crises. We understand the strategies of flight. This week I and many people I know had to flee their homes due to fires and air thick with smoke. We were exposed to what passes for leadership at the “presidential debate” and are still reeling from the gross and embarrassing display of ugliness and silliness. We were exposed to the disgrace of the grand jury’s decision in Breonna Taylor’s case. And we are exposed to Covid, which has us laboring to breathe behind masks. “I can’t breathe.” These were the last words of George Floyd and Eric Garner. It is a plea for Life. Toxic air. Toxic politics. Toxic masculinity. Toxic policing and toxic injustice system. Toxic economy. Increasingly, it becomes difficult to catch our breath. I can’t help but draw the connections between all these types of toxicities and it has me reflecting on resiliency and what breath might mean as transformative agent. Flight as a mode, while understandable, is not only not useful, it is ultimately not possible. We are here. Our breath is the moment. If there is no escape, if the very air we live in and lives in us is toxic, what can we do? One response: we can metabolize the ash of what is burning in our bodies and hearts and over-culture and alchemize it into new forms. We can breathe fresh air into bold images in exchange for earth’s outbreath. We circulate our vitality as rent for Life. This is a contract worth entering into. I want to offer a different image of resiliency for us to reclaim our bodies and wild nature hearts as vehicles of co-liberation: The Trampoline. It often feels like we are walking a tightrope. On a tightrope, our concentration is fierce, sweat is on our brow, our muscles and hearts are tight, anxiety fills us because we feel constantly on the verge of falling to our doom. But what if instead of walking a tightrope, we are jumping on a trampoline? Merriam-Webster defines a trampoline as ‘a resilient sheet or web supported by springs in a metal frame and used as a springboard and landing area in tumbling.” Instead of a rope strung tautly from one end to another, a trampoline is stretched between a solid frame, attached by many springs. We can take a breath with each spring and feel each of them as portal of power, as inner and outer resources. The more springs we have the more buoyancy we have. Being with the pregnant moon is a spring. Honoring the fullness of our feelings is a spring. Beauty is a spring. Rest and healthy food is a spring. Friendship is a spring. Feet in the creek is a spring. Honoring our truth is a spring. Playfulness is a spring. Embodying our purpose is a spring. Taking meaningful action is a spring. We are relational creatures in a relational universe. The more springs we have, the more we return to relational presence. And the more relational presence we cultivate, the more acrobatic. We have more moves. And we’re going to need every move we can imagine. I also like this image because it is circular, like Life, not linear, like a tightrope: We attach our springs and we jump in the circle. We pour our unique acrobatic panoramic breath and body into the world. We become webs of resiliency with each other. This is called fierce love. This is the wisdom of no escape. May our doings and being be not only exhales of fresh air from our deepest well, but jumping prayers of sacred breath for all. This is the revolution of the new breathing and it is calling us. Ryan Director of Creative Earthiness Writing from my trampoline in ancestral Wiyot territories and the Baduwat River watershed, Northern California |