Dear Friends,
I hope you are all keeping well here in the middle of summer, in the middle of a pandemic and in these unsettling and transformational times.
Last month, Efrat Livny from Threshold Community Space and I put our heads together to create another collaborative storytelling evening similar to what we've done these past months during the Great Pause.
For a handful of days I courted with what to call this event along with which stories might want to be told. Listening in patiently for the naming, the titling for this event...curious to see what might show up. It was an intense time; George Floyd's murder weighted heavy on my heart and the protests in his, and so many other people of color's names were erupting all over the planet.
One night, as my body moved into the liminal space between waking and sleep these words - Beloved Other distinguished themselves and were there when I woke the next morning. So began an inquiry into what this meant to me. What rose up for me throughout that day and those to come (it is still emerging) is this: Beloved Other is about acknowledging this paradoxical dance us two legged can have with "otherness". We can be drawn to, repelled by and view what appears to be 'other' as a commodity to be exploited. This is a deep rabbit hole of a conversation...one I pray continues to be reflected on and discussed and most importantly listened into.
Lakota Chief, Luther Standing Bear shared this wisdom from his people speaking to their relationship with the Great Plains.
“ We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, the winding streams with tangled growth, as ‘wild’. Only to the white man was nature a ‘wilderness’ and only to him was it ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. “ Luther Standing Bear, Lakota Chief, born 1868
This way of viewing the world, as Thomas Barry also expressed "As a communion of subjects rather than a collection of opposites", is found in the rich well of many indigenous cultural beliefs and practices and known to those of us who are committed to dismantling the yoke of the colonial and patriarchal paradigm.
In sitting with these two words, Beloved Other, I'm so very present to the work and listening that needs to happen to re-visioning a new (and yet even older) story to come forth. Living the meaning of these words is an anchoring into the wonder, awe and and ease of relating to this world and all it's constituents - human and more than human, hearkening back to the wisdom of this indigenous world view Luther Standing Bear spoke of and beyond.
What does the pairing of these words - Beloved Other and their shadow side might mean to you? What images, experiences, sensations, thoughts rise up? Where are you experiencing a nourishing and felt sense of other as beloved - not foreign, not commodified and feared? Where are your biases, conditionings and beliefs, conscious and unconscious, clouding your relationship with the wide animate universe, with "the Great Mystery"?
Coming up on Friday July 17th - this conversation is what we'll be cooking in through the lens of story, the imaginal, the radical and revolutionary act of listening and the wide arc of myth.
Whether you're able to join us or not I hope you'll pause and reflect on what Beloved Other means to you.
Hands to heart,
Tracy