The Legend of her own becoming
Red Thread Letter #854
Dear Ones,
Just a month ago we re-opened MUSEA after a year and a half. Then just last week I returned home from my two-week revisioning time at the sea. I loved having time offline to rest and be with my love Jonathan and spend time drawing, and then we celebrated our 7 year anniversary this week. Things have been so full with work and community and really exciting.
Yet at the same time I am feeling quite concerned about the Delta variant, and maybe needing to close again by the Fall and new restrictions are being enforced almost daily where we live. We are writing and re-writing our policy for guests as it aligns with state regulations and being sensitive to all sides of the story. It is a lot to keep up with. I knew I wanted to write to my community about how I am feeling, and what I am sensing in between the spaces. Here is my Red Thread Letter and the image I made to go with it.
The Legend of Her Own Becoming
What a long strange trip it’s been, and now where have we ended up?
What is the legend I am telling of my own becoming?
What story are you telling about your becoming?
I was raised in a family of women. Women who were as awake as they could be at any given part of their path. Both of my Grandmothers told me that by the time my children are grown, the world may be uninhabitable. #harshgrannies
I marched for civil rights, for the end of violence against women and to disarm the nuclear arms by the time I was 8 years old. There were men in our family, who didn’t try to silence us, but nor did they march with us or stand with us.
Sometimes it hurts, the astonishment at the harm happening on the planet never wears off. I am telling you this because in a way I feel I have been training for hard times, and I am particularly feeling a call to ask us to pay attention. And to pay attention as this pandemic shifts to a new place for our world with daily changes regarding the Detla variant.
At first I wanted to grow up to be a judge because I thought I would be good at administering justice. My most common phrase as a child was – “wait, but that isn’t fair to everyone”. It wasn’t long before I discovered that the corruption I wanted to stand against was so pervasive that I would have to spend years in the patriarchal construct and be fighting all of my life. Becoming an artist may not seem like the natural progression from wanting to be a judge, but the reasons are clear for me. It was the place I could have the greatest influence on awakening others and myself.
To serve justice, we first need to have our eyes open.
I saw at a young age how the first place we experience unfairness, especially women, was to ourselves. I could hear in the voices of the women around us how they made choices based on not believing they mattered, and how alone they felt in those choices. Even my mother, surrounded by powerful women, felt as if she was ‘on the run’, mostly due to choices that were made from not having enough resources or running from men. Our saving grace was our capacity to tell a story we wanted to tell, about what was happening instead of being a victim of it. This one thing changed everything. Period. #mamacloud
As I grew up I knew I wanted to support women in being able to leave violent situations – but it would take years to connect that the most threatening situation I could have an impact over was the one happening inside. If a woman could change her internal narrative she may be able to have the fortitude to make other choices based on her own mattering – instead of desperation and feeling worthless. The violence was always going to be around her/us in one way or another but we could choose how we relate to it. My family once moved out of an entire town, all together, fleeing violence by a group of men pursuing us, because we were harboring women who needed protection. #truestory
What I feel myself and the Intentional Creativity Guild CAN IMPACT is the narrative within about how we feel about ourselves and our relationships. When we are utterly consumed by feeling hateful or helpless towards ourselves, it can be challenging to make sound choices, or get well enough to gather others and join activism that matters to us.
Around here we hope that the work we do together awakens a level of choice at creating ourselves by our own hands. Intentional Creativity reveals the conscious choices while being the biological practice for rewiring us for transformation. If you work with your internal narrative and tend to yourself, you will have a greater capacity at being resilient, being of service to these times and finding inner sanctuary.
Everyday I ask myself “How can my piece of the red thread serve the great unfolding at THIS crossroads of human history?”
Because I am very concerned about what I am seeing and feeling happening all around us. Whether that is the record number of sea creatures dying, community members caring continuously for pandemic family members, wars erupting around us in different ways or places, new cases of Delta right in our IC California community and the predicted surge, the heat waves and the fires, the record-breaking gun violence over fourth of July weekend in the US, families in our own community protecting their adult children from violence, the old growth forests being cut down, the systemic violence against people of color, the increased abuse of women during the pandemic, countries without access to adequate resources, or the children and elders we know who are sick, and the list goes on.
You know all about it already. I don’t want to alarm you, on the one hand, but on the other hand… I want to name this experience right now – that we are in uncertain terrain and it isn’t really going to improve for some time at the level of the world. So…
How can we be as ready, engaged and in love as possible?
I have a high tolerance for bad news and scary prophecies with being raised how I was. To act for good in times of hardship, instead of retreat and silence it. And I am shaking in my own cowgirls boots today because there is a lot to behold right now. (And as I begin to film the 2021 Legend, asking myself how on earth can I make this filming really f*cking relevant and have it be a good time???!!! and serve all of you)
I know I want to be awake for whatever unfolds and I know that in order to keep serving this community I need to tend my own creative life force first. And I do. This is my practice, daily Intentional Creativity for over twenty+ years. Every time I paint, draw and gather with you in ritual, we are weaving ourselves stronger.
Today, I wish to make it known that I feel one of the greatest ways I can continue to serve you through my red thread is to focus my educational efforts on how to be resilient through creativity, what I am calling “The Practice of Intentional Creativity”. Choosing one mighty red thread is where all other choices can be nourished. This might mean I can’t join other causes that matter to me. I have received my instructions from the universe: ~ Create the practice that will sustain ~
My teachings going forward into 2021-2022 will be largely based on themes like cultivation of Intentional Creativity as personal and community practice, healing through medicine painting and drawing, and how to share it with others, insight direction through cultivation of clairconsciousness and the creation of beauty as an antidote. I have long said, discovering pleasure is one of the mighty ways we can learn to sit with pain without turning away.
During the pandemic of the recent past, I still did my practice every day and wrote a book and drew almost daily while working to keep the Mothership on course. I have only been focusing on one major painting, my wild twin in Ritual and that has felt good. Yet harder times may be coming. Dear Ones, I don’t need to tell you that statistics about the pandemic show we are far from complete, and that many feel Delta is about to change everything again. I have looked at the numbers and tend to agree, and I feel it quaking within me.
So today’s message is a sobering up of my personal purpose and sharing it with you, the curation of my own legend and how it weaves with you. And giving you a call to pay attention to Delta. And inviting you to the curation of your own self and story.
I am riding my red thread as a crimson lightning bolt, holding on, knowing my part and inviting you to claim your own piece of red thread. My legend is woven with your legend.
Imagine going through the next part of our lives together knowing that you are in a community of conscious and compassionate creatives who are each carrying their own piece and peace. We are united in our diversity. We are woven with red thread and we will stick together.
I hold the vision for our courage and our potent practice during these times of great change.
Being a comfort to another is a high value of mine, and I hope my work can be a comfort to you and encourage you to navigate what you are dealing with. Each of our situations is unique, and in many cases, surprising. We need different remedies, yet we are the apothecarians we need with access to infinite variations of colorful medicine.
May Love Be At the Center of All or our Choices. I share my heart with you this day and in this sharing, have found peace within, and the courage I need. And I hope you found something here that you need as well.
To anyone who has reached out about the Northern CA wildfires, thank you for your concern. They are not near where we live at this time. Let us pray for all beings, creatures and land that has been impacted.
Yours in service to the unfolding,
Those of you studying to teach Intentional Creativity® right now, we are most grateful, as we surely need women leaders in this community and in the greater collective. If you want to study with us and teach Intentional Creativity and you have questions about next steps – message sarah@musea.org with your inquiry.
p.s. When you read these long letters, know that it will take you 7-10 minutes to read but that I likely spent 2-4 hours writing it because I thought it was important enough to share….
What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been ~ Grateful Dead (and our most common family quote.)
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