This september . . .
Monumental Erosion & (R)Evolutionary Co-Creation
A Day to Slow Down and Locate Yourself in the Transformation Underway
Soul friends, we are being transformed.
The events of 2020 and 2021 have changed us and call us to even greater change. “We are,” in the words of Terry Tempest Williams, “eroding and evolving at once.”*
Waking up and staying awake in the midst of such tremendous loss is not easy. It requires curiosity, compassion, courage, and community.
Standing up to individuals, to the systems, and to the parts of our own selves that keep us marching in lockstep to the concerns of an empire already doomed and to the worn out stories it persists in telling is exhausting work.
Some of us have grown uncomfortable within the confines of the stories and worldviews that shaped us. Many of us have begun to question the veracity of those stories, while others of us have rejected them outright and have begun our exodus. Still others of us are clinging to them desperately, fearful of what it would mean to let go. Compassion on it all, dear ones.
Like the souljourners who came before us, we may find ourselves wandering in a desert of disorientation surrounded by the echos of our own complaints and preoccupied by our fear of wild beasts that loom in the darkness. Perhaps, in this same desert we’ve awakened to abundant manna and angel visitations. A desert is full of paradox.
We wonder, “Will we ever make it through this time? How? And, if we do, is it really possible to emerge transformed? Will we meet the grace to say, NO to the constant temptations of securing the survival, affirmation, and control we so desperately seek? Can we learn to say YES to our own transformation?”
I believe we can and we must. Soul friends, it’s time to locate ourselves within a larger story.
A larger story doesn’t undo the old story; rather, it enfolds and expands it. In these upcoming Quiet Days, we invite you to consider your place within the unfolding story of the universe.
As Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker write, “The great discovery of contemporary science is that the universe is not simply a place, but a story—a story in which we are immersed [in which we live and move and have our being], to which we belong, and out of which we arose.”*
We invite you to explore how the story of the universe is simply today’s expansion of the Christian story that has shaped so many of us. We invite you to consider how the story of the universe magnifies what has oft remained hidden in this sacred story of our formation.
We invite you to consider: What is being eroded? What is evolving? How can we can work with Reality, rather than against it?
*Erosion: Essays of Undoing by Terry Tempest Williams and Journey of the Universe by Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker