I’ve been on a solo road trip for the last few weeks, and I’m currently staying in Phoenix. Every time I step outside, I’m hit by the unbelievable (to me) heat of the Sonoran desert. It hits hard at first. Shocking. Similar to when you open the oven and the heat rushes out into the room, smacking you in the face on the way.

This is an intense time to be in a human body. It requires a certain perspective and capacity to live vibrantly in a vessel that has been brilliantly designed to gather information through multiple avenues, all day and all night long, both consciously and below our mind’s awareness. It can be hard not to numb ourselves to certain embodied experiences, attempting to cherry pick the ones we feel capable of enduring, let alone actually enjoying. But in fact, when we (attempt to) select certain emotions, sensations and feelings and ignore others, we truncate our capacity to experience everything. If we wash out “negative” feelings, then the tremendous, pleasurable, and joyful experiences become washed out, too.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been suggesting that, you find a way, even if for only the briefest of moments, to forget what things are called, and instead see what they are.

Of course, this is easier said than done. It requires that we slow down and gather our attention, directing our presence into the moment. In our fast-paced, distraction-riddled world, this can seem nearly impossible.

Just remember, you can start small…

Chris wrote to you about how her avoidance of discomfort and pain led to disconnection and isolation. She shared about needing to learn to be with all of the sensations in her body, and emotions in her heart, and how that became a doorway into belonging, connection, and deeply nourishing pleasure. While reading her words, I realized that while my family operated in some similar ways – my dad’s mantra was, ‘happiness is a choice’ – the impact on me was different. Rather than trying to move away from pain and discomfort, I came to assume that pain was simply the way life was, and no one could do anything about it. I dismissed the experiences I was having, and chose to be happy – or at least to make it look like I was – and felt so very alone.

With the safeguards I’d put in place, I wasn’t available to the intimacy I longed for, with myself or with others. My threshold for discomfort was practically nonexistent and I became prone to unfair and hurtful outbursts that I didn’t know how to clean up. I enjoyed the things that brought me pleasure - music, friends, sunshine, mountains, orgasms, pot, laughter - but it all felt shallow and not actually satisfying. Finally, I realized that the deep ache of my unexpressed emotions needed my attention if I were to live into my fullness. From then on, life got a lot more interesting…

In industrialized cultures, we are often taught to focus on what our community is doing for us. What are we getting out of it?

And yet, perhaps paradoxically to some, we find our way into our belonging and embeddedness, the rich vein of our rightness-of-being, when we ask: What are we wanting, willing, and able to do for the others all around us? We find our belonging when we imagine we matter. We are defined as much – if not more – by the role we play in the ecosystems of which we are a part than we are by the things we get from those ecosystems.

We want to share another poem with you. This is one of our favorites by a rather well-known poet, Mary Oliver. May it inspire to spend some time with the trees, to remember your belonging and your light, and to slow down for a moment to appreciate the breath in your lungs and the sparkle in your eye.

Our belonging is unquestionable and inexorable. As much as we might try to separate ourselves from the other-than-human world, we are undeniably an intrinsic part of the Earth's ecosystem.

Every time the faculty of The Verdant Collective gets together to craft an offering, we find that no matter the specific content, our intention ultimately comes back to one thing.

BELONGING

One thing we have in common is that the four of us have parts that were painfully rejected by family, friends, institutions, and beyond. Oh my goodness how we’ve wanted to feel loved and held by those who simply couldn’t! We’ve shared stories with each other about moments of despair when we felt too broken or too weird to ever be really welcome in this world.

In our world of busy-ness and sound bytes we tend to rush from one thing to the next, shoveling things into our bodies and minds, rarely giving ourselves the time and space to actually taste and metabolize what we are taking in. And we want you to be able to take this in. It’s quite possible that your life actually depends on it.

Nothing about our bodies, our nervous systems, or our brains is black and white. They do not function independently of one another, and what we need, what brings the most wellness and wholeness, is understanding, inclusion, and integration of the complexity of our systems.

The nervous system is our primary internal navigation system, pulling the levers and influencing our behaviors with lightning speed, just beneath our conscious awareness. Although all human nervous systems are made of the same essential parts, our particular life experiences sculpt unique neural pathways that shape how we respond to situations and our environment.

In the last two decades, I have come to understand that fundamental social change seeds and roots within the intimate and often uncharted terrain of our emotional and physical bodies. Terrain that has been devalued, colonized, and commercialized by the dominant culture just as it is often ignored by activists themselves.

In Western Culture, the word erotic has been conflated with sex, and sex has been reduced to what you do with your genitals with another person. It’s a rather limited understanding that gives us little if any room to actually exist and explore… We want to invite you into a very different understanding of the word erotic.

I’m in bed with my partner of 3 years. The sunlight is beginning to stream through the curtains, and we’re just stirring from slumber. He’s spooning me and his hands start to roam across my body in a gentle, barely-awake way. His hands speed up, almost imperceptibly, he gently pushes his hips into mine, and in a flash, I go from feeling held and relaxed to scared and trapped

I’m sure you’ve heard it, time and time again, the oft-used axiom, “Growth happens outside your comfort zone.” Of course, there is some truth in this statement. Yet, if we get too far out of our comfort zone we aren’t going to grow either.

I need to be honest. When it comes to writing right now, I’ve been lost trying to find my voice. I’m in the soup of deep feeling and inquiry and my words and thoughts about racism and justice aren’t formed well enough to share in a meaningful or helpful way. I’ve been sitting here with a blank page for hours wondering what the hell I’m going to say.

When it comes to fundamental layers of American culture, such as systemic racism or misogyny, change does not come easily, quietly, or peacefully. If we look to ecology and its ever-unfolding evolution, we see that Life is not always gentle, and systemic change is often violent.

In the last few months, I’ve learned so much about the underbelly of my emotions, the uncomfortable stuff I’ve been able to breeze past and work around in busier times. Feelings of bitterness, frustration, insecurity, and a short temper have crept in from the periphery, and these days, I have to consciously scan for what’s good because so much of what’s going on feels like a threat.

Life is an ingenious inventor. And, after about 4.54 billion years of trial and error, upgrades and product recalls, the system we humans have been endowed with is a brilliant organic web of optimal functioning….that is, if we follow the simplest of operating instructions; if we learn and follow the practices of fundamental wellness.