Ideas as Sturdy as a Bench
parenting circle this friday!
The technology and care of this beautiful bench! I spent some time on these benches last week and it struck me as a perfect metaphor for what I want parenting circles to be.
For so many years I craved an aptitude for making furniture over writing and facilitating, because furniture is so clear and reliable. Over the years, I keep returning to writing instead of learning how to make furniture so I’ve accepted that it’s just what I do. I understand now that what I want to do in writing and in group time, is find thinking that better supports us, nourishes us, buoys us, in the actual lives we find ourselves living. A difficult task perhaps, but when we land on it, it’s the sturdiest kind of bench.
The benches like the one in the photo are placed for people to sit and take in the view in various places around this northern California campground. In the instance of this bench, the view is a prairie that elk often visit. In the instance of a parenting circle I want to make a space for us to view ourselves, our next steps, and to see ourselves reflected in others.
On my walk to this bench, a fern said hello. It moved more dramatically than any other fern around it and it looked so much like a wave that I smiled. Hello, I couldn't help saying out loud. Thank you.
I remembered this particular feeling of belonging I get when I'm in certain lands. I don't feel the absence of this belonging until I feel its presence. It feels like the land is happy I'm here and that makes me weep with humility at how rich it is to be on this earth, of this earth. It’s not like it’s happy I’m here because I’m unique in some way, it’s more like it’s happy I’m here because I’m another being within a being, another plant in soil, constituted by the same mysterious mixing of elements in a slightly different form.
The question for me used to be - how do I move to this kind of land so I can always have this feeling. Lately I see that I forget and remember the feeling cyclically, and I'm interested in finding it wherever my circumstances take me. I want to find it in places I spend more time these days, like my home in San Francisco, which has fewer trees, more plastic, more electricity buzz.
I need other people to remember the belonging the fern offered up. Which is why I’m doing these parenting circles. A place for a little meditation, a little writing, a little conversation, a little silence. It's short but when we are parents that is usually what is available to us. The other thing I forget and then remember is that remembering takes no time at all, in fact, or a very short focused moment. When we feel disconnected, we imagine we need a week long spa, or an exotic vacation. Those things can be awesome but are not necessarily the conditions that help us truly embrace the present. What is often needed is a pause, a opening of my grip, an intention. Shorter and simpler than I think with my everyday mind. What I need when I want a vacation is usually a rest for my mind, to put down over-efforting for a bit.
This particular parents’ circle on Friday will be loosely guided toward questions about our political lives. By this I most simply mean how we engage with the world beyond our immediate family. I'm interested to ask questions around what my offering and responsibilities are to contribute to larger causes while I'm parenting in this season.
I hope you will join me even if you don't think of yourself as "political." I want it to be a space we get to reflect on the kinds of worlds we want our children to grow up in and what might help our psychic systems feel peace around how we participate toward those ends.
I want belonging, the full depth and truth and no-exceptions of it, to be the bench we sit on when we ask these questions. I’ll pass on the reminders the ferns and redwoods shared with me last week, and we’ll hold questions together from the bench of a circle.
register for parenting circle here!
Become a paid subscriber to this email or venmo me $7 (@ existingtogether) to join.
Either way I love you and I hope the equivalent of the ferns saying hello to you happens often, and I hope your conditions support you not missing it, very soon.
Love
Sarah