IN CIRCLE Luminous

IN C I RC L E IN-CIRCLE.ORG

WINTER 2023

Photo by Matt Petricone

WEAVING COMMUNITY THROUGH THE WISDOM OF OUR HANDS & HEARTS

reflecting on

honoring death & darkness winter ’ s internal journey navigating grief hearts break so they can open support and resources

TALES

CIRCLE CREATIVE COLLECTIVE info@circlecreativecollective.org @circlecreativecollective 62 Plains Road, New Paltz, NY 12561 845-481-0739 in-circle.org

CIRCLE’S CURRENT TEAM

MELISSA HEWITT MIRABAI TRENT

LUMINOUS and BLOOM were co-written, coproduced and co-directed by JENNY WONDERLING, MELISSA HEWITT, and MIRABAI TRENT PHOTOS BY MATT PETRICONE AND PIOTR REDLINSKY

Circle Creative Collective is a 501(c)(3) Hudson Valley nonprofit organization with a mission of preserving and sharing the wisdom and healing of traditional crafts and skills. We gather in Circle to weave the fabric of community, inspiring people of diverse cultures and backgrounds to remember the lessons and skills of our ancestors, and embrace the wisdom of each of our unique traditions.

If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation, be a corporate sponsor, or volunteer, we would be truly grateful. Our programs are accessible to intergenerational and diverse individuals, many of whom cannot afford to pay. Please consider giving, no matter how small a gift. It keeps our programs blooming and accessible to all.

Photo by Piotr Redlinski

Photo by Matt Petricone

Photo by Matt Petricone

Photo by Piotr Redlinski

reflecting on

LUMINOUS: Tales for Seeing In The Dark

by Jenny Wonderling

C

ircle Creative Collective has produced performance events and workshops in the Hudson Valley for the past four years. Last spring at the Stone Ridge Orchard, Circle brought BLOOM to the community with the generosity of creatives, volunteers, and sponsors. This was a rare journey on candlelit paths where performance merged with the unexpected through improvisational and interactive scenes. Thanks to overwhelming positive feedback and the encouragement to create again, we quickly dreamed up LUMINOUS: Tales for Seeing In The Dark. This was presented this autumn on the paths of Rosendale’s Snyder Estate and within the powerful cave of The Widow Jane Mine. We again collaborated with nearly 100 local artists, performers, musicians, healers, and production people to make the many gorgeous and powerful scenes.

LUMINOUS was another performative experience, this time bringing visitors into the cavernous heart of the Earth

through a contemplative story about death and rebirth. Together with BLOOM, this second offering of hope and healing completed an important story of life’s most essential cycles of birth and death. At the heart of LUMINOUS were gifts to help us find powerful, heartfelt light in the dark through re/ connection, story and song. By honoring grief, impermanence, and the wisdom of the unseen world, we were reminded how each precious moment can indeed become more amplified.

And we can feel less alone especially when held by an inspired and loving community, through the transformative powers of creativity!

the importance of death, grief, and the burdens we carry…for there is no day without night.

Especially powerful was the experience of moving through the LUMINOUS journey as a group, processing loss as a community in a way that felt unabashedly original and sacred, as well as (yes, even) joyous. Not as alone as we often think or our society would like us to believe, we walked flanked by new and old friends, held invisibly by generations of ancestors and loved ones who have come before us.

LUMINOUS showed us how even in the coldest, darkest times we are held by beauty, that we are magic, and that each of us can be a light in the dark.

This is our 3rd issue of IN-CIRCLE magazine! This, like LUMINOUS, honors a subject that all of us must face, even and especially in our grief-and-death avoidant culture. Through wise reflections about loss and death, as well as meditations, creative ideas, grief resources, and more, our aim within these pages is to help better navigate the challenges that can emerge with loss and grief.

We offered two consecutive evenings to ponder and honor

A season’s end is also a death, one especially felt by many

Photo by Matt Petricone

Photo by Matt Petricone

of us who live in the Northeast.

The stark and sometimes lonely wintry months can amplify feelings of grief or anxiety. Winter is also a perfect metaphor for any cycle or process that feels harsh or isolating. Thankfully, being bathed in the abundant natural offerings of this valley can also help us through the dark times, for it is here we can appreciate the balm of the elements, the changing seasons, and our Earth’s lessons in im-

Photo by Piotr Redlinski

Photo by Piotr Redlinski

permanence. Just as the trees must release their leaves, we too, must embrace change to allow for new growth!

LUMINOUS and this issue of IN-CIRCLE is an offering to you and anyone feeling loss–whether of a way of life, an identity or aspect of self, a dream, or a loved one. We hope you will appreciate the reminder to walk life’s path with an open heart, a curious lens, and a trust in Grace. Togeth-

er, let’s welcome each step as an unexpected and important experience in our Spirit’s journey and as rich fodder for growth. Let’s fearlessly create original and authentic beauty in all forms! Together, you and me, and her, and him, and them can remember that our own challenges can be beautiful guideposts and teachers of compassion and overcoming. That alongside the essential powers of grief, we may also give ourselves permission to play, dis-

“A dream had become a reality through an alignment of intentions among we living and breathing, who walk the earth, our ancestors, and the land itself at Widow Jane Mine—that is the feeling enveloping my being upon reflecting on LUMINOUS. I am grateful having been a part of it, and was struck by the absolute reverence among all who participated in a visually and sonically stunning, living myth—a numinous and resonant expression of love.” -David Budd

Photo by Piotr Redlinski

Photo by Piotr Redlinski

Photo by Matt Petricone

Photo by Piotr Redlinski

cover, mend, and heal the world.

Of course all that is a tall order though without the presence and powers of art and community. Through those, in the most visceral ways, we can come to alchemize our grief, and transform individually and as a collective.

dead. If we do not grieve what we miss, we are not praising what we love. We are not praising the life we have been given in order to love. If we do not praise whom we miss, we are ourselves in some way dead. So grief and praise make us alive.” Indeed.

To everyone involved in this production, everyone who joined us as a guest, and you, dear reader, we thank you for your courage–a word that etymologically means “of the heart.” This has all been a wild invitation and loving reminder that we are truly connected to each other and the Earth.

May we weep, and grieve, and sing so that we may live more fully and joyously, honoring those and that which we have had to release, while embracing the new in unexpected ways.

Martin Prechtel had this to say about grief: “To not grieve is a violence to the Divine and our own hearts and especially to the

Co-creating these offerings has been my great honor and joy.

Photo by Piotr Redlinski

Photo by Piotr Redlinski

Photo by Matt Petricone

winter’s internal journey and the power of our own hands

by Jenny Wonderling

A

n important internal journey is reflected all around us in nature each winter. Here in the Hudson Valley and Northeast, the trees may seem nearly lifeless, the landscape sullen, but within all that, quiet and important movements are indeed happening.

Those majestic branched beings have dropped their green canopy, blooms and fruit have long withered, yet as they stand naked in their seemingly ancient skin, they have merely stripped down to the essential.

What if, as the journey turns inward, they are embracing the gifts of stillness and internal creativity that will help bolt the spring into wild cacophony and color?

Collage by Mirabai Trent

In fact, the bursting birth of spring simply cannot happen without this essential, individual gestation in these darker days. Much of the wisdom winter offers is about returning to silence and one’s solitary experience, and too, the deepest, truest part of ourselves so that we can be born (to create and experience life) anew if we use our time right. The potential for this human rebirth has to do similarly with celebrating the opportunity for internal alignment and balance, and maybe even finding comfort in stillness.

Francis Weller, in The Wild Edge of Sorrow explains, “Silence is a practice of emptying, of letting go. It is a process of hollowing ourselves out so we can open to what is emerging. Our work is to make ourselves receptive. The organ of receiving is the human heart, and it is here that we feel the deep ache of loss, the bittersweet reminders of all that we loved, the piercing artifacts of betrayal, and the sheer truth of impermanence. Love and loss, as we know so well, forever entwined.”

To understand and invite these cold and often lonely months is to appreciate that, like children as they sleep, we too grow most in and through the dark. Embracing this notion is antithetical to our “just be happy” mythologizing of reality. And it is hard, maybe even excruciating for Americans to be still, to be quiet. We seem to be defined by our activities and productivity, and we are comfortable measuring ourselves and others by those values. Are we enough? Have we done enough? We look for evidence of our impact through monetary reward, through our “social” worth, and perhaps most of all through our “busyness” which usually has more to do with frenzied action than a return to ourselves. But what happens when much of this, like autumn’s leaves, has fallen away?

People speak of seasonal depression, but how much of that is being forced to sit with ourselves without distraction or perpetual motion, to explore and mend our own unresolved grief and longings?

Winter offers us an opportunity to plunge into all that, to release or transform it, and what no longer serves us. Winter gifts us time to dream and re-member. Who are we really, whatever season?

Can we become content doing less? Can we find the “value” in stillness?

PLAY, big important words that will bring you into full presence. They will help you forget those worries and what-ifs, and restore your faith in this beautiful moment. And this one…while you breathe a little deeper, and time will seem to stretch like the clay in your curious hands.

Stillness is Never Still. There’s always plenty happening, even when we’re mostly in our homes.

But we humans can be harsh judges. We ask, am I enough? Am I doing enough? In this culture it can sometimes feel like we’re not. That’s where the power of craft and creativity come in—to bust through and transform a sense of overwhelm, disconnection, and lack of meaning.

One of Circle Creative Collective’s goals is to help one another find a way back to what matters most. As we step into the colder months ahead and enter deeper into home hibernation mode, Circle will offer the community a series of workshops that will explore a plethora of craft skills.

These will serve to (re)connect individuals to an open hearted community, and to the inherent wisdom that lives within each of our own hands.

The simple alchemy of hand-work can help bring light to dark days; it offers a balm to isolation.

It makes us realize that our very existence matters, our hands as portals to our soul’s longings.

Those who honor a creative process and spend time in and with nature simply manage better.

Creativity, craft, and connecting to our natural world, like self-care, must be recognized not as indulgences but essential tools to feeling grounded, to being able to cope in what often feels like a lot of uncertainty, isolation, and even fear. These tools help us to be able to know ourselves better and feel more content.

You are invited to join us on the creative path because creativity and craft are superpowers.

We hope you will experience this for yourself.

When you can’t walk in the woods or grow things in a garden due to weather or other reasons (and also when you can), try keeping a basket of yarn, paints, a journal, a loom, and whatever else piques your interest on hand, even if you’ve never tried these things before or deemed them important. Then, when you’re having a moment of feeling lost, bored, or alone, try taking out some of those materials as quickly as you can. Without judgement or qualifying what you are doing, explore as you once did as a child.

Soon, simple things like color, wool, string, or blank paper, will remind you again to just BE, to

Our Circle was formed because our founders recognized the healing power and wisdom of traditional craft and creativity. We remind each other of the importance of creating with a reverence for the earth, and an awareness about our collective impact on communities and individuals near and far. We encourage upcycling. We ignite a passion for processes; about the connection such traditions hold to the past. We invite open hearted play, conversation, and exploration. We laugh our heads off, and we sometimes weep as we share space, stories, listen to one another and create.

To quote Meggan Watterson, “When I sit in a circle, I know my body will communicate more than anything I end up saying. It says, wordlessly, just by being at eye level with everyone else: There is no hierarchy to the spiritual world. There’s just this circle where the first becomes the last, and the last becomes the first. We are all equal. And we’re all equally trying, in our own crazy ways, to love ourselves enough to see the good that’s right here with us.”

As in every sacred circle, we invite you to come with your unique and positive intentions.

SoulCollage for Groups TM

SoulCollage gatherings are a fun art process for deepening your relationship to yourself and others.

• •

relationship enhancing by sharing + listening building your own oracle deck in a women’s circle •

a meaningful activity for family time •

•

all rites of passage

home vigils and memorials for the beloved dead

Nixa DeBellis

Inquiries and Booking: nixadebellis@gmail.com

Breakdown or BREAK THROUGH?

You have a choice. I love to help people find their “voice,” and through creative expression - art, poetry, drumming, & healing sounds - insight!

You discover your new path.

I offer instruction and guidance.

Call me.

David Budd • (845) 338-1122 Kingston

navigating grief

by Nixa De Bellis

G

rief is much more than being really sad, or hugely disappointed. You’ll know it when longing and lamentation takes hold of your being and puts the rest of the Universe on pause— for some time.

There are many layers to deep grieving, and so many ways we can experience loss when love dies, or simply disappears.

The burden of loss is heavier and more intense when a relationship is burdened by knotted emotions such as guilt, shame, blame and anger. In my greatest grief, it took me a while, being in a dark, thick, heavy and immobile state, to crack the hard boundary of disbelief that a loss had happened.

I became unable to lift myself up off the floor some days, or to get out of bed, or do anything outside. Many of you know this kind of experience. I had to lie in it for some months.

When it became too exhausting to be exhausted, I was ready to move the immobile. How I did it, and what I recommend here, is to build spiritual practices when

Photo by Matt Petricone

relationships are going well and flourishing. If relationships are abusive, get help if needed and exit the relationship in any way possible. The practice you build now will be what you rely on when it is your turn to grieve.

The etymology and definition of spirit, from the Latin spirare, is the state of breathing. Spiritual practices are those that invigorate life. Cognitively, being “spiritual” means that one searches for meaning, truth, and purpose.

Practice means making inquiries regularly and consistently.

Spiritual practice involves generating and enhancing feelings of hope, love, inner peace, and connection with others and with Nature. Experiencing awe with how consciousness is immanent in all things is a high vision and a very stable vantage point of all things mutable and ephemeral, including your life and the life of all of your intimates, pets, acquaintances, and strangers. In behavior, spiritual practice can be your organized religion, your personal religion, a development of altruism, your creative and

scientific pursuits, and a sense of generous giving.

Don’t neglect this part of your life. The practices, observances, rituals, cycles, and ceremonies you enact over and over again teach you what to do in all states of living. If you do not have a spiritual practice in your life, develop your worldview and the practice will be clear. What do you think this existence is? What is the lens through which you see the world?

Balancing gains and losses on a global or cosmic level is a very good way to expand beyond the individual, painful angst. No one can avoid loss and pain. When in the state of grieving, here is a path to help you navigate the terrain:

Accept that it is so.

Soothe the stuckness.

Aid the mobilizing.

Go to Nature.

When we experience loss, there can be an unwillingness to accept that it is the truth. Longing for it to not be true is a certain way

to stay stuck, and it might take a while to move through this first step. When you accept the new reality, you will have to soothe the stuckness, honor the hurt, feel it and express it summarily.

Give yourself a generous amount of time, as much as you want, to soothe stuckness. Expressing grief to someone else can be very hard for another person to carry. Some beings with a strong spiritual practice can help you and listen to your lament, but you can also put it in a bowl of water, the ocean, a hole in the ground, or the earth under the floor you’re lying on. Scream, cry, and even spit. That’s how I did it.

When it comes time to aid the mobilization out of the state of darkness and into meaning, you will know. When you start to crack open a little, when you start to see light through the cracks, add massage, myofascial release, aromatherapy, and gratitude practices.

Seek a healer to help you. Make prayers, poems, stories, and songs.

Open up your knots and create art. Go to dance classes to make cathartic physical breakthroughs, like the Tarantella dance of my ancestral Italian lineages. You will begin again to feel that movement is possible. You will move through.

Give yourself generous time and consistent practice.

When you feel that you have soothed the stuckness long enough, and that you have aided the mobilizing of grief’s heavy load, take it to Nature. Go to Nature, bow to Nature who heals and who can metabolize your partially mobilized grief. Put it in the Grandmother Ocean by way of moving water—her creeks and waterfalls—or carry it to her directly. Salty, crashing waves and rushing waters transform the energy and you feed the holy there.

Put it in the Mother Earth’s soil and mycelium network of de-

cay and rebirth. Give it to Sister Dust, who accepts your tears and makes petrichor of it. It smells good again, finally.

If you have lingering guilt, shame, or unexpressed unprocessed anger, it will be much more difficult to move from feeling stuck to feeling mobile. Your current life practices will help you consistently do what is right for you, clean up confusions, clean up bad relationships, and heal your mind.

My grief story has morphed into a wildly undomesticated, never-before-seen bird of great beauty that exists in a new and ever-meaningful state. It shifted. I shifted. The impermanent world keeps shifting. When you are stuck, be stuck. When you see light, aid mobilization. When you are moving more freely in your heart and mind, go to Nature and give her the remnants. Bow to Great Nature, who heals.

DEDICATIONS It is with great love that I honor and remember my incredible Father, In Loving Memory of

Richard Novie

Jose Miguel Orozco To my daughter Melissa Orozco.

I am so proud to be your Mommy.

Your brother “Sato” is watching from Heaven, smiling and proud

May the work of luminous help open the hearts and minds of many that Spirit is Eternal.

I love you my Queen.

May we remember where we came from and where we will return.

-Always, your momma

Forever Dad-you are my solar rock.

-Alison Sinatra

to be your forever Angel.

hearts break so they can open

by Rochelle Schieck

T

wenty-one years ago, when I was 21 years old, I participated in a training course to become a hospice volunteer. I had been taking a class called The Psychology of Death and Dying that my professor had recommended. In the hospice training, we were asked to write down ten people we loved dearly, ten places we loved to be, and ten activities we loved to do. I invite you to do the same now.

The next part of the process was to go on a guided visualization, where we imagined receiving a diagnosis of needing to say goodbye to each of these people, places, and experiences we loved, one by one. It was heartbreaking. Gratefully, I’ve learned over the last 21 years that hearts break so they can open. Immediately upon the contemplation of losing these things in my life, I felt a deeper sense of appreciation for them in the days to come.

One of the takeaways for me in that experience was acknowledging that...

a person’s grief in losing someone is different from the grief of the person who is saying goodbye to everyone and everything in this physical realm.

I invite you to take a deep breath as your mind and heart travel where they need to in this moment. Notice yourself and your experience. What thoughts are arising? What sensations are present in your body? What emotions are emerging? Whatever has your attention at this moment, can you practice being with it? For a few breaths, I invite you to offer yourself presence.

“Stay calm and stay present.”

Together, we watched him take his last breath. When he passed, there was a visceral scene of his spirit no longer inside his body. The intuitive part of me knew he was gone. The woman and I sat in silence for a few minutes before we got up.

Another thing I learned in the hospice volunteer training was that the last thing to go is someone’s hearing.

This was the lesson I learned the first time I sat in a room when someone died. While I was still in my training, I went to sit with an older, wiser woman. Her beige chair was against the wall at the end of a single hospital-style bed with crisp white sheets. There was a frail, middle-aged man in the bed, in his 50’s I think. There were no family or friends around him. The wise woman invited me to practice presence, to bear witness to this man as he transitioned. Even though we did not know him, she taught me that we didn’t need to.

We could hold space for his experience by being with him in it. It took me a while to slow down my racing thoughts that were trying to understand what I was doing there. When I did have a moment of deep peace and presence in my mind and heart, he gasped for a breath. The woman looked at me in a way that said, Photo by Matt Petricone

This touched me in a personal way when I got the call that my grandmother might not make it through the night. I flew across the country to be with her. When I arrived, she was in a coma, but still alive. I cuddled up to hold her. Her body was softening, minute by minute, letting go of all the tension of the 78 years of her life. Her short gray hair stood up in a dozen different directions at once. I did my best to get comfortable in the half-raised hospital bed, and I began to whisper gratitudes in her ear. I replayed all the moments of my life when I was held and loved by her. I fell asleep and when I awoke, I realized she had died in my arms. She had been held in her granddaughter’s arms while we honored her life.

I think one of the best things we can say to someone who is dying is “thank you.” Thank you for living. Thank you for loving. Thank you for being on the journey alongside me.

Many of us have lived with loss. I offer my respect to your relations who have made the courageous journey into this world and beyond it. I also offer my deep respect to you and your journey. You are still alive, heart still beating and your breath still moving in and out! I am thinking of a teacher of mine who shared with me the idea that we used to live a lifetime and die in one body, and now we die many times and are reborn, living many lives in the same body. I’ll always remember the glee she shared with this news of living in accelerated times of change and evolution. It feels true. Even if it is not the literal death of another person or ourselves, the cycles of change require reconciliation with our grief.

How do you/me/we navigate cycles of impermanence, as natural as the leaves falling off the trees? How do you/me/we receive life’s hardships and grief and compost them to be regenerative for ourselves to create more beauty in this world we share? How do you/me/we keep up with the acceleration of change that is so present, where looking life in the eye with love is necessary to meet the heartbreak all around us?

INVITATIONS TO CONSIDER: 1: FEEL: Practice being with challenging feelings and offering deep compassion to them.

2: GATHER: Embrace your human journey by embracing your brothers and sisters who are walking alongside you at this time, in their own way.

3: GRIEVE AS PRAISE: In Martin Prechtel’s book, The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise, he writes,

“Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”

Let the natural flow of grief move you to explore if it’s true for you—do hearts break so they can open?

DEDICATIONS Long life, Honey in the Heart, White roads paved in the eyebrows of the Moon, Which is sea foam, Yellow roads paved with yellow, fat and abundance, From the tail of the Morning Star, No Evil, Thirteen Thank-yous, Earth Fruit Face, Thanks.

-Martín Prechtel

In loving beauty and memory of Jeffrey Pettit 8/10/1927-8/18/2022 In Peace and in Grief as Praise Your loving daughter filled with gratitude and appreciation for all of you.

In Loving Memory of In Loving Memory of

Margie Cooper

Bronislawa Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another,

Honoring your strength, softness, tender heart & wicked sense of humor.

Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of “Mother”

-Edgar Allen Poe

Dearest Mother, Grandmother, Great Grandmother: You are so very loved! You

Love, Glenna

live through us in our hearts. You are with us always and in all ways. We feel your love beaming down on us. You are a beacon of light.

we crown you M

any who came to LUMINOUS have asked to know more about the crowns that were sold and that many of our performers wore. The history of making crowns from natural materials can be found across cultures and centuries, is steeped in tradition and symbolism and were made from flowers and plants that had particular associations and healing properties. For Circle Creative Collective flower crowns represent a celebration of life and unique creative expression.

There is evidence that people have been gathering roses specifically to make crowns for thousands of years and that these symbols of love and devotion were the first cultivated flowers. As explained in The Way of The Rose by Clark Strand and Perdita Finn, “The first mention of a rosary-like devotion is over 5000 years old and refers to a japamala, which in Sanskrit means “muttering garland”. Like the word rosary, mala originally referred not to a circle of beads but to a sacred circle of flowers.”

Working with flowers and with our hands can bring us a sense of inner peace, offering a bridge between meditation and creativity.

In partnership with Ulster Immigrant Defense Network, we worked with a community of women from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico that are now living in Kingston to create the crowns sold at Luminous.

Together, we sustainably gathered natural materials, many of which were withering in the cold of October, and we found beauty in every stage of the life cycle.

Plants that would normally be overlooked instead provided adornment and inspiration for many. All proceeds from the sales went directly to the women, creating empowering pathways of income.

“Circle Creative provides work for these talented immigrant women who create these products with pride and independence. We feel so grateful that these women have a safe outlet for their skills, and inspiring means of support created with their own two hands.”

-Lesley Gallagher, Ulster Immigrant Defense Network

check our event calendar for upcoming workshops in-circle.org

mother earth speaks from the earth scene in luminous

A

s Onome, playing Mother Earth, stepped out from the foggy fissure within the cave, she opened her mouth and heart and the words poured forward through song.

While creating LUMINOUS we pondered... if the Earth could speak directly to us, what might she say? Here is our rendition.

Child, you have all you need.

Please, just give your gratitude, your joy, your tears, your song, your fullest presence, your truth, your uniqueness.

For that is all I ever ask for anyway. And for you to celebrate the time you have…with me.

What do you take without giving?

Dear ones, please sit now with all of your relatives and hear me now. Hear Me Now. As you sit on the ground, listen to the sound of the wisdom of Me, of We.

Listen to the wisdom of your body’s intelligence, your soul’s wisdom. Your heart’s wisdom.

Your life’s wisdom.

I live through the rocks. I live through the soil. I live through the trees. I live through the skies. I live through the sound in your heart. And bones. And sinew. And flesh.

Photo by Piotr Redlinski

What do you not know about your own sacredness?

How do you not know that your bodies are sacred?

Love is the language I speak.

Love is the language I sing.

Love is the language you are designed to understand.

I speak through the trees. I speak through the leaves of every tree. I speak through the stars in the sky.

I am the Stars. I am the Sky. I am the Ground.

I am the Earth. As are you.

Every particle of you, every wave of you.

We are One. Every blade of every grass.

Every sand of every sea.

Every leaf of every tree.

Every speck of dust.

There is sacredness.

There is reciprocity.

There is giving and receiving as one. We are all one.

We belong to each other.

We speak the language of Love.

We sing the language of Love.

I sing the language of Love.

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a mother’s power

twice birthed

An interview with Martin Dunkley by Jenny Wonderling

M

artin Dunkley, co-founder of Kingston’s Seasoned Gives, recently lost his beloved mother Dorothy Murray (aka, Mama Blossom) to a stroke. He shared with us how the loss is shifting his daily experience and allowing him to see through new eyes.

“I’m not going to lie; it’s been tough.

The person that I was, passed away with my mom. It’s incredible that only a mother has the power to give birth twice! She was able to see me come into this world and watch my eyes open. I was able to watch her eyes close, and, with that experience, I am learning and discovering myself all over again like a child would. My accent, my vocabulary, my awareness…the irony is that I don’t believe it could have happened without my mother’s interjection of herself.

When a woman gives birth, it’s the ultimate sacrifice. I have heard the pain has been compared to the equivalent of every bone breaking in the human body at once. Humanity wouldn’t be here without that sacrifice. Another activist, scientist—another human must be born of that pain. I am not diminishing fathers, but I feel it is only through the pain of losing a mom

that someone can be born once more and can truly recognize all that. I hear, smell, and process things differently. I am simply not the same person. And, in fact, she did what she was supposed to do as a mother, she did her “job.” She was the best mom anyone could ask for and she “went” before me, for a mother is not supposed to bury her son or daughter.

I’ve found that the emotional/spiritual work you do prior to such a loss is very important and that is why the journey with grief can be destructive or unintentional. Instead, I’ve experienced this true discovery with all of my cells. And one of the things I’ve noticed is that, since her death, I’ve had an internal battle going on. My mind accepts what happened and can recognize that she’s free of pain and in a better place. My spirit can appreciate that she’s a part of everything now and that I can access her all the time. But my flesh and my heart tell the others to shut the hell up! I just want to feel and hear her, hug her. I know you can’t exist as a spiritual being without recognizing that you can’t destroy energy or the spirit. So I can see that because I have this battle within me, there is not a balance within myself.

What I am learning is that we shouldn’t fear the inevitable, and dying is the ultimate fear. That’s probably the reason I am grieving the way I am. It makes me wonder why we don’t offer a class in school to help children to change

this perception in a ceremonial way, so that individuals like myself wouldn’t go through it this way. Instead it could be a celebration to recognize sooner how it is through death that she now has superpowers. She has actually become supernatural! And with those new powers she has helped me pay better attention to the small things, helping my heart to really look.

Like this. This is our moment, now, to connect fully. Grief is allowing me to better appreciate, and love what I may not have noticed before. So I’m grateful, too.”

Dorothy I. Murray, age 79, passed peacefully at the MidHudson Regional Hospital inPoughkeepsie, NY on August 5th, 2022, surrounded by her loved ones.

She was born on July 3rd, 1943, to Wilhelmina and Cornelius Murray, in Kingston, Jamaica W.I. Dorothy worked as an LPN in New York City at the Jacobi Hospital in Bronx NY and New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York, NY. She is survived by her five daughters: Leila, AnnMarie, SandraDee, Claudia and Denise; and two sons: Ivan and Martin, as well as 23 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by her parents Wilhelmina and Cornelius Murray, and only brother, Leaford (Jiggs) Murray. Dorothy dedicated her life to her kids and grandkids and was passionate about her role as a homemaker. She was also an excellent cook, which culminated in her becoming the face of, and inspiration for, the Seasoned Delicious Foods brand. Affectionately called “Momma Blossom,” she was loved and adored by all who met her.

She will be greatly missed.

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the five gates of grief

by Francis Weller, compiled by Moya Keating The following descriptions of the Five Gates of Grief are based on Francis Weller’s book The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief.

Gate 1: Everything We Love, We Will Lose Impermanence is one of the core teachings of the world’s great wisdom traditions. Weller rites: “There is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness, some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive.” He writes further that he “has faith in grief” for it’s ability to expand the heart’s capacity for love. Through loss and sorrow, the heart breaks back open and connects with what we have lost. Grief is not a psychological issue; it is a soul issue—a revelation that through loving I am faced with loss. This is the call to Wake Up to the sacredness of life.

Gate 2: Places That Have Not Known Love This is the work of radical acceptance, welcoming the parts of ourselves that have been banished because of shame and self blame. It is time, writes Weller, to recover from perfectionism, regrets, self-loathing, and to affirm self-love, self-compassion and worthiness. From Weller’s perspective recovering all parts of ourselves is not just a self-help exercise. It is what is demanded in our time. The world needs our unimpeded talents and gifts. We have to quicken, and to ripen. This is the call to Mature.

Gate 3: The Sorrows Of The World When Weller wrote about the sorrows of the world, it is as though he foretold the moment we are living through right now. Science is delivering the message behind the news headlines, that it is human encroachment into wild habitats that created the conditions for the Covid-19 virus to emerge. Humanity is living the grief connected to the sorrows of the world in a totally new way. We are learning, as if for

the first time, that humanity is one family. The call is to re-embody “an unmediated intimacy with the living world, with no trace of separation between the human and more than human world.”

Gate 4: What We Expected and Did Not Receive Weller writes: “We are born into this world as stone age children,” and as such, we are hard wired to expect to belong to a village, and to a inherit the “wisdom that lies at the core of our imagination. “ We were born expecting a rich and sensuous relationship with the earth and communal rituals and celebrations, grief, and healing that keep us in connection with the sacred. We do not know what we did not receive, and so it is manifested as anxiety and alienation. From Weller’s perspective, it is a fiction to believe that salvation is private and internal. Healing occurs in a restorative relationship with a sense of belonging and participation. This is the call to Remember Where We Are, and Where We Belong.

Gate 5: Ancestral Grief Weller writes: “This is the grief we carry in our bodies from sorrows experienced by our ancestors.”

This gate opens to being with injustices levied by colonialism, genocide, slavery, and war; loss of languages, traditions, art and wisdom. This grief can be a heavy burden, and will take many generations of ritual, reconciliation and soul work to begin to heal lingering sorrow. The other facet of ancestral grief revolves around the very real loss of the ability to feel the presence of ancestors in our soul life and imagination. This leaves us with a feeling of homelessness. This is a call for Ancestral soul retrieval in order to move more deeply into relationship with the wider world.

Francis Weller, MFT, is a psychotherapist, writer and soul activist. He is a master of synthesizing diverse streams of thought from psychology, anthropology, mythology, alchemy, indigenous cultures and poetic traditions. He specializes in grief work, shame, addiction, depression and men’s issues. Author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief; The Threshold Between Loss and Revelation, (with Rashani Réa) and In the Absence of the Ordinary: Essays in a Time of Uncertainty.

Photo by Piotr Redlinski from Luminous this fall

in the presence of death

by Jennifer Muir, Death Doula

I

t is the first day of autumn and the eve of the one-year anniversary of my father-in-law’s memorial, and I have been called to write about my work as a death doula. Little by little, I’ve learned to heed the muse who calls from the mouth of mysterious portals.

As the season progresses and the veils thin, I find myself poised at the precipice of the underworld, the depths of the unknown, the fertile darkness. The time is ripe for deep diving into interior mysteries that are directly connected to the mysteries of our Great Mother Earth and our Great Cosmic Mother—the ground of all that is manifest. This is the beautiful gift of this time of year.

It’s the poetry of the fertile darkness that pulled me to the work of death and dying. It was a siren call from the Dark Mother for me. I had no idea where I was heading, or why. Slowly but surely, I am coming to a deeper understanding.

I made the realization that collectively coming into intimate relationship with the fact of death will save us.

Period. There’s not much else that will, in my humble opinion. The exiled nature of death in our culture has been deeply devastating and damaging in all ways, and the evidence is visible and palpable, especially in these tumultuous last few years. We in the West are materialists, first and foremost. Through our insatiable need to consume, we overuse and fail to protect natural resources, we prioritize long life over quality of life in our healthcare system, we steep ourselves in the dogma of reductionism and fail to see our sacred interdependent nature. I often wonder: If we witnessed the reality of death and dying in our day-to-day life, and didn’t sterilize, silence, and hide it, how might things be different?

There are plenty of cultural examples. I think of India and Tibet, of bodies burning on the Ganges

and sky burials in charnel grounds.

Where dead bodies of loved ones are left unmoved in the home for a few days while families and friends gather because it is believed that consciousness is still making its leave from the gross vibratory realm of matter. Death is not banished in these cultures and, dare I say, people seem more content with what is. The statistics around anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues in the US are staggering.

I was in a women’s circle recently and every single woman who shared discussed her fears and anxieties.

I found it uncanny that each one identified fear of death as the subconscious source. The gnawing existential angst is just so palpable and present in our broken and flailing culture. And I don’t think the problem is solely informed by our death denial; I think it’s also informed by the lack of beauty and magic around our death traditions and rituals. The synchro-

nicities, heart openings, dreams, and signs woven in the fabric of the dying process are available for those who have the eyes to see. It is my experience that along with the sadness and pain of loss comes an immense opportunity to touch into the ineffable.

My second reason for doing this work stems from the dire need to face my own impending death and the fears connected with it. I thought about death a lot as a child. It scared me. I was constantly afraid someone I love would die or that I was dying. I would feel myself slip away in the night into some terrifying black spiral. I’d jump out of bed to make sure I was still there—peering at myself in the mirror to affirm my existence as flesh and blood. Every death and dying training workshop I’ve ever done has been filled with people speaking of the profound gifts they’ve received working with the dying and their families.

No one ever described the nature of those gifts, however (back to the ineffable). I feel that they were referring to the freedom found in facing one’s deep-seated fear of death—in standing in the face of it, softening and breathing, and loving what arises.

So, I seek through my fumbling efforts to know death so I can heal myself and my culture.

I didn’t really know what I was signing up for. Had someone told me beforehand I’d be faced with my deepest fear, I would have turned back. Thank goodness for flying blind. Thank goodness for the call to the underworld by the Dark Mother.

I did not experience the death of someone close until the passing of my husband 13 years ago. He died of an accidental drug overdose 3,000 miles away, outside of London. His lifeless body lay alone, untended, slumped for about 36 hours before he was found—not before I knew he

died, however. I chose not to view his body when it finally arrived back in the US. I was too scared. I told myself that I didn’t want to remember him that way. I wanted to remember him vital and alive. But what did I miss out on by not looking? What did I relegate to stay hidden in the cluttered attic of my unconscious mind? . He was ultimately cremated, having only his father bear witness to his dead body. In a week’s time we had a service of sorts that was pieced together in the midst of our trauma and pain. In retrospect, it did little to bring any of us together, nor did it really celebrate or honor his life. How could it? He died at the age of 32. None of us had any depth of knowledge or practice that could support and guide us through. And our community didn’t know how to hold us because we didn’t know how to be held. The healing available to a culture or people that know how to be with death and grief was missed out on completely. His loved ones had to forge their own way or no way at all. Though I lament the lack of knowledge at that time, I am grateful for the grace that showed me the way and my spirit that responded over the years. This was my training ground and the training continues.

And now reflecting on the death of my husband’s father a day less than a year ago…. Oh the grief… the grief that had no outlet and stayed trapped in the heart of a man with a huge heart…. He died a year ago in a hospital bed, in a hospital room. The bed had vinyl covering. The room was freezing with a loud air purifier so that anything anyone said in this tiny room was drowned out and muffled by its persistent hum. I had to touch him and hold his hand through plastic gloves, a plastic gown, and two masks.

This made communicating nearly impossible. And still, the grace and tenderness of the hearts that were present permeated all of it. I’ve seen it time and time again in my training.

Hospitals and Hospice centers—

sterile, cold rooms with TVs blaring, lonely and confused patients, who are drugged, disconnected, and disoriented. And yet, grace is present— the invisible gentle hand of profound compassion. The field of one who is making their passing, and those who vigil at their side, is the most expansive I’ve ever experienced. Thoughts cease, perception sharpens, and a transparent rainbow of vibrancy permeates. Is it this grace I was seeking to know when I jumped out of bed to confirm my alive-ness? Is this what I still seek over and over again?

Even with all of the cultural denial around death, the reality and authenticity of it cannot be avoided. This is what I have sought and what has sought me my whole life. The real, absent of pretense. This is what working with death and dying offers me.

When I became a death doula, my first client died in his home on a mountain covered in mountain laurel, shrouded in mist, with his wife next to him in a room that was an altar in and of itself.

I arrived only five minutes later. His body was still warm but the light from his brilliant blue eyes was gone. He died on the memorial day of my husband’s passing. I entered the house, hugged his crying wife, stood by his side. Chanted and prayed. His adult daughter arrived as soon as she could and the three of us washed his body with herbs and water and anointed him with frankincense oil. We sat quietly, we talked gently. We inhabited that field together. Something was deeply affirmed for me that day and another thing left untended, was tended. A completion and undeniable invitation.

So I share a bit of my experience and my musings with the purpose of working towards eventually making what I do obsolete because, one day, we will be communities of people who have come to know how to care for each other in death, and, thus, how to care more deeply for all of life in all of its miraculous diversity.

© Mulography / Levon Helm Studios

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END OF LIFE

BOOKS

Hudson Valley Hospice Offering hospice and palliative care services, remote support groups for caregivers, grief support, pet adoption, an end-of-life doula program, and more. hvhospice.org

Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death byJoan Halifax

Circle of Friends for the Dying Offering a safe, comfortable homelike space where individuals with a prognosis of 3 months or less to live can rest in an atmosphere of peace and tranquility. Open to two residents with room for family and friends to visit. cfdhv.org End Well Project End Well is dedicated to the belief that all people should experience the end of life in a way that matches their values and goals. Bringing together a community that unites design, technology, health, policy, and activist initiatives to transform how the world thinks about caregiving, grief, illness, and the end-of-life experience with the ultimate goal of creating a future where ending well becomes a measure of living well. endwellproject.org

IN COMMUNITY Death Cafe At a Death Cafe, people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea, and discuss death.The objective is “to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.” A Death Cafe is a group-directed discussion of death with no agenda, objectives, or themes.

It is a discussion group rather than a grief support or counseling session.

You can host and begin a death cafe in your community. See the website for guidelines. deathcafe.com Local Death Cafe: cfdhv.org/event

Sacred Passage: How to Provide Fearless, Compassionate Care for the Dying by Margaret Coberly The Tibetan Book of Living and Dyingby Sogyal Rinpoche In Love with the World: A Monk’s Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Helen Tworkov The Smell of Rain on Dust by Martin Prechtel. A manifesto how-to-grievewell guide for all levels of grief and the many losses we encounter in our lives. A short handbook that wastes no words for 168 powerful pages. floweringmountain.com Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul by Stephen Jenkinson Gives exquisite language and thoughtfulness to the fear that North America, in particular, has around death and dying. A sociological exploration with wisdom and great insight for how to die well.

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How To Free Yourself and Your Family From a Lifetime of Clutter

by Margareta Magnusson How to free the mind of the load of material stuff and distribute it well before your last days, to support the people who will be left to do it if you don’t. And, perhaps you get to befriend death while living and assuage fear and phobias, in a tidy home.

Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives by Michael Newton.

Case studies as revealed through hypnosis of twenty-nine people, revealing

different layers the soul traverses in the spirit world without a body. Fascinating and comforting explanations of how dying feels and what is the souls’ journey.

Death: The High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman. A three-part graphic novel about the high cost of living, starring Death as a female Endless One, to help story unfold in our own psyche as myth and to help us see in the dark.

Prayers of Honoring Grief by Pixie Lighthorse. Poem-prayers for the long arc of a grieving period, giving a sense of season and terrain to take time with, and a patient portal to move through.

Thirst by Mary Oliver A volume of poems written while grappling with the loss of her partner.

MORE SoulCollageTM for Groups A fun art process for deepening your relationship to yourself and others in community and for opening up awareness and conversation.

Nixa DeBellis, Certified SoulCollage Facilitator, nixadebellis@gmail.com Five Wishes This Five Wishes document gives you a way to more specifically guide your proxy, health advocates, and intimate friends and family to create an end-oflife plan. fivewishes.org Nights of Grief and Mystery Tour Words, poetry, melodies, and a rock band to delve in audience of a thoughtful performance in a theater of healing and grace through music. orphanwisdom.com/nights-of-griefand-mystery Griefwalker, A documentary film directed by Tim Wilson

About Circle Creative Collective: Circle Creative Collective (in-circle.org) is a grassroots nonprofit organization rooted in the Hudson Valley with a mission of preserving and sharing the wisdom and healing of traditional crafts and creativity. “We gather in Circle to weave the fabric of community, inspiring people of diverse cultures and backgrounds to remember the lessons and skills of our ancestors, and embrace the wisdom of each of our unique traditions.”

JOIN US FOR UPCOMING WORKSHOPS LIKE: • Talisman Embroidery • Natural Dyeing • Weaving as Meditation • Sewing Series • Drum and Rattle Making • Block Printing • Creating Leather Bags • Mending & Darning • Journal Making • Coil Basketry • Spirit-Mask Making • Spinning Wool • Crochet & Knitting Fundamentals OR PURCHASE SOME OF OUR LOCALLY-MADE PRODUCTS THAT HELP SUPPORT LOCAL IMMIGRANT WOMEN: Naturally-Dyed Napkin and Dish Towel Sets Bee Inspired Embroidery Kit Small Loom Weaving Kit Needle Felting Kit Hand Woven and Embroidered Products from Guatemala and Oaxaca

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