Hi Friend,

Here's a story that dwells within the heart of Sequoia Samanvaya; of this work of ReMembering and ReEnchanting.

I was a child - perhaps seven. Something difficult was happening in my parents' house. My memory is less of a specific thing and more of a felt-image: a heavy, dank, ugly, uncomfortable fog, or perhaps a dangerous storm cloud.

So I walked out of my home's backdoor, past the vegetable garden and the fruit trees, through the red wooden gate and out onto the land behind our house: acres and acres of EBMUD watershed land. Did my loyal companion, our Australian blue shepherd, come with me? I don't recall.

Not too far, but far enough, into the hills, I lay down on my back. I could still see the yellow lights against early evening's dusky blue sky. As I lay there, the moon rose above the line of eucalyptus trees on the horizon. The soil was hard and dry beneath me; the grasses smelled like early hay - it must have been late summer.

My hands in the soil, my vertebrae against the earth, something happened. It was as if I could sense invisible threads, almost like music, connecting all of it: soil and grass, tree and moon and, somewhere in the distance, the sea and me. I heard a coyote. An owl flew above me. I felt - such profound, profound Presence.

A presence that was within all things and also connected all beings; very much alive, and with a kind of knowledge, a kind of wisdom, that was not the same sentience of humans, but was, nonetheless, connected to and beyond human knowledge.

And this Presence could and did hold me. Into this embrace, that included moon and early evening star and the sweet dry grass, I melted.

Usually when I tell this story I focus on the profound experience of interconnection and interbeing that swept over me, regulating my nervous system and clarifying a very deep knowing that already existed, somehow, within me.

But there was something else, too: that no matter what was happening in my parents' system/house, this Presence could support me.

And it was in that moment that I felt myself dedicate myself to Her.

In that moment of dedication, I felt such a strong Yes flow through me; a belonging that has never left me; a kind of peace that, while sometimes feels far, is also something is always right here.

Such is the work of ReMembering.

Even today, with all of the books that I have read, I still like the earliest reference-name I had for this presence - a gesture of a pronoun, not even a name. Most of the traditions I have encountered know that we can't really name this sense of interconnection; of harmony.

Every course, every spiritual direction call, every time I preach, every small group, every article, every newsletter, is, on some level, trying to cultivate the experience of; trying to point towards, to encourage the possibility of that harmony that is also always already here, even as we experience profound dis-harmony on so many levels. In so far as we are able to support more accurate histories and decolonial approaches to how we story our own identity formation, it is because I keep finding that the process of decolonization can take us closer to the interconnected mysteries of all of life. And death. And (many) forms of re-generation. A process that leads us, that leads me, again and again, into various creative expressions, including silence; including song.

Sometimes mutterings, sometimes murmurings, sometimes chants.

To ReEnchanting.

The term Samanvaya is an old, old Sanskrit term that is sometimes translated as co-ordination but also means harmony. It was explained to me as the 'harmony that existed in the beginning and will exist in the end and also exists now.' There is a timelessness in this idea - a recognition that time is not only steady and continual, chronos as the Greeks would say, but also that there is that which is beyond time. I was invited to use this term by friends of mine in India who wanted to both encourage and give strength and blessing to the big work we are doing in our own way, here at Sequoia Samanvaya.

I preached recently on logos, in the Gospel of John, a term that is misappropriately translated as "Word", though it was initially translated from the Greek to the Latin as Sermio, which means 'conversation', which is a far, far better translation. I wish the Church had gone with that translation; it might have reduced a few thousand years of misunderstandings. Heraclitus, as I understand it, understood logos as a principle that harmonizes conflicting forces, showing that opposites are interconnected and balanced. Perhaps that's part of what I felt, there, on the hill. The logos that forms this connection between all beings. Perhaps I felt the feminine version of the greek masculine logos - she whose name the Greeks translated as Sophia; whom the old Jewish traditions called Hokhmah. Wisdom. Sometimes called Lady Wisdom. I wonder, these days, if we can also call her Mother; She who was in the beginning of all things.

Just this week I had a particularly hard moment, again related to my family of origin. I went outside and sat, watching the sunset go from dusky pink to a luminescent, almost translucent gold. I was asking what to do about something that causes me deep heartache.

In the midst of asking that question, a hummingbird came before me, hovering just inches away. It looked directly at me with its beady black eyes and emerald throat. In the sunset, those beating wings glimmered like gold.

I see you.

We looked at one another for a while. Eventually it went back to feeding on the nearby hummingbird feeder. And then - another hummingbird came, and the two of them flew off into the sunset. Watching them, my heart lifted, and I shifted from the questions of doing to the experience of being part of this great mystery.

Beauty is essential to our ability to survive.

And: I can't make this stuff up.