Hi Friend,

Amongst a soft drizzling California rain the other day, I awoke thinking of so much that I'm grateful for. It feels right to share some with you.

Not particularly, mind you, because it is the 'season of thanks-giving' in the U.S. and Canada. Although I am experiencing my own version of a harvesting moment (both metaphorical and literal), and I'm sure that influences this sharing.

I've noticed that when people share gratitudes, especially with a bit of detail attached to them (beyond the most common overarching statement of, 'friends, family, and food'), it often acts as a kind of window into someone's life.

As each of our lives are intertwined in the wider web, it is thus akin to a window into the wider web. Perhaps this is why sharing gratitudes can often be encouraging - gratitude tends to beget more gratitude: when we offer windows into our own particularity of the collective web through the shape of gratitude, others also can see their own particularities within the wider web from the lens of gratitude. And sometimes it can be jarring, because the windows into our lives that are part of the wider web also show some of the inequalities, injustices, and strangeness in the social-institutional structures of the web itself. One woman might be grateful that she found the number of an immigration lawyer to call when her husband was taken by ICE; another woman might be grateful to spend her anniversary weekend with her husband in a luxurious 5 million dollar home overlooking the ocean. I've heard both stories in the last few weeks. Both women are expressing love for their partners.... and their love story is deeply influenced by a the unequal structures of a web that is largely outside of their direct control and influenced by their positionality. Both of them are finding moments of gratitude.

So perhaps this expression of gratitudes for the work and teachings and practices of ReMembering and ReEnchanting will support the gratitudes in your own day. And give you little windows into the sweet moments of another person's life (in this case mine): another person who, like you, is sharing this wild ride around the sun. All of these moments are from the last few weeks.

So many gratitudes to.....

For the waters - the rain (which here is gentle) the creeks, the ocean, the wombs - that enable life. Again and again, the waters keep flowing.

For the people who protect the waters - ecologists and indigenous activists and people who clean up beaches and my neighbor who helps to unclog the drain pipes and the sewage workers who keep things flowing and the coast guards who rescue people and the folks who are getting increasing practice in cleaning up after floods, and all the ways that people are learning and sharing how to deal with increasing storms due to climate change (shout out to the folks in southern California who have been impacted by the latest torrential rains).

To my many teachers who keep helping me tend more deeply to see the thing beneath the thing. The river beneath the river. Including bringing humility to my gratitude practices: I still don't know how we can get out of this mess of continuing to exacerbate so many inequalities and injustices. I am still grateful that today - and so far as I can tell, also tomorrow - I have enough to eat. How can I lean into helping others eat?

To any and all of you who have been and will continue to give a portion of your own meals/finances to your elderly/ vulnerable neighbors who have been experiencing the pain of SNAP cuts or other forms of food insecurity.

To any and all of you who are tending to those who are vulnerable: to elders and children and endangered frog species and our increasingly endangered coast lines and those who are being terrified/hunted by ICE and to those who are recovering from surgeries and sicknesses. To those vulnerable parts within yourself.

To the (for me, very rare) opportunity when I was able to tell someone who spends most of her time helping others that I was able to get her a fellowship - for two months, she won't have to worry about paying her bills and can tend to her own creative spirit.

To the element of fire: sun and candle and the fires we have gathered around for many generations to share stories. To the lighting of the fire in my mother's hearth, an act I have done since I remember, and which I did again this week, bringing in this year's fires to the hearth. To the many people who have helped me start fires, both real and symbolic. To the Indigenous cultural burners like Ron Goode who have kept and are still sharing indigenous practices of burning; practices that are essential for the revitalization of our watersheds. To the many firefighters who are learning from Ron and other indigenous leaders, and in the process changing their own and the larger Western culture's own relationship to fire.

To the many moments in the last few weeks - walking through woods with former/current students; sharing a meal with several of my spiritual direction clients; reviewing testimonials for our upcoming circular time offerings; when I see, clearly, the difference I have made in these people's lives. Intangible in some ways, but profound in so many other ways.

To that moment when Krissy shared with me that she is now in a position to support her Tuscarora community in a different way.... and the community is in a position where they can receive and work with this particular kind of support. Heart medicine works both (and many multi-dimensional) ways. (More coming on her new initiative, Strawberry Wisdom in the near future!) That I get to be a part of that bigger thing. That I will get to invite others to be a part of this bigger thing.

To that moment, this past week, when I got to open the 'harvesting' gathering hosted by one of my students, Andrew Murray Dunn's Fall Cultivator. It was almost three years ago when he first was sharing with me some of these ideas of a "school of wise innovation." We talked for many hours about his vision and ideas. I encouraged him... and warned him about not turning "wise" into the next version of "greenwashing." And then he, with a team/network, was able to bring something meaningful into being. As one of the School's teachers (mostly around circular time and Origin Stories), in this Harvest gathering, I was able to reflect back some of how the School has recognized that wisdom is connected to time and to place, and some of the multiple ways in which we can think about the metaphor of "harvesting". After his gathering, we had a bit of a celebratory dinner: it was beautiful to see how his own journey is shaping him in some really positive ways.

Watching myself, I see that I'm much better at doing things like having simple (but still profound!) powerpoints, starting and ending presentations on time (always appreciated by organizers), weaving poetry (I worked with Ecclesiastes 3), embodied movement, small group conversations and high-level insight, and having grace (instead of just fumbling) with zoom-related tech issues. Gratitude to myself - for continuing to improve in the 'small practical things' as well as the 'big meaningful ideas' that make such a difference to collaborators and clients.

To one of my first bodywork clients, who walked into the office I was working in at the time 22 years ago, and who has been coming back to work with me ever since. When I saw him this past week, I can feel his 80+ years beginning to catch up with him - the stiffening of his shoulders, the bend in his neck that no longer straightens so easily, the tiny pauses before he shifts from one thing to another - but he still goes on long distance hikes every week. Remarkable.

To the child I recently played with, now three, whom I first spoke to while she was in her mother's womb, and then for whom I officiated her eco-spiritual 'baptism'. In which she blessed all those who were so lovingly gathering around her. (When doing a blessing for a child, consider how much the child is blessing the community, as well as how the community is blessing the child.)

For the many funerals/ memorial services/death rituals I have been able to witness, participate in, and co-create this year; for the draft 'how to officiate a memorial service' booklet that sits simmering on the back burner of my Canva cauldron; for the many people who keep mourning; for the people who keep tending the mourners, not asking them to 'get over it'; for those who understand how long and strange and hard is the journey of life-after-loss. For the opportunity to look more closely at death. To not always skirmish before the inevitable.

For the Spirit and the many people who made possible the recent rematriation of land from a group of Franciscan Sisters to the Chippewa Indigenous community in Wisconsin. For the recent moment when one of the people deeply involved in that process and I had a long conversation to support their ministry in this bigger web. A web that, as we reflected on the whole thing, she was both instrumental in and fully, totally, not in control of.

For the many people - friends strangers family neighbors farmers - who are concerned about - and even more important, willing to help - my mother, who is in a period of her life where she struggles to find her own words. And she often falls.

To all the elements that make local farmers markets, with their overflowing bounty, possible: the eons of different cultures' cultivation of foods; the soil and microbes and cow dung and compost and sun; the labor and knowledge and practice; the aching backs and the technologies that enfuse farming and harvesting and growing; the years of networking and advocating and organizing and millions of people saying, yes, we can do this ancient thing once again, right here in the parking lot behind the gas station/across from the church/right near the big super market; the farmers who drive and show up; who carefully explain again and again how to cook that long skinny vegetable that someone has never seen before; the multiple ways of exchanging money; the systems of banks and credit unions and electronic exchanges of value..... all of which enables fresh local food on our table. As well as in the bags we give to those who don't have such access.

For one of my clients whom, when I asked her how she most wanted me to support her on the day of her big conference, which took months of work/planning/outreach/design/effort to put together, asked me to help hold the wider space and to help her stay centered/grounded. (In Quakerism, we would refer to this as "eldering" for her "ministry.") I'm grateful that she recognized that this was a need at all - too often, when people are putting together a big thing, so much emphasis is put on the thing itself that they forget their own needs, especially the needs of space-holding, grounding/centering, and coming-back-to-self .... and that she could, actually, ask for help. And that this is indeed 'real work'. That can be paid. And for the folks who showed up to help me hold that bigger space - I also don't have to do this work alone. Including when I'm getting paid to do so.

For our Associate, Michael, who keeps coming up with great ideas and amazing graphic designs and does the tech that keeps everything at Sequoia Samanvaya going smoothly, who this week came up with the cool idea of giving everyone on our ReMembering and ReEnchanting Newsletter list who signs up for our annual Circular time workshops a 10% off through the end of November. Just use this code: Sequoiacommunity.

For the serendipity that led a dear colleague who is doing some amazing work with water systems in southern California to invite me to jump in the car with him this week to see our mutual friend Caroline Casey perform her stand up comedy/astrology/channeling genius ReEnchanting (road)show. Wherein Caroline reminded us both of how very, very tenuous our complex system is right now (ie, the rate of things could fall apart could vastly accelerate quite soon) and how in the moment of things falling apart, both the stories we tell and the unexpected alliances we can build are very, very important.

For the gentle inner nudge to swing by a former ReMembering student's home the other day to say a brief hello, knowing she was flying to give a TED talk - with her wife and their two small kids and thus didn't have much time to talk. Then she asked me to sit and stay for a bit and help her work through a tricky part of the TED talk that she gave a few days later. It was a moment where we both stretched our minds and hearts and words to articulate dynamics of ReMembering and ReEnchanting.

For the nudgings that led a former ReMembering student, herself a meditation teacher, so appreciated the ReMembering Course that she encouraged some of the folks in her network to take it, leading to my current ReMembering Course cohort, all of whom are part of a small family foundation that understands the importance of these histories for their work on the intersections of mindfulness and ecology.

For the years of work and practice and thinking and conversations that are enabling me to offer this upcoming Thanksgiving-themed webinar on Origin Stories. Including to the wonders of the serendipity-meets-destiny-meets-ReMembering-web, that led me to a 3 hour car ride with a new-colleague/friend that helped solidify some of my thinking for this year's Thanksgiving Resources document (which I think will be available next week!)

The webs are within us - both the webs of the structures of inequality that are man-made as well as the webs of mutual co-arising of all beings - and outside of us; Spirit connects us through nudges and whispers and synchronicity and patterns that can act like teachings. With grace and humility we can attend to where they take us. So much is bigger than we are. And yet here we are. Participating. In Serendipity. In Justice. In the Web. In Un/Learning. In giving gratitude. In ReMembering and in ReEnchanting.

For your gratitudes.

Sara Jolena