Hi Friend,

You might not be expecting the following story in this explicit invitation to join us for the 2025 Summer ReMembering Course. But it's all true. 

Back when I thought I would become an academic anthropologist with a focus in religion and art, I got super interested in "social memory" - how a group of people (a nation, a subsection of society) remembers something.... and how deeply contentious social memory tended to be. Social memory is present in calendar holidays, a group's identity narrative (such as what does it mean to be a nation-state) and objects, like statues and buildings, which, far from being mere stone, are drenched in meaning.

Or rather, sometimes certain objects are filled with contentious meaning. And sometimes they are just stone - in plain sight, you walk by the statue in the park every day, you might not even notice it.

Looking back, I can say this was definitely an early interest in animacy: what is it that makes an object also a subject - what turns a "thing" into something "alive"? When do carved stones speak? To whom, and with what kind of story? What's the role of the carver? Of the stone?

In the last few years, we've seen these questions all over America - in the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses where statues of so-called 'great white men' become subjects to be adorned (or defamed) and in the process, their meaning in the public space is challenged. During the #blm protests, statues were pulled down and sometimes dragged to new locations, or in other ways marked. In response, some people cheered and other people got upset. Don't touch that statue!

Frequently, people get upset from across the political spectrum (ie, there are usually people who might politically agree with those who are spraypainting statues but who do not agree with the act of spraypainting.... or vice versa). The statue is, in these moments, a "site of contentious meaning-making," as I used to write about (back before I decided that academic writing was not how I most wanted to communicate). Statues (and buildings) are so much more than "just" carved stones.  Indeed, legally, they are legally valued highly (ie, damaging private property, including statues, can get you arrested... even if the statue has not lobbied a complaint against you.)  

And then there are all the various "markers" of history - often relatively small signs, they demark "here is where this happened in (date)". What gets put on those small signs that are consistantly putting forward a particular message about the past and the landscapes that we live in - and, thus, about our present? Those signs are so political. So contentious.

From statues to plaques: history is contentious. And it's all around us.

The "present moment" (that much discussed and lauded and continuous but also fluid dimension of reality) contains within it the living past. 

It's in our art - especially our public art, but also individuals' paintings and dreamscapes, and sketches on notepads. It's in fashion and architecture and design. It's in what's considered "cool" and what's considered "retro" and what is considered "traditional." The past-in-the-present (especially informs investment decisions and philanthropic RFPs.

And right now, in this particular political moment, overarching narratives we interpret landscapes and peoples and economics and science and gender and ethnicity and "us" and "them" and nationhood is getting actively pushed, shaped, wiped out, actively erased, shoved around, and changed (again) by the current administration.

All of which tells us that the stories about "how we got here" are really really important.

Really important = Really Powerful.

Histories cast as fugitive but nonetheless true are really, really, powerful.

That's part of why these stories - and, critically, ways of engaging with them well - have become dis-membered.  Because the stories - these truths, some of which are quite complex - are powerful.  They have the power to shift how you understand yourself. And how you understand land and ecologies. Governance and citizenship. Climate change and investments. 

Even though I knew that, I was still surprised when I started teaching the ReMembering Course, which is all about coming to understand really basic questions like: "what happened" and "what is my place in what happened" and "so what for who I am now" - at how powerful the course itself is.

I don't just mean "power" as in "power from above" vs "power from below", or even "power from without" vs "power from within" - all of which are super valuable insights into power dimensions that I know a lot of you are interested in and have done a lot of thinking about. But in this context, I'm not only talking about that kind of power.

I'm talking about the power that comes from peeling back facades and seeing what is beneath them - for you, for us, collectively.  The power that comes from aligning ourselves with something that is not merely 'the matrix'. The kind of power that is possible from engaging deeply with multiplicities and complexities (which some people who only see power as a "simple narratives" don't see as powerful at all, but I'll hold out that it takes a huge amount of spiritual depth to do it well, and, when you do, the power that can arise from it is immense.) It's both within and without. 

You can see-experience it in landscapes and infrastructure and stones and stories. 

You-we can influence it on all those levels, too. 

I'm talking about the power of moving towards greater integration.  Shadow and light. Love and Suffering. Truths - told and heard and shared. 

I want you to have better access to this kind of potency. I want that for everyone who is willing to be led by their heart and their head; their deep knowings and their analysis. 

It took me a long time to be able to touch/experience this - and longer to begin teaching it in the ReMembering Course - which is starting on Friday May 23.

In my own journey, my ability to access this more complex form of power was made possible in part because of a death. Death has a habit of interrupting life.

I'll be sharing more of that in the next missive. Stay tuned.  

- Sara Jolena

ps - Krissy and I appreciate your ongoing prayers. She continues to not be working at her "normal work" at the moment, focusing on the immense amount of paper work, phone calls, and other things that keep arising as the family tries to settle the estate of the deceased. Why, we keep wondering, is this process so difficult??? 

She and I agree that it is important that I keep offering the ReMembering Course during this season, because people as individuals on our own spiritual journey, as parts of organizations, as part of our society, need this kind of material.  Do contact me if you want to join us this Summer.