Hi Friend,

I ended my last missive with a line about how death interrupts life... and in my own life, how there was one death in particular that helped me change my relationship to both the living and the dead.

Before I got there, I shared about the past is with us in the present moment, and how we interpret this past, especially the past that we have memorialized and concrete-ized (such as in buildings and statues and even roads and parks) is always with us.

Which is another way of saying that the work, conceptual and theological frameworks, ideas and beliefs of some of our ancestors are consistantly influencing our daily life. How we relate to all of our ancestors - regardless of how much influence they did or did not have - is a form of power. Relating to their context (our history) helps us relate to them. How we relate to the past is a significant form of power. One that is too often only used by, as they say, those who are writing the history books.

Which is very much contentious these days. Again.

And integrating - integrating different perspectives, sorrows and shames and joys , hidden truths and truths cast away and connecting histories forced into disconnection - is also an act of power.

So now: back to the death that shifted my understanding of my own life.

It was my father's death. I was 33 (that good ol' Jesus year!) and in the middle of my eco-theology studies at Union Theological Seminary, living in New York City, having recently spent several years overseas (mostly India and England). Of course, there was a lot going on at that time in my life and in the world: massive climate protests followed by a wave of #blm protests swept the city (this was in 2015, not 2020) and I was often marching with my fellow Seminarians. I was taking courses on theodicy: how do we understand evil with the great (and alas late) grandfather of black theology, Dr James Cone, and a course on the generation of black intelligentsia prior to the civil rights movement - which included getting a chance to read a lot of one of the greatest mystics of that era - Howard Thurman (whom I felt and still feel can and does speak directly to my soul). And ecofeminism, womanism, feminist asian theologies, and rituals. It was in the midst of this that my father died - both expected (he had been seriously chronically ill for 20 years) and, also, unexpected (he had so many health miracles we stopped counting... and I didn't really think he was about to die).

The experience was like being pulled underwater. Into an underworld of sorts.

Questions such as "why was my father the way he was", and "what am I inheriting from him" --> "who am I in the face of his death", became part of my everyday questions.

It was into the midst of this swirl that something pierced through, creating pattern (ie: complexity) out of a fair amount of chaos without becoming an over-simplification.

That's the kind of thing that enables the Power that can arise from multiple forms of Integration: if it is too simple, it leaves too much out, and the structure of the pattern doesn't hold over time.

That "something" was an intersecting set of questions that arose from a dialogue with folks from the Indian Law Alliance, which does a lot of climate justice work and a lot of work to end the ongoing suffering caused by the Doctrine of Discovery. It was through that dialogue that I first asked a professional question: how is climate change related to the Doctrine of Discovery?

And then the personal question that quickly arose: how is the Doctrine of Discovery (and thus climate change) related to my father's family (who are amongst the founding fathers of this country)? And what does that mean And for myself and my family? For our collective spiritual growth and development? What have I inherited? What is the healing balm that my father never found?

There's an old myth, so old it goes through many different cultures, that goes something like: when you are at a crossroads, or perhaps a bridge, a being will arise. To pass to the next stage, you have to ask the right questions.

Those questions were big enough and deep enough and real enough that they seemed to be the 'right' questions.

Which wasn't exactly easy, per se. At some point during this journey of emotional/somatic/relational rabbit holes and miracles and confusions, the stones - buildings and statues and river pebbles - began to talk to me differently. It was very disconcerting. Disorientating - that seeing-feeling what had been dismembered.

There were also a lot of miracles.

Because our beloved animate universe keeps rooting for us to engage in deeper integration. Deeper truths. Deeper yeses.

Somewhere in the midst of a lot of submission, I felt arising within and around me a different kind of power.

As well as a better understanding of my father, his death, his side of the family, our country, and my lineage.

I sensed into a pattern that connected things that had always been kept disconnected. And in finding those connections, I found continual and ongoing moments of deepening. Some part of me relaxed. I both unlearned and relearned. Uncoded the matrix - and sensed into the deeper web of life. Not perfectly at all! But enough - enough to make a lot more sense out of my everyday reality.

The intellectual work became my thesis. I started talking about it as "re-narrating", and then a colleague (who also worked for and was an editor at The Moth at the time) who had witnessed my journey said, Sara, this isn't about telling a new story. This is much more somatic than that. You are trying to get to the place from which stories come from.

And so it became: ReMembering.

Not just a new story. A way, a practice, of relating to where and how our stories arise.

When it became clear that I was being called to teach about these histories, which is another way of saying to teach about the present moment and the nature of reality, and how we relate to our ancestors/plantcestors, one of my big questions was - if I lead people on a historical journey in an online setting (before it was what we all did), can I teach in a way that is:

a) cheaper (less financially expensive) than my own experience (omg the cost of grad school - not to mention all the other expenses that this journey entailed!)

b) less time consuming and less difficult than my own journey

c) Pedagogically integrating (cuz process is connected to outcome as we all know) intellectual and somatic and heart-centered and spiritually deepening and creative/music/artistically orientated within an online container (was that even possible, i wondered?)

d) Connecting people to their own spiritual pathway/journey (ie, not trying to impose my own theology) but also offer eco-spiritual/animist teachings that can help people on their own journey?

e) Create both a powerful experience... and a way of experiencing and deepening our own power...?

The answer was.... yes.

It still yes.

It still is the ReMembering Course.

And it keeps improving.

And I keep learning.

Like, everyday. Revelations are continual.

We start ... real soon. Friday, May 23, 2 - 3:30pm et on zoom. And we will keep meeting as the sun grows higher in the sky in this hemisphere, through the summer solstice, into the early autumn, through the Fall equinox. We end in October, just before Sawhain/Halloween.

What a beautiful arc this will be.

If you are pulled towards this Work: Email me. Now.

Join us.

All the other information is on the website.

- Sara Jolena

ps - No, I don't know when I will offer this next.