As the skies cleared after a light shower, Indigo Buntings sang in the hedgerow and we were so thankful for the nearly one hundred people who traveled from near and far to join our embodied celebration of Fruition’s End and New Beginning. Huge thanks to everyone who joined us in spirit, as well! Your presence is so vividly here with us, Friends.
Our celebration had three parts, honoring three distinct companions on our transformation journey: heartbreak, the gift of seeds and the gift of a new community.
Together we honored heartbreak in many forms: fear, loss, grief, doubt and so many other ways this transformation is uplifting challenging emotions for our community as well as Matthew and I.
As we named these fears, we thanked and honored the gifts they bring us as we hold and navigate this beautiful, tender and complex chapter of our lives together. Matthew shared each fear, tossing a zinnia stem from a bouquet to the earth when he had finished, honoring the ephemeral nature of the world both beautiful and painful, allowing the earth to hold what we cannot. Once the zinnia landed on the ground, everyone gathered said together, ‘Thank you, Fear.’ Then Petra shared the gifts this fear offer us, tossing another zinnia to the ground as she finished. As the flower landed, everyone said, ‘Thank you for these gifts, Fear.’
Matthew & Petra’s Fears
Matthew: We are afraid of how we may be perceived, we are afraid of being misunderstood and potentially ostracized by our local and wider community. We are afraid that the challenges coming our way will challenge our love for ourselves, Petra and Matthew, and intimate partnership.
All gathered: Thank you, Fear.
Petra: What a gift to align our actions to reflect our deepest values — and what a gift to trust the deep paradox we are both deeply aligned and can always more deeply align. Trusting the only perception and judgment we need to fear is our own, we practice loving ourselves and each other in the midst of great paradox and sacred, cognitive dissonance.
All gathered: Thank you for these gifts, Fear.
Matthew: We fear not finding the space to listen, learn, reflect, making our new approach a new grind into loneliness and exhaustion, numbing from the world. We fear our faith in gift culture will be fleeting under the crush of self doubt: We fear our lack of knowledge, our naivety, that we’ve taken a leap of faith without the faith.
All gathered: Thank you, Fear.
Petra: What a gift to remember every moment we have an opportunity to make a choice. Together, let’s choose humility, curiosity and courage, committed to hold ourselves accountable to ourselves, each other and our wide community. What a gift to deepen our practices as we lean into the non-linear nature of transformation, living the questions, cultivating the love, growing new worlds. What a gift to sense that everything ebbs and flows, trusting that our emptiness and honesty will make room for the gifts of the world to return to us all. We thank these growing edges and all crutches along the journey for their profound healing as they mirroring our growth. Together, let’s practice letting go of such crutches when it’s time to walk, skip & dance! We trust falling is an invitation to practice appreciating the grass and get back up.
All gathered: Thank you for these gifts, Fear.
Matthew: We fear taking more than we give, holding on to too much in an effort to protect ourselves from scarcity.
All gathered: Thank you, Fear.
Petra: Scarcity mindset will always be here with us, offering us endless opportunities — gifts! — to compost old patterns and grow new ones, finding friends and mentors, humxn and beyond, on the journey. Can we hold the paradox: we are giving enough and we can always give more? Can we trust our receiving is in fact giving? What a gift to try, together.
All gathered: Thank you for these gifts, Fear.
Matthew: We are afraid our community won’t show up in the ways we need or the ways we think we need.
All gathered: Thank you, Fear.
Petra: What a gift to learn to trust ourselves and our community to be everything we need, deepening our practice of becoming ever more generous neighbors and friends. And what a gift: We can shift our approach, reevaluate our needs anytime: iteration is love and iterate we shall.
All gathered: Thank you for these gifts, Fear.
Matthew: As we have lived the dissonance of turning life into property and our hearts have disconnected from ourselves, how will we reconnect?
All gathered: Thank you, Fear.
Petra: Thank you life and these deep fears for providing the contrast for such profound feeling, yearning and learning to emerge. Thank you for the gift of seeking and cultivating friendship along the way.
All gathered: Thank you for these gifts, Fear.
Fears we have heard from you, our Beloved Community
Matthew: As your wide community, we fear for your safety. We fear for your health. We fear for your ability to pay your bills. We fear you will become a liability, that you are free-loading, that you will become a burden to your community.
All gathered: Thank you, Fear.
Petra: Living in our individualized society, what a gift to see that we deeply care about another’s needs and wellbeing, recognizing our neighbor’s wellbeing as our own. What a gift to learn new patterns of abundance sharing together, trusting we all have gifts and we all have needs! Dare we trust our needs are also gifts? As we learn to care for our individual and collective needs with greater honesty and generosity, exploring how we meet these needs outside market economy, what a gift trust our care and curiosity as the foundation of all flourishing to come.
All gathered: Thank you for these gifts, Fear.
Matthew: As your wide community, we fear the loss of convenience and access to the seeds and so much more from the farm.
All gathered: Thank you, Fear.
Petra: We can do things we’ve never done before! We can do hard things! Together, we will learn to cultivate connection, access and mutual aid that is deeper than convenience & transaction. Let’s compost scarcity mindsets: we may not have certain, concrete answers but we do have lots of seeds! What a gift to lean into this loss of convenient ‘access’ as an invitation to be in more direct, intentional and reciprocal relationship with ourselves, each other and the seeds we love so well. Together, let’s hold the paradox that we love where we’ve come from and we love – and will learn to love and trust more deeply – where we’re going.
All gathered: Thank you for these gifts, Fear.
Matthew: As your wide community, we fear you are judging us. We feel and fear a sense of Shame for not doing enough. We fear you are making it harder for others to meet their financial needs. We fear other people won’t understand your work.
All gathered: Thank you, Fear.
Petra: We are all so beautifully humxn, fabulous and fallible. We can be afraid AND brave. Know thyself, yes. Can we love ourselves, too? As we move forward with gentle, friendly curiosity, we are letting go of who we’ve been and embracing who we want to be, we will learn to trust these fears to lead us deeper into our needs and dreams. Diversity is the foundation of resilience and together we celebrate the many ways we all are finding ways to transform the world together, embracing the multiplicity of approaches: No one sunflower is better than another. Together we will cultivate practices, diverse, seasonal and daily, to help us resist trading authenticity for approval as we find deeper belonging.
All gathered: Thank you for these gifts, Fear.
What fears are accompanying you today? In this season? In your garden and beyond? What are the gifts of insight and care these fears may be offering you? Sending love from our tender, abundant hearts and gardens to yours.
Sow Seeds & Sing Songs,
and the Many Beings of Fruition
