Happy New Moon in Taurus, dear ones -

We’re in the Bealtaine portal now - if we were marking the celebration by the lunar calendar, it would’ve been yesterday. If we’re marking it based on exactly six weeks between the equinox and the solstice it’ll be around May 5th. If we’re marking it on the Gregorian calendar, the calendar of uniformity, it’s generally celebrated on May 1st.

It seems to me one of the most important skills to be human, to be alive, and to develop an animist way of relating, is that of paying attention.

To pay attention forces us to slow down. To attune to and open our senses. To listen without needing to answer. To wonder and leave room for mystery.

Sometimes our attention is a spotlight - focused and narrow in order to invite more depth or intimacy. Sometimes it’s a wider beam, more like sunlight, shining on everything and taking in more widely. Open, close. Our attention can blink like our eyes.

I seem to be in a season of more intimacy and depth, quality over quantity. Without a car, my world is limited to foot (and the occasional public transport or offer of a ride from community). It means in over three weeks of being in remote Co Donegal, I haven’t seen all the “must-see” sites. But it also means I hold in my mind a more intimate map of where I was - one based, for example, on the hedgerow plants coming forth (here are the two spots to find wild mint along the side of the road, and here’s yarrow; here’s the stream only present after rain, here’s water that flows always; here’s where I was standing when I greeted that man; here’s where a dog I imaging to be going deaf lives - it barks when you come up on it from behind, but not when it sees you coming; here are good bushes for finding shedded sheep’s wool).

It also means my days are measured in quality of light, of tide levels. Smells are connected with wind directions and temperature. Some part of my brain is always aware of the calls of the sheep and their rhythms of hunger, danger, and play. Like the sheep, I find myself hankering for fresh, vibrant greenery so I forage nettles and make tea and soup.

It seems to me this is what indigenous folks mean when they speak of storing knowledge and memory, personal and collective, in place and relationship. That we know place and self and other through these layered maps of seasonal and daily rhythms, through plant and animal life cycles and relationships, through our own animal bodies’ impulses and instincts. That none of it is separate.

Yesterday I arrived in a new spot in Co Donegal (staying with a new friend) and so this morning I went for a walk and saw what there was for me to see in the hedgerows here. I met a bird whose call sounded like stones knocking together and found it’s called a Stonechat. How perfect. There are donkeys here at the house with me and I’m enjoying watching their rhythms of grazing and resting.

It occurs to me we don’t have to be in remote and beautiful places in order to develop our ability to pay attention and find wonder in life. But it helps. In our urban environments, we almost literally can’t hear the subtler sounds. There are less obvious slower, deeper rhythms for our nervous systems to attune to. There are fewer beyond-human kin to witness and learn from. And beauty? Beauty seems to be such a key piece to wanting to pay attention.

If we’re despairing over our phone addictions and burnout, perhaps it would help to notice if there’s a direct correlation to how much beauty and aliveness is around us. Nothing is separate.

As part of our seasonal round house gatherings (Sun, Moon, Fire & Soil), I send a pdf with suggested prompts for you to mark the season in your own life, in the place where you are.

This is a way to take these moments into deeper intimacy with your lived experience - so they don’t stay just one moment, generalized and compartmentalized, in a Zoom room. Like I used to remind students when I led yoga classes: what happens on your mat is important, but it’s one moment, one context - where you really start to see a difference is in taking your practice off your mat and into your life.

The first (and, if you’re limited in time, most important) prompt category on our pdf is around paying attention. Because the world will help bring you back into right relationship if you slow down and actually connect with it. And connection is not something you do. It’s something you become available for.

If we want to live lives of deeper meaning, connection, beauty, and care… this is one way we start to align ourselves with those desires. By paying attention, honoring the seasons, remembering how we belong to the world. By feeding the right things with our attention and being nourished ourselves in return.

Both the pdf and our live gathering will aim to point our feet, hearts, and minds in that direction.

​Join us on May 4th?​

with Love,

Kate

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P.S. The energy of the place I was staying for the last three weeks carried a decent bit of tension and trauma - not the land itself, per se, but the owners of the lodging. There was a time I wouldn’t have consciously noticed and I would’ve left deeply dysregulated. Then, there was a time I would’ve noticed and chosen to stay anyway for convenience. There has also been a time when I would’ve run - insisted on leaving to save myself.

This time, I knew I could leave and trusted myself to know if/ when that became necessary… and I chose to stay - not for convenience, but because this work of paying attention, connecting with the land, of having daily rituals to ground and nourish me has led to greater resilience and I could tell there was still something there for me in that geographic place.

When it was finally time to leave, I could feel the relief of that. And here, in a fresh and much energetically clearer space, I dropped right back in to more calm. I don’t share this because any of these responses are better or worse than another - but to illustrate again how relational and contextual it all is, how it ebbs and flows… and how important it is to practice/ build the skill and capacity for kinship and co-regulation with something much larger than us - our Mother, the Earth. It can support us in times of challenge as well as times of ease. Both are key to not experiencing burnout.

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P.P.S. No new podcast episode for this new moon. I was set to share one with you, but felt an intuitive “no” at the last minute and am honoring that. Something is shifting and it’s not clear what yet. But I trust.