Dear ones -

Apologies for the radio silence of the last month: no emails, no new podcasts.

While we’re taught that consistency is what we need to aim for, we’re human. Imperfect. Seasonal.

I find myself curious as to what trustworthy is, what relationship is, if not consistency.

I have a suspicion it’s good faith and honest presence.

And so in this life season of wandering and wondering, where a lot of my energy frequently needs to be diverted towards handling life logistics and being in liminal spaces of expanding and integrating that expansion; I do my best with consistency for the container that is my business, for you all. But knowing I won’t always be successful at that, I mainly do my best with good faith and honest presence.

So what am I present to right now?

The unfurling of Spring. Taxes and plane ticket changes. The subtle coconut scent of sun-warmed gorse on the breeze here in the wild northwest of Ireland. Throwing my hands up in grocery stores and wishing there was some universal layout so I didn't have to walk through every aisle every time I go in every new city, searching for what I want/ need. The baaing of young lambs and their mothers and their different tones of locating, warning, demanding, reassuring. Small-town personality politics and a local deciding I was his new, pretty drinking partner even though I told him hanging out in pubs at 9am on weekdays wasn't my thing. The deep peace and magic of a holy well, high in the hills, issuing forth from natural mounds which hold the shape of a woman's body. The crashing of waves on craggy rocks.

In late March, my allowed six months in Scotland was up (where did the time go???). I find the six-month mark in longer travels (along with the 3-month mark and the 1 year mark) usually carries its own moment of grief, exhaustion, overwhelm - travel tends to be expansive and there's only so much of that you can take before you need to just sit down and digest for a little while. I was hitting that moment while also preparing to leave Scotland with no clear plans for what was next (just a sense it wasn’t over yet and to keep moving) while also launching the seasonal round house gatherings. It was a lot. Especially when compounded with the grief of bearing witness to the Tower card moment of empire and the United States as we know it. Being critical of something, seeing the inevitable (and ultimately, probably, for the better) demise of something doesn’t mean we’re immune to grief. So I’m present to grief. And a sense of rudderlessness. Of being adrift and without place and roots.

None of which is new. Especially for those of us descended from diaspora and forced or chosen migration.

It’s quite something in this moment in time to be standing in the literal same places where five or six generations back my ancestors chose to leave in search and in hope of something better. And to find myself back here again, (in part) because the great American experiment seems to be reaching its current limitations.

This is not to say we can’t iterate. Shift course. Change trajectory.

This is not to say this isn’t also part of the journey.

Death is part of aliveness. Endings become the compost for new growth.

But to hold blind hope for the future without any reckoning with the past and present is perhaps the main mistake our ancestors made when they left where they were to start fresh. They did the best they could at the time, I’m sure. But as we know - wherever you go there you are. And the ruptures and wounds we don’t tend to don’t automatically heal by starting over. A uncleaned wound, even scabbed over and appearing to heal, will fester. It’s as true on the personal level as it is on the collective; as true physically as it is mentally-emotionally-spiritually. We have to become strong enough containers, be held in strong enough cultural containers, to hold healthy tension, conflict, and discomfort at the same time - to clean the wounds and integrate the beauty and the pain; the hope and the ending. Moral high ground is not a medicine. But compassion, humility, grief, empathy, and connection are.

So I’m also present to straddling time and space - backwards and forwards and all around. And the wounds and potential and love and dreams I find there.

That’s what shamans do, after all.

I’m right where I need to be and I suppose I, like all of you in your ways, was made for these times.

So how do we become these containers? What are the cultural containers that will hold us in these times?

As I’ve mentioned before - looking for the remnants of a more “indigenous” culture in Europe has been part of how I’ve been looking to answer those questions. But I’m also aware that many of us are woven from complex and diverse threads - the places we live now; the sequence of places our ancestors have lived over the hundreds or even thousands of years; the lineages we become interwoven with through devotional practices, time, and deep respect; the people and places that claim us beyond all logic or reason.

Like moral high ground, purity of the divisive and almost anti-bacterial kind is also not the medicine for these times.

So I’m also present to complexity and relationships between things. The kind that’s stretching me and challenging the comfort I find in absolutes and boxes.

So I offer us all this reminder: Just to be alive and human in these times is no small feat. Particularly if we’re aiming to do things differently than were done before.

This means, yes, I’m looking backwards for the threads, the roots, the embers. But not because the answers are found there. They serve more as the soil for seeds, as clues of what needs to be healed and how we might remember to do so. But even with all that, I’m aware we’ll have to seed/ create something new.

One morning, in the space between sleep and waking, the words “living cosmology” came to me. (Perhaps you’ve also experienced these moments - moments when an answer to a question arrives and then you have to sit and live with the question and the answer until the understanding comes into being.)

My current understanding:

Cosmology: a story of how the Universe came to be, how it keeps itself going, and what role we humans have in the whole thing.

Modern cosmology is mostly scientific or, perhaps, religious. But most modern humans don’t seem to have a holistic cosmology and certainly not one that offers us protocols and guidelines for our role in things - how to behave in a good way and belong with a sense of meaning and trust. It seems that to be without a cosmology contributes to the sense of rudderlessness. Feelings of emptiness; lack of meaning and purpose. It leads to a lot of having to self-define values and proper behaviors (which is just too many choices to make all the time). It gives us more to disagree on and fight about; weakening community and our ability to call each other back and repair in the wake of inevitable rupture. (Note: I’m not making a case for a cult here or giving power away to any small groups or individuals no matter how pretty the story (propaganda) they spin. A cosmology should empower the whole while also empowering a sense of responsibility and mutuality, not disempower or let people off the hook from relationship or for harm.)

A living cosmology: one that is relevant today. One which comes to life through our behaviors and actions, not just in theory. One which we co-create with the land, with our beyond-human kin, so that it supports Aliveness.

And as I and my work continue to bridge the worlds of animist and ancestral reconnection, shamanism, movement, storytelling, and deep nature connection; I see this meeting point as being in service to a living cosmology.

So I’ve renamed the seasonal round house gatherings (we have our gathering for May Day, or Bealtaine/ Beltane here in Ireland, coming up on May 4th).

The bones of the offering are the same but my understanding of it continues to deepen. It’s no longer simply about fanning the embers (its old name) of an almost extinct culture. It’s bringing the essence of those embers through to now… in service to a living cosmology. It’s a place for us to explore what it might be to live in rhythm with the seasons; to cultivate the skills necessary to feeling more belonging to place/ land, lineage, inner world, and devotional practice/ ritual. It aims to be a possible antidote to the displacement, disconnect, emptiness, ambiguity, anxiety, and loneliness that being without a cosmology can lead to. It’s not an answer, but a first possible step to live our way into an answer.

And while it’s a little bit of a strange dichotomy to be engaging in ritual about connecting with the seasons and the land through… Zoom; that, too, is part of the tension we live in in these times.

So that’s my update - settling in to a rhythm here in Ireland. Feeling some new connections and possibilities unfurling like the ferns (I'm excited to be guest teaching online in a couple different containers as well as bringing my offerings in-person to a festival in Wales in June - more on all that to come). Foraging nettle, wild mint, and gorse blossom tea when my body craves communion with the land. And continuing to listen deeply for whatever wisdom seems to want to come through.

If you’d like to join us for Sun, Moon, Fire, and Soil - to participate in the turning of the Year (yes, participate. A common indigenous cultural thread throughout the world seems to be the understanding that humans participate in the continuation of the world through our celebrations and rituals. The world helps us remember who we are and we, in turn, help it remember itself) - consider coming for our May Day/ Beltane celebration. A fire festival/ cross-quarter/ lunar seasonal marker. The very beginning of Summer and the official moment when the dark half of the year becomes the light half.

As they say here in Ireland: “You’re most welcome.”

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with Love,

Kate