CHURCH

After a long busy week of giving and doing, you want to be fed. So you go to Church. To the temple of Nature and Connection. Where Plants stand at the pulpit. You say yes to taking communion. You ask Spirit to teach you and heal you as much as possible while there. So Spirit is generous. It delivers as much as you ask for.

You walk deeper in and you’re asked to open and soften with strangers and see them as brothers and sisters and let them hold you. Your conditioning challenges you. You try to throw out the cynical guarded part of you and you hold hands with the strangers, and let them embrace you deeply. It’s hard, but you try and soften more. It’s your hymn. It comes out weak at first. An embarrassed song.

Then you run into two people who you felt rejected your heart in the past. Another opportunity. You observe yourself hardening in front of them and you challenge your ego to step aside. You try to stay soft. You don’t think you can be this open. But you do it anyway. You know you asked for it. The choir of wind in the trees sings your praises.

You stand in front of another Witch Priestess who does similar work as you and when you feel threatened by each other, instead of shutting down, you open more. You challenge the conditioning of female competition to melt away. By the end of the evening you feel like sisters and hold hands, Priestesses together in this chapel.

You look around. You notice advanced practitioners; people who seem to have more access to their Hearts than you. Elders. Teachers. You listen. You observe. You are humbled. You keep yourself open. It hurts to be so open. But you breathe deeper. You feel love more deeply.

This is where the work and the practice are one. The time alone in meditation prepares you. The breathing exercises prepare you. The books. The retreats. But this is it. Coming down off the mountain. Showing up to the Temple of Connection and being willing to be naked there.
Thank you to my generous Plant teachers who teach me in one day more than a year of school. And thank you to Leslie Satterfield for capturing yet another moment of freedom and surrender and pushing me to expand and love. Happy Full Moon.