Dear Abundance,
I was having a conversation with my director at my job about how I wanted to move a little faster in opening up to some of the new people joining our team.
I had been feeling like I was being closed off and I just felt like I wasn't showing who I was and in that conversation,
He shared a quote with me that has stuck with me.
He said,
We have to move at the speed of trust.
And he meant that to say that when building community,
We must be brave and we must be open,
But we also must be patient with ourselves and the feelings that come up.
Because getting to know people,
Opening ourselves up,
Getting to know ourselves as we interact with others is serious business and it can be scary,
But I invite you to be brave with me.
Throughout this meditation,
Breathe in deeply through your nose and exhale out through your mouth.
If your mind starts to wander,
Use your breath as an anchor to bring you back to the moment.
I want you to imagine a world with you in it,
Where you build new connections,
Make new friends,
And take new chances.
I'm someone who deeply loves community and loves building with others,
But there have been moments where I've had friends who did not honor the love I've given them,
Work situations or organizations that weren't as loyal to me as I was to them.
These moments shook me,
They tested me and made me determine if my commitments to love were commitments that I would hold.
I say all of that to say I've been there where you've had all these experiences that come to reinforce the idea that there is no safety in community.
I've been there where you want to open up to new folks,
Where you want to experience new relationships,
But the pain,
The sting of the hurt,
Of those bitter endings,
Of those forced goodbyes,
They keep you frozen.
These moments,
They shake us and leave us feeling alienated and scared at the idea of forming new connections and being vulnerable again.
The call to abandon vulnerability is so real,
But if I had abandoned my vulnerability,
I wouldn't have experienced the light of community.
I've also experienced deep love in my closest relationships.
I've been loved by friends and family whose love gave me a new appreciation for humanity.
I've experienced the power of true accountability that leaves me ready to grow and not ready to isolate.
I've experienced my sister holding me as I cried,
Grieving my uncle when only hours before I wasn't a great friend and I was being really shitty.
I've experienced great love in the form of mercy and forgiveness in my friendships.
I've had friends who have forced me out of the house when I was depressed,
And friends that stayed in the house with me when I couldn't get myself out of bed.
Through it all,
The thing I needed most was patience.
The lessons of all of my relationships,
Good and bad,
Taught me that new connections deserve patience and they deserve time.
I invite you in this moment to join me as I pray for your protection as you travel to new spaces and make new connections.
God I thank you for this moment where our highest good makes your protective grace.
Divine Creator,
Benevolent Ancestors,
We ask that you place guards of protection around us as we venture into the world and make new connections and seek to deepen those that we already have.
Keep us patient as we learn to trust.
Keep us gentle as we confront the barriers in us like individualism,
Which tells us that we should stand stronger alone,
And isolationism,
Which falsely leads us to believe healing can only occur in solitude.
Keep our perspective as we navigate the barriers in our world that block community like racism,
Classism,
Transphobia,
Xenophobia,
Ableism,
And any other oppressive systems that try and obstruct us from loving on one another and holding one another.
As we begin and get ready to meditate,
I pray that you would ease the mind of every listener who may hear this meditation,
But ultimately may you soften our hearts in the places and when we enter the spaces where our heart should be soft,
And when we enter territory where we might not be as safe,
May you thicken that skin around our heart.
Give us a little callous for protection,
But not callous that stays,
Callous that leaves the moment we are back safe.
May you surround us with people who will love us and see us,
Not for our performances,
Not for our masks,
But for who we are at our core,
Vulnerable,
Broken,
Happy,
Sad,
Whatever we have to give that day,
The people that are going to love and cherish our offerings.
I thank you for all of these things.
In the name of my benevolent ancestors,
In the name of Jesus,
And I invite you to thank whatever deities you pray for and pray to,
Amen,
Ashe.
I want you to take a deep breath in,
Breathing in for one,
Two,
Three.
Hold your breath for one,
Two,
Three,
And now breathe out for one,
Two,
Three,
Four.
Very good.
Let's do that again.
And I want to remind you to breathe in through your nose,
Breathe out through your mouth.
And while you're at it,
Place your right hand over your chest and your left hand over your belly as a gentle way to remind us to breathe deep into our belly and to not stop the air in our chest.
Let's take another deep breath in for one,
Two,
Three,
Four.
Now hold your breath for one,
Two,
Three,
Four.
Now breathe out for one,
Two,
Three,
Four.
Hold your breath for one,
Two,
Three.
Now breathe in for one,
Two,
Three,
And four.
Very good.
I want you to return your breath to normal,
But continue breathing in through your nose and breathing out through your mouth.
I want you to picture yourself on a sandy beach.
The wind blows,
Whipping past your face,
Blowing through your hair.
It gives you a kiss on the cheek every day that this world,
This life finds a new way to give you a hug,
To give you a kiss.
And this moment,
It's riding the wind.
I want you to pay attention to how the waves crash against the seashore.
Watch the tide roll in.
This water in this ocean has probably been drinking water at some point,
And as Olaf so eloquently reminds us in Frozen II,
The water that we drink has passed through about four to five humans before it makes its way to us,
And through that,
It's filtered,
It's cleansed,
It's disposed of.
There's a whole process that this water goes through before it gets back to us and we drink it.
And in that process,
Whether the water is rain,
In a river,
In a nice warm bath,
Part of some medicine used to heal,
That water retains its memory.
So as you look upon this water,
Ask it to remind you of those moments where it was used to find and locate the thorns.
Ask the water to remember the moments it was used to alleviate those communal pain points and bring about togetherness.
Ask the water to remember synergy,
To remember compassion.
And ask the water to remind you how to be brave.
Ask the water to show you how to be adaptable.
Some days you are the water and some days you're the sand being carried by the water.
But whoever you are on your journey of community building,
Be where you are.
Move at the speed of trust.
Listen to your body.
Ride your breath,
Hush your mind.
Take a deep breath in.
I thank you for this moment where we get to venture into the unknown and visualize beauty.
To remind us of the beauty that is in community.
To remind us of all of the possibilities of who we could become on the other side of meeting people that are loving,
That are accepting,
That hold us in all of our brilliance,
In all of our humanity.
May we imagine who we will become on the other side of being loved by new people,
By new friends,
By new community members.
But more importantly,
As we venture down this journey of community building,
Give us patience.
May we hold these words and move at the speed of trust.
We have done the thing where we have overloaded our nervous system in community building where we have not consulted with our body and just jumped out there.
Like we've done that and we're not doing that anymore.
We're taking it easy and taking it at the pace of trust.
I thank you for listening to this meditation.
I hope you got what you needed.
Amen and Ashe.
