When you receive this newsletter, I will be in the middle of a three week trip in northern New Mexico. But as I write, I am still two days from starting that trip. I am going partly for the same reason I spent three weeks in Utah – to rest into Sabbath time, to have an adventure, and to immerse myself in a part of the world I really love and which nurtures me.
But I am also going in part to do research: to see if this is a place I am called to live in. I have such mixed feelings about this! Sometimes I feel we all move too much; we don’t stay rooted in a place, for good or for ill, and permit a place’s pros and cons to shape and call us forward. So many people are moving to the southwest – does the desert really need me to add to the already-too-many-humans there? Do I really need to move, or is it something else? Can I even trust these questions?
And yet, I feel the need for these questions. When I visited Utah earlier this summer, it was obvious to me that something had to shift in my life, and that the desert supported me in some remarkable and true way. I am trying to be faithful to that information, while also just simply letting myself play. I’ve decided I really can’t take it too very seriously, that as long as I go and engage in a spirit of play and discovery, maybe I can trust where it takes me.
We all need to ask searching questions about how we impact the world and how sometimes we make decisions from unacknowledged privilege, from unconscious group think, or even in order to escape or play out old not-so-useful patterns. It’s important to do that, to risk that kind of proper self-doubt. But we also need to find a way to trust our desire for sincerity, and to trust some inherent goodness. We have to do both.
I find myself returning over and over again to the gospel verse: “Be ye wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” I hear deep wisdom in this. It’s a paradox of self-honesty and reliance on something large and good that helps us take the next big step, whatever that turns out to be.
In constellations work, I am often accompanying my clients into that space. They’ve been locked in an either/or – too much freedom or too much limitation – and through the work we find a way to honor that life is far more complex, dignified and sometimes tragic than that.
In October, once again I start with a new group to learn and play in my Constellations Training. If the vision of accompanying others (or yourself) through this human terrain sounds inviting, then now is the time to check out the details and let me know you are interested. You can save $250 through September 3rd.
What is your experience of appropriate self-trust and self-doubt? Of being a wise serpent and an innocent dove? Please share your experiences on my blog, below.
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