Week 10: Alignment in Relationship

Oct 30, 2024
2 min read

Updated: Nov 4, 2024

I don’t think it’s only me, but is anyone else out there having a hard time planning future events? I’ve been attempting to re-align and focus my retreat-leader-world since this bodily injury. Deciding what to write on new business cards (such an old-fashioned thing to do!), planning fall circles and setting writing direction has been onerously complicated.

Planning for the holidays? Forget it!

How do you align yourself in a tilting future? If you ground yourself too deeply (which we’ve all been encouraged to do), one will get dizzy and fall flat on your back with the external cosmic thrust. If you hang onto another in all sorts of co-dependent ways, you’ll get even more disoriented - your unique soul more directionless. At least that’s been my recent experience. We each must discern the next challenging piece of movement possible (not the whole symphony score!) It’s not easy to trust the flow of community when everything is turning inside-out and upside-down.

In learning to physically walk again from my position of present immobility, I see or sense a close-in point of relationship. Someone or something I love. Something that I’m drawn to. Focus there. Balance from the inside. Reach out gently. Sense the other. Wait for attunement. Resist the need to force a move too fast. Take a step. Feel for the connection and trust for the creation of something new. Breathe in the flow of community all around.

This is the process of alchemical change - a seemingly magical process of transformation, a creation out of a combination of what seems like opposites.

Maybe that’s all too mystical for you, but it’s essential to remember that the limbo we are in is not only political but we as earth-beings are caught up in a black hole of swirling epochal change. This is a season to go gently. To keep hope alive.

Parker Palmer has said: