My hands are empty but She raises them for me

Or, even in these severe times, when I am the Whoopsie, She is the Daisy

Dear Sacred You,

My apologies, it’s been two months since my last piece, Praying in Queer. Thank you for bearing with me and supporting my return to this page.

In these violating and violent times, my heart has been so full, as I’ll bet yours has. My hands have often felt empty, and at a loss.

And yet. I notice that while I’ve been separated from writing, I haven’t been apart from creating and learning. At some level, I trust they’re all being woven together beneath us.

For this and for Her, I’m grateful.

This past season, She of countless ways—the Sacred Feminine—has been raising my hand, saying Yes on my behalf to varied invitations to contribute, even as I’ve doubted myself and what I have to offer.

But Her love ways. She’s been keeping me in and on the Wheel of Life. In Her reality, it seems even my fallen parts, like falling water, can be used to propel and power other things forward, things to which in my lifetime I may never bear witness. I’ve been learning that my task is to be available to Her spiritual mechanics that know how to repurpose my falling parts/waters/tears for the re-emergence of the Whole. As She does this, I notice She also invites me out of isolation back into the gift of Participation. Her LifeLove like a wheel, unending.

So here’s a bit about how and where She’s been raising my hand to show up, contribute. And about how, after each offering—when I’m apt to realize something I left out or wish I’d done differently—She firmly massages/soothes/reassures my hand, holds it and guides me forward in Hers. I’ve also noticed how She’s provided me with opportunities to do what I wished I’d done. Her shape-shifting Grace keeps me breathing and creating.

On July 26th, I gave a presentation to a group of wonderful women in their annual Soul Care Retreat. The theme was, “Spirituality and Sacred Wholeness.” I found joy in discovering ways Wholeness had been affirmed in their spiritual lineage. And then I did something even I think is weird for me: I created a PowerPoint presentation! I know, Coke + Wholeness > > PowerPoint?!? Here’s one of the closing slides:

I ain’t gonna lie, I had fun creating the deck. And I was surprised and delighted to see various women taking pictures of the slides for their own uses. But. And. Aargh. I wished I’d given more time and space for their bodies and deepening relationships. I felt badly about this.

Thank Goddess for Her divine waterwheel. In remembering this experience in Her field of grace, I can in the future trust the primacy of the human spirit’s need for embodied, relational connection. I can be increasingly poised to let any conceptual gems I’ve discovered show up in service of this, not in place of it.

On August 10th, I shared an LGBTQ message at the church of my youth, substituting for their senior pastor. The theme was, “Re-Membering the Story of Us.” I was drawn to the CEB version of the ancient text from Romans 12:1-2:

1 So, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your appropriate priestly service. 2 Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.

Much activating/triggering language aside, sometimes my bodyspirit feels a bit weary of being asked, in faith settings, to speak as an LGBTQ person about my LGBTQ experience for the benefit of cisgender, heteronormative people of genuine spirit and heart. And yet. As a curator of programs years ago, I’d asked the same of others.

Waterwheel, remake me. Clarify me. Spill me.

This time, I framed stories of how LGBTQIA+ beloveds have always been living bodily sacrifices for the awakening of the whole. I believe in the priestliness of queerness because of the specific combination of what immense social vulnerability + insistent inner devotion to love and truth it requires. Anyone who carries this combo is doing holy work.

I asked for mutuality around this vulnerability, that of sharing about intimate desire and truth-at-all-costs expression. I showed a clip from the 1981 film, “Chariots of Fire,” where the missionary Eric Lidell, who is also an Olympics-level long distance runner says, I know God made me for a purpose. But He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.

I felt glad to share this message, but also a bit at risk. Was I being too bold? Was this landing as judgment over invitation? Was it reducing LGBTQ from our full humanity?

Egads.

So I checked Her name from my lips.

Eros.

The name of the One who’d helped me become who I am, who gave me the platform and inspired the content of the message. I’ll never forget how strongly this regret landed in me as I drove home.

In Her grace, in the following weeks, she restored me to Her waterwheel. I had more than one client with whom I noticed a ripening moment, and there She was, spilling off my tongue in name and spirit. Eros. Upon doing so, I felt the energy in the Zoom rooms shift. I noticed, in my clients’ bodies, a landing. Like a moment of homecoming.

On August 15th, I guided a two-hour online retreat for a community of spiritually engaged people who share in the Divine at the intersection of contemplation and creativity. I was asked to deliver an experience that incorporated both movement/embodiment as well as social justice. The retreat was named, “Loving into Justice: Pilgrimage through the Body.”

In two hours? Phew.

On one day of working hard, draft after draft to design this experience, I simply had to take a break. I laid down on my bed.

Sometimes when I lie down on my bed, and always when I’m in a body of water, I surrender my bodyspirit to Hers, i.e., She is bed, She is water body. When I do this in lakes or oceans, I invoke the Goddess inherent in these liminal waters, and my prayers are twofold. The first is surrendering my life-matters to Her powers of detoxifying and dissolving. The second is opening my physical, spiritual and mental pores to Her restoring and right-relating me again.

The online retreat was to take place on the Feast Day of the Assumption of Mary. This is how I’ve come to think about acting for justice: I know I’m on a helpful course when I also feel I’m being further “assumed into Her.”

As I lay there on my bed, a centerpiece arose, one that was much simpler, much wiser than all the scribbling, cracking and hacking I’d been doing. So I knew it was Her.

During the retreat, after very briefly framing and identifying the characteristics of cultures of dominance we’ve been formed in (like white supremacy culture), each participant was invited to choose one characteristic that for some reason really spoke to them, whether as something visited upon them, or as something they themselves may have enacted upon themselves or others . . . or both. I remember feeling the welling-up of compassion in this invitation.

We laid down on our backs. After a bit of guidance into helping their bodies remember the ways they were born to move, I put on a piece of music. I invited participants into a movement meditation, acknowledging and releasing these imprints of dominance into Her composting bodyspirit, whether with one hand, multiple limbs, or otherwise. This was an early “pilgrimage” site, where in working for justice, first we need to regularly cleanse and clarify ourselves so sound gestures can emerge.

As I observed the participants, I felt one lesson from the Soul Care Retreat becoming a gift. We were contemplatively moving in community, releasing, feeling, being together.

Here was my whoopsie: I chose to let that continue for one more song. I remember sensing in our Zoom room how for some, this could be of deepening service. But I also forgot the two-hour constraint of the container I was given, and when the end of the retreat was behind me, I realized I hadn’t guided them in equal part to receive Her restorative powers before re-entering daily life. I’d had to rush through this vital part.

Here is Her daisy: Moving forward, this remembrance is now woven into my body. There are two scheduled opportunities I’d like to invite you to now, and countless ones that I have faith will spontaneously emerge in daily life, allowing this lesson and others to come out, breathe and be shared.

She waterwheels me. She waterwheels us. She Is Here.

And now. Here we are. Thank you for being with me in this way. Inhaling with you. Exhaling with you. Looking within. Looking up.

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Next: You are invited to TWO splendid and generative offerings that I’ve been, in Her grace and Mystery, invited to teach at.

1. RESURRECTING THE GODDESS: LIBERATING CHRISTIANITY WITH THE WILD WISDOM OF THE DIVINE FEMININE, September 29-October 3, Monday-Friday (Online and Recorded; not just for Christians)

I’ll be one of the Speakers, and I’ll also be leading a 90-minute workshop. My talk is entitled Her Love Language is Incarnation. My workshop is called She Liberates Body and Word! I’m super excited about the workshop, where we’ll get to retrieve our language and bodies from the ways patriarchy has weaponized them for dominance, and reclaim their natural, restorative powers through easeful movement woven into poem-making.

I’m bowing down in joy to be included alongside teachers of my own, whom I honor so deeply, like Dr. Christena Cleveland, Taya Ma Shere, Erin Duffey-Burke and the Circle of Angelic Realms.

The Resurrecting the Goddess Summit is FREE. Register HERE! I’d love to share in this experience with you.

2. SOMATIC SPIRITUAL COMPANIONSHIP course by SPIRITUAL DIRECTORS INTERNATIONAL, September 30-November 18, Tuesdays from 4:00-5:30pm PT

As if that weren’t enough of a bow-down, bowl-me-over blessing, in this same season of time, my exquisitely gifted and beloved mentor Cynthia Winton-Henry has invited me into the teaching fold of a course she is generating and leading: Somatic Spiritual Companionship. At last! A course for spiritual companions and all those drawn to tend their spiritual lives, on how to remember, regain relationship with, and apply somatic experience and wisdom for the greater good!

I’ve been invited to co-lead two of the Somatic Spiritual Companionship classes. On October 28th, I will be co-leading Social Grace, Trauma and Genocide, alongside Cynthia, Carolyn Renee Morris and Hailey Mitsui. On November 4th, Cynthia, Carolyn Renee and I will be joined by Cassandra Sagan, on Lineage Care and Ancestral Bodies. I will be there at each of the other classes too, as the topics and leaders are wisdom treasures for our times.

I, we, welcome your prayers and presence.

This is for both spiritual directors/companions and all spiritual seekers. You can register for Somatic Spiritual Companionship HERE.

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In these upcoming offerings, may our learnings from the past become nourishment and blessings for our collective present and future.

With you on Her Wheel,

Coke