We are wandering lost in the desert. Not a new set of circumstances. Familiar. 

Almost as if the desert has a meandering scar, a worn spot where people have been displacing sand and making a mark for millennia. This raggedy path is a sign that we have been lost before. My friend Patti Digh recently informed me that these pedestrian paths are called desire lines. These paths that no one planned for are the spontaneous ways of the people, which over time, carved themselves into being from experience and not planning.

Lost in the desert, I wonder what desire lines did my ancestors carve? How did they persevere under power-hungry leaders? What paths or escape routes, resiliency lines, did they carve with their persistent footsteps through pastures or town squares? When was it a line of escape, or preservation, or compassion? My hard choices today feel like echoes of history, their impossible choices laying a desire line for me, for the loving path I am determined to keep walking. 

This spring, my meander contains multitudes. I face more reality than ever before. The truth of aging, of becoming closer to the end. The power of community and the limits of trust. The unforgiving truth in the question, “what is my life for?” wakes me up, rocks me to sleep, sings to me at red lights while the engine idles. On a good day, I roll around in that question and it can feel lighter, not so accusatory. I touch the seam of the question with my finger and it entices more contact, a deepening. 

Zooming out from my personal lost meander, I see us. For us as a people, as a nation, the lost meander we feel presently is punctuated with violence and the threat of more violence. The ever-present knowing that death is all around us. That the carnage is unfair and ugly - out of control and thoroughly cruel. And too many of us are funding it with our precious resources, we are at once contributing to the death while at the very same moment, we are turned away from the murders, from the suicides with other things to keep us occupied. Our lost meander is once again, has always been, over the bone pile. 

 Our collective body has always known carnage. We recognize our role is to persevere, not ask too many questions, and facilitate the next generation. As I feel this slow hum of anxiety underfoot, I listen for the heartbeats of resistance. Knowing that with all the death around us, there is truth, there are voices organizing for better futures, there are circles around campfires dreaming states of being for our grandchildren. As we wander the desert, we’re taking stock of the people we wander with. Who is bringing the love? Who knows how to skin a deer? Who can teach a song? Who can hold a baby? This has always been true. 

When my son was a child, my cousins gifted him the book Frederick, about a little mouse family needing to burrow in for the winter. All the mice had important jobs finding food and building their nest. Little Frederick would look at the sky and offer words from his heart.

"I am gathering words, for the winter days are long and many, and we'll run out of things to say," "I gather colors...for winter is gray," Frederick was the community’s poet. Through the story, his family realizes that they need the poetry of little Frederick when the food runs out, and the winter is cold. 

Perhaps it is too easy to become stuck in a place where we just think “well, this is it.” As I take comfort in my well-worn paths, those gifts I know I have, I am also going in some different directions - unanticipated and pleasurable. I see my community doing the same. Being with the current reality. While the possibilities are not endless for the next decade, I see many options,  many paths. Some are well manicured and lined with stone. Some are desire lines from those who came before me. 

I have a friend moving to Canada. I have a friend who’s been traveling around the world for the last year, a friend who lost their job and is focused on their body and taking care of themselves. I have a friend who’s become an artist. I have moved into a tiny 630 sq ft apartment off the side of my friend Ruth’s house. 

Some thoughts on feeling scared and lost:

1. An impulse when I’m lost is to speed up and go fast. When really the gift of being lost is that we have to slow down. Perhaps, we stop to look around to see where we are to get our bearings. 

2. For someone who grew up wealthy cis + white, the idea that I have no idea what to do is humbling and in some ways as a mercy. I don’t know what to do. The question then becomes so what then? When we don’t know what to do, what do we do?

3. My kavanah for the last 16 months (Jewish intention, “direction of the heart”) has been to be kind in the face of my own fear. When I started with this intention, I was focused on everybody else - determined not to take out my anxiety, my grief, or my rage on the people around me - the very people who are helping me box up my stuff, pack up my car, feed me and remind me to bathe. I wasn’t gonna take out my feelings on them. Somewhere over the course of the year, I realized this sweet kavanah extends to me. That I deserve my kindness as well. I see how I had gotten into some pretty bad habits with myself. 

4. Ultimately, it’s hopeful to ask for directions. It’s hopeful to circle up and say OK. That ridge looks daunting and the valley looks inviting. Let’s take some inventory of our collective resources. Let’s make a plan together. Asking directions from the landscape, the creatures, the community.

Whatever happens in the next 20 years, I hope these lessons about feeling lost remain with me and I hope that I continue to experience the gift of these feelings - even when my mind tells me that I’m no longer lost.

I am carving a desire line to my future.

 Poem of the Month

Marina Tsvetaeva

from Girlfriend I2

Moscow's hills are blue, the warm air tasting of dust and tar.

I sleep all day or else I laugh as if well again after winter.

I go home quietly without regretting the poems I haven't written,

the sound of wheels, or roasted almonds matter more than a quatrain.

My head is magnificently empty, my heart dangerously full; my days are like tiny waves seen from a small bridge.

Perhaps my look is too tender for air that is barely warm.

I am already sick of summer - though hardly recovered from winter.

I3 March 1915 - Translated by David McDuff

Provocations and Nourishment

The rise of end times fascism / Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Debra East’s substack has launched. Debra holds it down in Lander, Wyoming, organizing and feeling herself into the future. Check out her essay, “Racism had a headstart on me.”

 ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Real dangers women face

 ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. I am so enjoying Francis Weller’s Wild Edge of Sorrow

 ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

The Love & Justice Quarterly Subscription Box

Each season, Love & Justice subscribers will get a box of BIPOC hand-crafted whimsy, and an invitation to connect to discuss the enclosed book. 

Upcoming Opportunities

Are you getting what you want out of your one precious life? My coaching work is expanding:  

Individual packages are always available to support you to live a life connected to your values. How aligned do you feel in your choices for home, parenting, relationship and career? Ever wonder what more connection to your heart could mean for your life? Sometimes, my clients zoom in and want to focus on one domain, and sometimes we look at the big picture. It’s up to you.  

 ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Group coaching for white women starts October 9th - New Ancestors is a 12-week dive into the antiracism your heart wants to carve out! How has white femininity been a trap in your life? What do you need to grieve? What are the antiracism questions and yearnings you want to work with? How can you show up in your white woman identity in ways that feel aligned and right to you? 

 ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

AORTA

Offerings for individuals

 ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Generational Differences in Communication | American Society on Aging

 ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

https://www.sexdownsouth.com/

 ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Get Your Shit Together - from estate planning to money management and insurance to all sorts of other practical life decisions - this class is a re-boot for some and a first big bold beautiful step for others.

 ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Toward Justice,

Evangeline

Please forward this blog to any of your friends working to build more just communities and organizations.