Week 41--in which we remember how it feels to be seen and safe

Beautiful Ones,

Three weeks ago, in Notes from the Field #38, I listed five profound ideas that I brought home from my son Jerry’s wedding with his beloved Maura in New York City.

I’m still living inside that experience.

When I can’t fall asleep for all the pain and suffering being perpetuated in this country and around the world, I take myself back to that room at the One if by Land, Two if by Sea restaurant in New York.

Open the website and you’ll see the room with the massive arched windows and the staircase Maura descended. It's quite the space.

And has been “quite the space” throughout American history. The restaurant is housed in what was Aaron Burr’s carriage house and barn. If you were paying attention in fifth grade, you know who Burr was and what he did. If you slept through class, Lin-Manuel Miranda has filled in the gaps for you.

You might enjoy reading the history of the building. I sure did. It feels like the whole wild story of the American people with all our flaws condensed into a few rooms.

The history of the building is amazing, but it was the life stories of the people who gathered there that makes me want to return to that space in that moment.

There were 121 people at the wedding. I didn’t get to meet everyone, but everyone I did meet stunned me with their beauty. By beauty, I don’t mean physical or just physical, I mean “beautiful people” in the way I have been using that phrase since stumbling upon Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s quote:

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

Everyone in that room had known defeat, had suffered, had struggled mightily, and lost much. And came through filled with compassion.

If you have been with me for a few years, you know my son was imprisoned in 2013 by a judge, furious that Jerry would not name fellow activists in Occupy. The restaurant was filled with friends who supported him financially and emotionally throughout that nightmare. I got to hug the attorney who wrote the motion that got him released (and in the process altered case law) and dozens of friends who took care of him after he was released, broken and suffering from severe PTSD.

When Jerry was released, he made a vow to the guys in prison that he would go to law school and fight to prevent anyone else from experiencing prison. Jerry kept his promise and the room was filled with attorneys who work beside him in Legal Aid. I was thrilled to meet lawyers who fought the NY Bar to make sure Jerry was admitted. Angels, all of them. I even met a 96-year-old woman who was instrumental in the fight for Algerian independence and the protection of the Black Panthers in New York. She’s so important, they’re making a documentary about her.

The room was also full of creatives: artists, writers, publishers, poets. Maura has a MA in the Philosophy of Art and a PhD in Art History. I got to meet one of her dissertation advisors. And I met lots of her friends from college, The University of Seattle.

She and Jerry clearly know how to recognize and nurture real friends.

Oh, and every letter of the alphabet was there. Gay, Lesbian, Trans, Bi. Everyone was at home in that room. Including me. I was so comfortable, that when Maura’s mother introduced me as a witch, I felt honored. Seen. Safe.

In short, the entire room was full of beautiful people.

Real, intelligent, creative, principled people. It felt wonderful. It felt like home. I came away feeling I had at last found my true and precious family.

So, when I’m shocked and shaken by the next horrible thing the white christian nationalists are doing, I float back to New York on a bright September afternoon, and remember once more what it feels like to be in a place where everyone is safe. Everyone is seen for the beauty that they are.

That’s the world I want to live in. So it has to be the world I help create.

And I do. Or rather, WE do. We who gather to create my prayer intensives.

I may be the one who names an event and posts it on my website for people to join. But the miracle isn’t in anything I teach. Not really. It’s in the wisdom and beauty of the community that gathers.

We recognize that we are all “beautiful people” who have struggled. Beautiful people who gather on zoom from around the world, listening one another into being.

In the annual The Lotus and the Lily intensive, which opens November 18, we listen carefully to Thich Nhat Hanh on opening night as he illuminates the Buddhist teaching that no one is separate. We are all inter-being and inter-becoming.

In these intensives, we call that awareness “The Theatre of the Miraculous.”

And miraculous things do indeed happen.

All this week, I’ll be sending invitations to members of previous Lotus and Lily intensives, members of the ART of Becoming a Witch intensives and the members of Deep Soul Writing with Friends.

Next Sunday, I’ll open The Lotus and the Lily to all the subscribers of these Notes from the Field.

Lotus always fills to overflowing. But don’t worry. If we go over my zoom limit, I will increase it.

This is a year no one wants to miss because we’ll be looking back at a complete 9-year cycle (and what a nine years it has been!) and preparing to create a one year, the first in the next 9-year cycle.

It’s an intense moment in time. That’s painfully obvious. But it’s also a moment pregnant with possibility.

A moment when the right question isn’t: What do I want?

But: What wants to be lived in and through and as me?

A moment when we can (and we must) create a world that feels safe. For everyone.

Life is Fragile. Handle with Reverence.

Janet

PS: If you haven't read The Lotus and the Lily, order it now in preparation.
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