Dear Reader,

Welcome to SacredSpace!

Below you will find:

With love,

Noelle

QUOTES

REFLECTIONS ON RITUAL

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As I witness this moment, as I am part of this moment. As a mother and healer, an artist and organizer - I write.

Honoring my voice. Just what comes. I feel like I often censor myself as a writer. Always trying to have a kind of clarity. Maybe a fear of judgment. Or trying to make myself more "accessible". I don’t always allow myself to move in and out of my poetry, my quick thoughts, my sparks & spirals. But here I am, going for it!

Writing today about ritual. About spaces of gathering in person. And what that means to me. I have seen again and again the transformative possibilities of gathering in community, in person: to create, to meditate, to ritualize together. While I love aspects of what the online world has provided for us - to educate, connect, open our minds and share across borders - there is an isolation that comes with it. That comes with an online class, sitting behind a screen, scrolling, listening through the computer, layers of machine between humans, between our breath and vibration.

There is a kind of magic that can happen when an ensemble of people tune in together.

I have seen this in plays, I have experienced this in ceremonies & meditations, jam sessions, dance gatherings and rituals. When we are able to truly connect with our inner world, and feel connected to OR notice our disconnection with ourselves and the world around us. These gatherings are an integral part of feeling belonging and wholeness.

As Thich Nahn Hahn writes in his book No Mud, No Lotus “In the collective we can see the individual, and in the individual there is the collective. There is no absolute individuality; there is no absolute collectivity.” We are inextricably linked to all of life and to one another.

Sometimes, it's only after hours of dancing, meditating, building an altar together or playing theatre games before we are slowly are able to let go of that tugging feeling of ego, or that tightness in our chest that we didn't even know was there. When we are actually able to fully arrive into the moment, into our bodies, into spirit, alongside one another.

A surrender happens. There is a homecoming. A healing. Sometimes a rupture. A calling to ancestors. An attunement and alignment.

When I create sacred spaces - this is what I am going for. Connecting us back to the magic and vibration that allows us to be vulnerable with ourselves in community.

These spaces of gathering are essential to our liberation movements.

If we keep pushing pushing pushing with “content” and “education” and “quotes” and "memes" but we don’t gather in the room together to hold eye contact, to listen to the sound of each other’s names, to create song that is birthed from the ancient fire in our belly and bones and blood, to build an altar together to honor our waters and lands, then I fear our movements are missing something. Missing a connection to spirit that is the guiding force leading us into cosmic, human and earthly harmony.

THIS is an ESSENTIAL part of the multifaceted journey into spiritual, political and embodied freedom and collective liberation.

The late Malidoma Patrice Somé writes “Ritual is a gathering with others in order to feel Spirit’s call, to express spontaneously and publicly whatever emotion needs to be expressed, to create, in concert with others, an unrehearsed and deeply moving response to Spirit, and to feel the presence of the community, including the ancestors, throughout the experience.”

It is unquantifiable. Yes, I can try to find the words to showcase what this is. But I would rather just gather.

I look forward to journeying with you, to be in community to envision, imagine, build, sing, create, improvise, cry, laugh and connect. As we birth new worlds in these heavy times, I come back again and again to Malidoma Patrice Somé's writings. He reminds me:

“Ritual is the principal tool used to approach that unseen world in a way that will rearrange the structure of the physical world and bring about material transformation."

SPOTLIGHT

Malidoma Patrice Somé(1956–2021) is from the village of Dano in Burkina Faso. A medicine man and diviner in the Dagara culture, he is the author of ‘Of Water and the Spirit’ and ‘The Healing Wisdom of Africa’ and 'Ritual'. He led workshops, rituals, classes and talks all over the world. He held three masters degrees and two doctorates from Sorbonne and Brandeis University.

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