Whoever has an ear, listen carefully— 40+8 Day Twelve

breathe in | breathe out

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Question

Whose light has touched your life?

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Reflection

Whoever has an ear for this
should listen carefully…

Fear and habit
have our ears all plugged up.
Fear and habit have us
trapped in echo chambers,
limiting possibilities and confining our light.
Fear and habit have us
mishearing one another’s stories.
Instead, we write them about the other from afar,
never coming near enough to be surprised by their glow.

To open our ears again
we need to learn new habits.
We need to resource ourselves
with practices and communal support
that will help us tend to trauma
and empower us to process fear
from a grounded and skillful space.

Embodied practices.
Supportive relationships.
All a part of the care
of a power greater than ourselves.

This seems like a recipe for hearing again.
This is a recipe for transformation.

How is fear and habit restricting your glow?

Whose glow don’t you know
because you’ve written them off from afar?

How are you resourcing yourself
to move beyond these limitations -
to heal heart and body?
And who is supporting you?

What a wonder, when bodies heal and settle and become!
Together, a beautiful prism illuminating the cosmos!

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Logion 24

His students said to him,
“Take us to the place where you are,
since we are required to seek after it.”

He answered them,
“Whoever has an ear for this
should listen carefully.
Light shines out from the center
of a being of light
and illuminates the whole cosmos.
Whoever fails to become light
is a source of darkness.”

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Practice

Many Intertwiners are reading and practicing through
My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma
and the Mending of our Hearts and Bodies,
by Resmaa Menakem.

This is powerful and timely wisdom.
It’s about tending to our trauma (racialized and other)
and resourcing ourselves to move through fear
so that we may be transforming presence
actively abolishing white-body supremacy.

Consider picking up a copy of the book
and working through the embodied practices.
We highly recommend working through it
with others in a small (3–4 people) community of practice.
Email info@intertwinene.org for a Group Guide to inform your work together.

If you’d like to get a sense for what this work is about
before diving into the book, consider this
quick 5-session free e-course from Resmaa &
The Cultural Somatics Institute.

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