When my son woke me up this morning - well before 6am! - the sun streamed through the crack between the blinds and directly into my eyes. I groaned inwardly, cursing Portland’s blasted northerly latitude, but attempted a smile at the small person inviting me to play and roused my unwilling body for another round of early morning MagnaTiles.
As we approach the summer solstice, the days can become almost unbearably bright. Our bodies are instinctively awakening and responding to the light, but as the school year comes to a close, we can be overstimulated with the pressures and endings that accompany it.
Meanwhile, the global violence, political strife, and existential crises in our wider world continue on. Even while the days are getting longer, there’s just not enough time in the day to do and finish and worry about all the things that need doing and finishing and worrying.
But the setting sun approaches the horizon in a long and languid bow. The sun, it turns out, does not worry about what time she is going to set. She simply sets in her own good time, painting watercolor hues across the sky as she goes.
A Community in Action
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the pace that Leaven Community has been going this spring. We’ve been Organizing! Planting! Training! Grantwriting! Budgeting! Outreaching! Cooking! We’ve been working hard!
And, as it turns out - and I’ve been hearing this from many of you - we’re tired!
We are doing all these things with a purpose, of course. We believe that building community grounded in justice, storytelling, diversity, and action is an antidote to the systems of oppression that dominate our lives.
But what happens when we push ourselves so hard - even to organize a beautiful community - that we are denying our bodies’ and spirits’ needs for rest? Can it be that working so hard to dismantle systems of oppression in the world may actually reinforce the very systems we aim to resist?
The community organizing spiral has four (interdependent, nonlinear) stages: Sacred Encounter (Listening), Sacred Unveiling (Research), Sacred Action (Acting Together) and Sacred Pause (Celebration and Reflection). And I suspect it is time for our community to take a well-earned Sacred Pause.
Let the Light In
This summer at Leaven, it’s time to Let the Light In - time to welcome the joy, lean in to rest, and open up to love. Let’s take time to dream! Let’s make space for connection! And let’s allow what we’ve learned to settle into compost for the next season.
Check out our Events Calendar to learn about what’s happening this summer at Leaven. And in the meantime, let's allow the summer light to nourish our bodies and spirits - so that it can metabolize in our community to keep showing up for ourselves, for each other, and for the world.
