MY VALUES

I believe in LOVE. I choose this world, creeks and crises, children and communities, frogs, and all the fabulous gifted artists and activists, witches and queers, elected officials and priestesses, organizers and executive directors and parents and optimists who keep one foot planted and what is really happening to this world we love and place the other foot in the future we are authoring, together, now, a place where our cities are safe for all our children and frogs. Why frogs? Because I love them with all my heart, I grew up making creek-deep palaces for tadpoles, and because they are masters of miraculous metamorphosis and the change we need right now seems like a miracle sometimes and also because if our cities are safe for all our children and frogs- if they are in relationship with the land and made so the most fragile among us can thrive– then they are safe for everyone.

This is wisdom. I believe in WISDOM by Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ definition from her wonderful book, The Dangerous Old Woman. She defines wisdom simply as “what works.“ She is an elder to me as I become older and more dangerous every day. Dangerous to the Story of Normal and wise to its lies that this crossroads change moment isn’t ours. It is ours. It belongs to the Wise. We are the future elders of this transformative movement of love and belonging and we know that what works matters as much as love and belonging. We are the elders of this future, and all our teachers stand behind us, from the ancestors who have done their healing to the living leaders of our times. I acknowledge my teachers – Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Johanna Macy, Starhawk and my other many elders in the Reclaiming tradition of witchcraft, adrienne maree brown, Natalie Goldberg, John Brazaitas, Resmaa Menakem, Mary Oliver, Lindsey Mack, Mary Greer, and so many more.

I honor their work by acknowledging them. I believe in HONOR, in living my values of justice and truth and honoring all my lineages. My teachers, my ancestors of blood, spirit and craft, including those ancestors who want to make repair and those who once had an intact relationship with the land. Honoring my values and lineages means learning, failing and working with the shame and fear and anger that is part of learning in this river of blood, shored by bones and skin, that is my body. I honor my body. I honor my identities. I strive to see my own cisgender whiteness ever more clearly and reduce that harm while making my absolute best offering for this world I love. I believe in answering my calling as a transformative priestess and storyteller in a lineage of priestexes and storytellers. We are in service to all our descendants in the time of the Great Turning, which is Joanna Macy’s term for this crossroads moment in which we turn toward a just and life-sustaining society.

This is transformative, and it is magic. I believe in MAGIC. I believe that we are capable of the miraculous transformative change that we need now. I know that our bodies are intimately connected to the web of life and the intelligence of the wild and the wisdom of the land. I believe in the magic that comes when we link that wisdom together: my full wild intelligence with yours, with theirs, with the cycle of the seasons. There IS time. There is time for rest when we let intuition tell us which work is bullshit and a waste of time that we could be spending naked in the lake or sitting close to the bonfire. Anyone wanna come closer to the fire? There is magic in this gathering. There is a magic that you were born to make. With this magic together, we can meet this moment, and we can do it with pleasure.

I believe in standing with what is, in holding, and witnessing and healing the pain, and I believe in PLEASURE, which is our bodies’ navigation system, our compass guiding us towards life. Let us gather in ways that make our eyes light with laughter. Let us feel the ache and release of healing – together instead of alone. Let us be guided by what is most weird and wonderful. Let us love the miracle of frogs and whatever it is that you love, in your secret and also not-so-secret heart as we all go places we have never gone before for the sake of all our descendants in the time of the Great Turning.

These are my values and this is one way of telling you About Me. These are my values and they are a spell. This is a spell that I cast for the world that we love.