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Ordinary Gifts In A Time of Excess
Greetings Reader!
Have you had to batch delete a few dozen emails multiple times a day this last week, due to the holiday market dash of the season? I know I have. So, if this message made it through the gates of deletion, I am grateful. Thank you for being here.
This week’s reflection and practice aim to open up for you a kind of gift-giving and receiving that we can enjoy all year. And, if what they explore is new to you, I can really say this honestly and with sincerity and, dare I say, a guarantee:
With time, this practice will change your entire life, from the inside out, and back again. In fact “inside” and “outside” will themselves start to loosen, and unravel, and free you.
Cheers,
Jennifer
Founder, Ordinary Nature​
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Weekly Reflection
- Weekly Practice
- Upcoming Event for Holiday Support
- Little Tender Things
WEEKLY REFLECTION
Radically Ordinary Gifts In A Time Of Excess
Jennifer Ruth Keller
I don’t know about you, but if I’m not a bit careful, it is easy for me to slip into the holiday season bustle at the (literal!) expense of rich, simple experiences.
Today on our walk to school, the rainy weather had coaxed a worm onto the sidewalk. (We live in the shrub-steppe desert, eastern side of Washington state, so a night of rain is not super common here.)
My daughter spotted the worm first, and we both marveled at its size. “Wow! It’s almost like a baby snake!” I exclaimed, as she crouched low to get a better view.
The worm nudged its way across the concrete, towards a lawn. We gave the worm a wide berth, then resumed our walk down the last few blocks to the school.
Just yesterday, in a training for my continuing education with Seminary of the Wild, we talked about the shift in orientation from “looking at” plants and animals in nature, to “being with” plants and animals as nature with us.
A shift, or re-orientation, from living “alongside” or “next to” other creatures, and opening ourselves to living with them, in a kind of co-presence, or shared presence. One way to develop this re-orientation, or to explore the shift, is to pause or bracket our own ways of experiencing the world, and to imagine, or open to, the felt consideration of what it might be like to move through the world as that other being.
The exploration or imaginal experiment may feel odd at first, or artificial, or strange, or new. Trying it with a light touch of curious play can help.
I wonder what that concrete feels like to the worm? might be a place I’d begin. Does it sense us here, and how? What does movement through space feel like? What do those blades of grass mean for the worm and how are they “there” for the worm?
These curious wonderings are a form of attention from an “imagined within” rather than from a voyeur on the outside. Yes, we can remain aware of our own not-knowing, that is, I don’t presume my idea of how a worm feels is right! I don’t know enough about worms yet to know in any objective way.
But, this is not curious play for the sake of scientific portraiture. It is for the sake of “being with” the world in a way where I become less dominated by my centered place of knowing, and a bit more able to share a space with other beings in inter-relationship.
And that shift from me-you, subject-object, human-animal distinctions and boundaries into a more inter-relational way of being is when the richness of material reality can bloom in unexpected ways. We become interwoven with the world, rather than visitors walking through it.
This re-orientation becomes a way to notice, and receive, and reciprocate the arrival of gifts—whatever they may be! A worm inching across concrete could be, in another situation, a worm pooping on my hand as I move it in the garden away from a shovel, or a dead worm who doesn’t make it out of a rain puddle before it dries. Just as in human life, we don’t always get to choose the gifts that are given to us.
As the season of gift-giving is upon us, consider how you might playfully explore this new mode of abundance. How might offering your ordinary presence with other beings—and becoming receptive to their forms of presence as well—be a way to celebrate the holidays this year?
WEEKLY PRACTICE
This week’s invitation for practice and exploration will follow upon the weekly reflection:
Set aside 30 minutes sometime in the next week where you can be outside without a destination to get to. Could be a yard, a park, a walk around your neighborhood, the woods, a field.
Once outside, stroll a bit aimlessly at a slow pace. (Probably 5-10x slower than what you typically think is “slow”!)
Without forcing it too much, let yourself be open to noticing another being who gets your attention. Or catches your eye. Or in some way draws your notice amidst the rest of the environment you’re in.
If you need help shifting into “reception mode”: enjoy a few minutes with each of your major senses. That can aid the process of slowing down, of shifting from your head and “I’m striving to notice something” into a more relaxed mode of “I’m here for receiving.”
Once a particular being settles into your felt experience, drawing your notice, be with them for 5-10 minutes. Allow yourself to explore that “imaginal” mode, in which you playfully wonder how they may be experiencing the environment with you.
At first, this may be something you do in your mind. And then, the invitation is to shift into a felt experience with that imaginal curiosity: dropping into a more embodied sensing or imagining of how they are experiencing the same place.
Playful, light-touch, curious questions and musing are a way into this more embodied kind of exploration.
And here’s the cool thing, which once it sinks in, can be life-changing: They are experiencing you too. You being with them, or near them, means you are inter-relating in a single field, a shared material reality. And how cool is that?!
Try it out and let me know what happens!
THIS SUNDAY!
Need some support and human gathering with these kinds of practices? I’ve got you!
Pause The Noise: Pre-Holiday Nature Immersion
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Sunday, Dec 7th @ 12:00-1:15pm PST
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Virtual -or- In Person
Cost: $35 (before 12/1)
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LITTLE TENDER THINGS
You think I’m big and grand.
You behold me, gape and swoon.
But remember:
Within the whole wide sky
I am but one wee
wisp of cooled water vapor
condensed onto aerosols.
Tender, I am, too.
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