The Spacious and the Sacred

108 Thresholds

Episodes 105-108 Moving from Spring to Summer in these 4 episodes. 
Gathering Word: Threshold by Maggie Smith
You want a door you can be
            on both sides of at once.
 
                       You want to be
           on both sides of here
 
and there, now and then,
            together and—(what
 
                       did we call the life
            we would wish back?
 
The old life? The before?)
            alone. But any open
 
                       space may be
            a threshold, an arch
 
of entering and leaving.
            Crossing a field, wading
 
                       through nothing
            but timothy grass,
 
imagine yourself passing from
            and into. Passing through
 
                       doorway after
            doorway after doorway.
 
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Andi Chatburn: https://www.andichatburn.net/
Audre Rickard: https://www.saturatedgrace.com
Heather Fignar: http://www.heatherfignar.com
Irene Dunlop: https://www.tendsoulcare.com 
 
 

107 Abundance

Episodes 105-108 Moving from Spring to Summer in these 4 episodes. 
 
Gathering Word: The Gift of Strawberries Excerpt from “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer
In a way, I was raised by strawberries, fields of them. Not to exclude the maples, hemlocks, white pines, goldenrod, asters, violets, and mosses of upstate New York, but it was the wild strawberries, beneath dewy leaves on an almost-summer morning, who gave me my sense of the world, my place in it.
You could smell ripe strawberries before you saw them, the fragrance mingling with the smell of sun on clamp ground. It was the smell of June, the last clay of school, when we were set free, and the Strawberry Moon. I'd lie on my stomach in my favorite patches, watching the berries grow sweeter and bigger under the leaves. Each tiny wild berry was scarcely bigger than a raindrop, dimpled with seeds under the cap of leaves. From that vantage point I could pick only the reddest of the red, leaving the pink ones for tomorrow.
Even now, after more than fifty Strawberry Moons, finding a patch of wild strawberries still touches me with a sensation of surprise, a feeling of unworthiness and gratitude for the generosity and kindness that comes with an unexpected gift all wrapped in red and green. "Really? For me? Oh, you shouldn't have." After fifty years they still raise the question of how to respond to their generosity. Sometimes it feels like a silly question with a very simple answer: eat them.
Strawberries first shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet. A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it.
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Andi Chatburn: https://www.andichatburn.net/
Audre Rickard: https://www.saturatedgrace.com
Heather Fignar: http://www.heatherfignar.com
Irene Dunlop: https://www.tendsoulcare.com 

106 Discernment and Pruning

Episodes 105-108 Moving from Spring to summer in these 4 episodes. 
Gathering Word: The Journey By Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew What you had to do, and began, Though the voices around you Kept shouting Their bad advice‚ Though the whole house Began to tremble And you felt the old tug At your ankles. “Mend my life!” Each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, Though the wind pried With its stiff fingers At the very foundations‚ Though their melancholy Was terrible. It was already late Enough, and a wild night, And the road full of fallen Branches and stones. But little by little, As you left their voices behind, The stars began to burn Through the sheets of clouds, And there was a new voice, Which you slowly Recognized as your own, That kept you company As you strode deeper and deeper Into the world, Determined to do The only thing you could do‚ Determined to save The only life you could save.
‘The Journey,’ from Dream Work by Mary Oliver. © 1986 Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc
Andi Chatburn: https://www.andichatburn.net/
Audre Rickard: https://www.saturatedgrace.com
Heather Fignar: http://www.heatherfignar.com
Irene Dunlop: https://www.tendsoulcare.com 

105 Chaos and Cacophony

Episodes 105-108 Moving from Spring to summer in these 4 episodes. 
Gathering Word -Mark Nepo, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, page 247
"When jarred into feeling how precious life is and how swiftly time moves through us, we are overcome with an urgency not to waste another second. Now we feel the need to speed up and rush, grabbing what we can in fear that the fire of being alive will bring down the house. What we do next is a turning point in our lives. While such urgency is understandable, it is only by slowing down that time drops its movement. Only when opening everything – our urgency, our worry, our fear, our regret - are we welcomed into the timeless pool of being.
After all we go through, we are asked to lead a life of honest expression, which always starts with listening as a way to remember what matters, to name what matters, and to voice what matters. These are the practices that keep us authentic."
 
Andi Chatburn: https://www.andichatburn.net/
Audre Rickard: https://www.saturatedgrace.com
Heather Fignar: http://www.heatherfignar.com
Irene Dunlop: https://www.tendsoulcare.com 

104 Greening

Episodes 101-104 On the spring equinox we talk about the transition from Winter to Spring.
Gathering Word - Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May
"We must emerge slowly from our wintering. We must test the air and be ready to shrink back into safety when blasted by unseasonal winds; we must gradually unfurl our new leaves. 
There will still be the debris of a long, disordered season. These are the moments when we have to find the most grace: when we come to atone for the worst ravages of our conduct in darker times, when we have to tell truths that we'd rather ignore. 
Sometimes we will have to name our personal winters, and the words will feel barbed in our throats: grief, rejection, depression, illness. Shame, failure, despair. It often seems easier to stay in winter, burrowed down into our hibernation nests, away from the glare of the sun. 
But we are brave, and the new world awaits us, gleaming and green, alive with the beat of wings. And besides, we have a kind of gospel to tell now, and a duty to share it. We, who have wintered, have learned some things. We sing it out like birds. We let our voices fill the air."  p141, Wintering by Katherine May
 
Greening Retreat led by Andi Chatburn and Irene Dunlop:
https://www.andichatburn.net/retreatmt/p/june2023 
 
Andi Chatburn: https://www.andichatburn.net/
Audre Rickard: https://www.saturatedgrace.com
Heather Fignar: http://www.heatherfignar.com
Irene Dunlop: https://www.tendsoulcare.com 

103 Unfurling

Episodes 101-104 On the spring equinox, we talk about the transition from Winter to Spring
Gathering Word - For a New Beginning by John O’DonohueIn out-of-the-way places of the heart,Where your thoughts never think to wander,This beginning has been quietly forming,Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,Noticing how you willed yourself on,Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safetyAnd the gray promises that sameness whispered,Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,And out you stepped onto new ground,Your eyes young again with energy and dream,A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clearYou can trust the promise of this opening;Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginningThat is at one with your life's desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
 
Andi Chatburn: https://www.andichatburn.net/
Audre Rickard: https://www.saturatedgrace.com
Heather Fignar: http://www.heatherfignar.com
Irene Dunlop: https://www.tendsoulcare.com

102 Melting

Episodes 101-104 On the spring equinox we talk about the transition from Winter to Spring 
Gathering Word - Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
love will come
and when love comes
love will hold you
love will call your name
and you will melt
sometimes though
love will hurt you but
love will never mean to
love will play no games
cause love knows life
has been hard enough already
p60, Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
 
Andi Chatburn: https://www.andichatburn.net/
Audre Rickard: https://www.saturatedgrace.com
Heather Fignar: http://www.heatherfignar.com
Irene Dunlop: https://www.tendsoulcare.com

101 Transitions

Episodes 101-104 On the spring equinox we talk about the transition from Winter to Spring 
Gathering Word - Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May
"Everybody winters at one time or another; some winter over and over again. Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you're cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. Perhaps it results from an illness or a life event such as a bereavement or the birth of a child; perhaps it comes from a humiliation or failure. Perhaps you're in a period of transition and have temporarily fallen between two worlds. ... However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful." p13, Wintering by Katherine May
Andi Chatburn: https://www.andichatburn.net/
Audre Rickard: https://www.saturatedgrace.com
Heather Fignar: http://www.heatherfignar.com
Irene Dunlop: https://www.tendsoulcare.com