september 2022
One thing I’ve learned about trying to live seasonally is that sometimes life doesn’t cooperate. In yin lately, we’ve been grounding in preparation for falling back here soon, but I’ve been feeling less like grounding and more like planning. This year has been weird and hard, and I’ve felt behind for nearly all of it. I’m finally feeling like writing again, and a small spark of creativity might be returning (knock on wood).
One of the lessons of leaning into nature’s wisdom is recognizing your own inner wisdom that most of us are cut off from at some point in our childhood, so even though it isn’t exactly in tune with the seasons to be in planning mode right now, my intuition tells me it’s the right time for me.
So all of that to say that I’m trying to figure out some better organization for this newsletter and that includes not doing links in every issue because it takes too long. Instead, I’ll try to do one post a month with all of the links that you can save up for a rainy day or skip if you don’t like that sort of thing anyway.
Rants and raves
👍 I know it’s not the middle of the year, but it’s my newsletter so I make the rules. Here are my favorite books of the year so far as #readingseason comes around again:
Most mind-bending: tied for God Is A Black Woman and Recapture the Rapture. Christena Cleveland’s God Is A Black Woman helps remind us that God isn’t a white man with a beard up in the sky and helps connect the dots of the repercussions of that kind of theology - and frees us up along the way. Jamie Wheal’s Recapture the Rapture was a weird conglomeration of God, sex, and death (as the subtitle teases) that somehow works - mostly. But even where I disagreed with it, it made me think.
Book all of us should have read by now: God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. Vine Deloria Jr’s classic originally published in 1972 is still in print for a reason, and it should belong on high school US History readings lists. It especially should be required reading for those of us who consider ourselves Christians.
Most addicting: A Court of Thorn and Roses. I loved this series and raced through it entirely too quickly (to the tune of staying up past 1AM several nights, which is crazy since my bedtime is 9:30!). It’s fantasy but not too out there, sexy but mostly still smart, and it was the perfect escape when I needed it. Supposedly, there’s a show from Hulu coming too.
Book I’m most likely to reference three years from now: Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World.
Most fun: Book Lovers. I love Emily Henry, and I think this one was her best yet (but I can’t resist an enemies to lovers trope!).
👎 Speaking of books, it’s National Banned Books week. The American Library Association has tons of resources, including lists of the most frequently banned books (my kids used the 2020 list for their school book report list this year, which I’m inordinately proud of!). I loved this story of how communities are fighting back across the country.
👍 Fall equinox was yesterday, and I’m so excited that fall temps seemed to arrive right on schedule with a perfect high of 67° and blue skies yesterday. I taught a few equinox workshops and here is the handout I shared in case you want to have an autumn equinox celebration of your own this weekend.
Stuff worth sharing around the interwebs
8 billion ways. One of the more useful things I read this month, I can’t link to for you. It’s from Margaret James’ newsletter, which you have to subscribe to to read, which you can and should do here. Here is the bit I loved:
The most healing practices are the ones that are the most accessible and sustainable. The ones you can actually do and keep doing based on your own consistent rhythm. The ones that help you remember your Aliveness.
That could happen in a yoga practice, or while watching your favorite show first thing in the morning, or when you're drinking coffee with a dear friend, or having sex. Who knows?! There's almost 8 billion people on the planet which means there's almost 8 billion ways to engage with your own sense of vitality. [emphasis mine]
Rhythms over routines. I hate on Instagram (especially lately) as much as the next person, but this post was an aha moment for me. KC is a licensed professional counselor who has ADHD and spends time educating people (especially women) about how differently neourdivergent people see the world - and, subsequently, how so much of the “normal” advice doesn’t work for them. In this post that made my lightbulbs go off, she said “a pattern is a tool, a routine is an expectation,” which is why, for example, people with ADHD have so much trouble sticking to routines.
Perhaps this is why I prefer formulas and rhythms (hello, LIVING SEASONALLY!) and have always had trouble sticking to routines. I love stuff like this that helps you to see that it probably isn’t you that’s the problem, it’s the system you’re forcing yourself into.
The avocado principle. How I wish I would’ve inhaled this post (and honestly, pretty much all of Casey’s writing) instead of all of those Health and Self magazine articles I inhaled twenty years ago. A few years ago, I decided that I just wasn’t going to engage in the typical body shaming talk that women love to engage in. It’s amazing how quickly it dissipates when one person just…doesn’t participate1. So I had a little whiplash this weekend - Grant and I went to Chicago for a work award he and his team won, and I forgot how body shaming is pretty much the first thing a bunch of women that don't know each other tend to engage in. I changed the subject pretty quickly, but what I really wanted to do was make them read Casey's post. Here's the longer version.
Other good stuff: Packer on Ukraine is required reading; The White House Twitter feed is standing up for itself, and I love it so much; speaking of Twitter, this thread is required reading as we head into midterms; I rarely have dreams about school but Grant does all the time and this explains why. I’m sure I missed plenty of good stuff around the interwebs this month, so leave your favorites in the comments for all to share.
Happy fall!
Sara
Admittedly, I’ve also culled my socializing quite a bit too over the last few years, which might have something to do with the lack of these kinds of convos - HA!