Coming Home This Week Is On Thursday Morning at 9am ~ Daring to Be Still
A meditation inspired by one of the greats (who is with us NOW!)
“In a culture that largely defines worthiness, sanity, and success in terms of how distant we are from our feelings, how far and fast we run away from our roots, how numb we are to the fluency of our bodies, daring to slow down…daring to be still is the most damning act of rebellion.” –Báyò Akómoláfé
Dear Friends,
Tonight my friend, Holly, sent me this quote from the brilliant and wise, Báyò Akómoláfé. If you don’t know his writing, I highly highly recommend you check it out. I am continuously awed (I do not use this word lightly) by the beauty and power of his prose, along with a perspective he frames as “postactivist,” “transracial,” and “ontofugitive.” I learn from and long for more of his rich insight…even as I am reading it! Like something I’ve been hungry for, finally receive, and it’s better even than I imagined or remembered. What a gift.
Note: Usually our Coming Home practice is on Tuesday mornings, but tomorrow I have to travel into NYC, so we’ll sit on Thursday morning this week. So, please join me from 9-10:15 on Thursday, August 18.
This is the part we will work with:
“…daring to slow down…daring to be still is the most damning act of rebellion.”
Why does he use the word, “dare?” For me, it’s such a precise choice. It takes a kind of bravery to actually and truly do this! Have you tried it lately? Have you felt the resistance one encounters when you do? It can be intense to ask for the space you need to process something that was said, to make a decision, to feel your feelings fully, to really be present to someone else’s experience.
We have to fight for the space to do these things even though they might be the most meaningful things we do. To me, it’s a sign of how decisively the system has pummeled us. And he’s right - the act of resistance is in taking back space, time, and agency by daring to slow down and daring to be still.
What will we find when we do? I don’t know about you, but I really, really want to know. In each moment, I want to know what is actually happening, what is really there.
Think about your life right now. What or who is breathing down your neck? Who is impatient with you? Who wants more of you than you can give? Who or what is applying pressure in a way that feels scary, threatening, or manipulative? Where do you feel overwhelm or its cousin, insufficiency? Answering these questions honestly can be hard. First of all, they require us to slow down and tune in.
If I do this, I feel on the surface that I am greatly impacted by other people’s timelines, by adhering to schedules (like my child’s school schedule), by the expectations of others that I will be available when they need me to be (even people I don’t really care about like the orthodontist’s scheduling secretary). A little deeper, I can sense a voice that constantly tells me a story about being irresponsible when I don’t answer correspondence in a timely fashion, or I miss self-imposed deadlines on projects. Deeper still, I sense the striving of my ancestors to improve their lot in life (or even to survive at times). And I feel a fear of being left behind that has an origin I’m not yet in touch with.
See what it is that keeps you moving, running, striving, chasing, racing. You might point to outside factors and people. You might also find that a lot of pressure is self-imposed; a symptom of the pervasive “myth of progress” and standardized definitions of “success” we’ve internalized. If we are conscious of this, we may be experiencing tension around these expectations—we may be in resistance. If we are still unconscious, they are probably causing a lot of stress and anxiety. In either case, there is a process of reclamation that needs to happen. The “daring” is about stopping the moving train. It’s about sitting in the unknown and seeing that our worst fears are largely unfounded. Then what?
That’s a great question. Let’s see.
Thursday morning we will dare to slow down and dare to be still together. We will see what comes up in the space we make. We will be attentive and we will offer the practice up as a shining, courageous act of rebellion and … hope.
