There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground; there are a thousand ways to go home again. –Rumi

A classmate of mine recited this quote for me in our Global Religions class last week as I was talking about how thrilling I find it to be discovering so many of the ways in which the divine can be constructed. I would argue that there are many, many more than a thousand ways, as each of us not only has our own way, but can change and discover new ways over and over again.

We are living in a time of great wounding. It hurts. And it’s hard to look at. There is much mourning we have to do for life as we knew it, for the loss of the ways we knew to find comfort and joy, to find love, to find the divine. It’s important to mourn. For me personally, I feel like I’ve been in this place of mourning for a few months now and I feel a great need to move on. I need to find a new way to go “home” again.

I will be starting my vacation on Monday. I will be taking a break from not only work and school, but also from the wounding (which means social media, for sure, as it’s just a long steady stream of woundedness). I will be finding the things that nurture and restore my spirit and bring me joy, so when I return to lead you into a new church year, I will bring with me energy and creativity. I plan to create a home environment in which there are many options for finding joy- music, crafting (I love to make wild hats that reflect the divine feminine), nurturing houseplants, gardening, backyard birding, caring for reptiles and amphibians (my daughter’s adventures that I have to take over when she’s not here), family genealogy, reading, healthy eating, watching movies, making movies, and an outside space that would accommodate small social distancing gatherings. It’s hard to say how long I will have to spend the majority of my time at home, so I think it’s important that I create an enriched environment for everyone (and all the living things around here!) that resides here. There is a spectrum of possibilities for how we can build our way forward. I’m curious to know how you are joyfully moving forward?

Additionally, I’ve begun talking to my daughter about creating a new way to do school. She, who loves school, misses her friends, and doesn’t do great via virtual learning, does not feel safe returning to brick and mortar school right now. This was a hard choice for her to make. It felt really sad for both of us to acknowledge that school as we knew it, just won’t be the same. But I know that staying stuck in the sadness and the frustration of the way things are (and at the people who refuse to do what it takes so we can move on from this pandemic quickly) is not healthy. So, we’re talking about how to move forward with the joy of building something new. She can safely gather with other friends doing virtual school, we can enrich her learning with our own activities, and have fun with new physical activities. We’re going to try roller skating, badminton, and volleyball! And I’m hoping that her virtual biology class will give her some interesting, hands-on lab work we can do together and further our knowledge of the interdependent web of all existence.

As I study Global Religions, and the histories of the ways these religions evolved into our existence, I gather more hope for the new ways we can kneel and kiss the ground, and find our way home again.