Introducing: The Sacred Weaving
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
Welcome to our new monthly newsletter, The Sacred Weaving, where we cultivate daily spiritual reflection. Whether you sit in ceremony or not, we hope these newsletters will be a helpful resource for deepening your presence with yourself, those around you, and the spiritual process that is constantly unfolding for you.
This newsletter is written by Sarah Beaudette, The Church of Gaia's Integration Director, and a writer and editor. She has trained in both Plant Medicine Integration and AyaSafety Harm Reduction at ICEERs.org. You can learn more about Sarah and her practice here.
I've been thinking about how best to accompany our community as one of your Integration team members. I grew up in Spokane, but life has taken me to Mexico. I don't see your faces at community events. I can't run the trails that crisscross Spokane county, or wonder aloud with you how bad this year's fire season will be. BUT--but, when I hear your voices on the calls I've had with church members, I hear home.
In this first newsletter I'd like to talk with you and hear from you about integration and preparation, and what those words mean to you whether you sit in ceremony or not.
Ceremony is 10%. Integration is 90%.
While our culture tells us to focus on the milestones (the marriages, births, new jobs, and ceremonies), we tend to forget that the bulk of our lives is what happens in between: your dog's eyes when she asks you to take her for a walk, your cat walking back and forth in front of your video calls, the softness of your child's newborn head; a softness that is unforgettable even thirty years later.
In this first newsletter, in the spirit of acknowledging that we are constantly preparing for and integrating the personal stories that shape us, I'd like to introduce myself.
I grew up at the bottom of the Monroe Street Hill in a poor, dangerous neighborhood. I was shaped by everything that happened to me in that ten-block radius, both the terrifying and the beautiful. Safety was a hidden passageway in my backyard, a green shadowy place between our house and the neighbor's, where I could hide, read, and daydream.
In high school, life got better. Our family finally had some emotional and financial stability. We moved to the Indian Trail neighborhood in North Spokane. I remember the clouds cresting at sunset as we turned onto our new street for the first time. I remember the palpable sense of relief in the car. The hardest years were over. We moved to Indian Trail in 2000, before most of the new developments went in. At night, you could still hear coyotes yipping in the scrub pine field across the street.
After high school I flew as far away as I could, with a scholarship to a fancy school on the East Coast. Childhood caught up with me, of course: alcoholism, suicidality, a constant fear that I was insane. I returned to Spokane again, broken but at least aware of my brokenness. When I limped away again to Seattle, I met my husband and started a career. David and I took our children to live in many different countries over the next fifteen years, but when the pandemic began we moved to Newport, taking refuge in Washington's forests and gardens, in our neighbors and friends.
We only met Connor and Shaleesa after we had left Newport, this time for good, to Mexico. As I integrate my Spokane roots with the radically different culture here in Mexico, I find that Gaia, the earth and my love of her, is a constant. Gaia, what we are made of, our heritage of rock and water, blood and tree, is always with us.
At the Church of Gaia, we are privileged to be introduced to a sacred, ancient lineage. Our Shipibo elders, unlike many cultures, have maintained their close relationships with their master plants, and the traditions that keep these relationships alive across generations.
When Shaleesa and I were talking with a friend the other day, we realized how important it is that we remember that we each have an earth-based lineage, even if we don't have the elders to remind us what that lineage is.
We belong to the damp fall leaves and new spring grass that have been our soft carpets, to the foothills that have been our context and perspective, to the seasons that formed us, and are forming us still.
We belong to our ancestors who walked the forests and found food, medicine, and friendship with specific plants and animals: Oregon grape, comfrey, nettles. Even if you don't know your ancestral plants, your relationship with them lies dormant in your genetics, waiting for you to return.
We belong to the favorite childhood trees we climbed and read books underneath, and yes, to the dandelions that grew in our yards. But maybe you didn't have anyone to tell you that these were your guides and guardians.
Any time we prepare to change, whether through a ceremony, a new situation in life, a new season, or simply a new daily habit we want to start, it can help to take stock: where do I come from? To what and whom do I still belong?
You can do this in a journal, in a collage, on the phone with your parents or your best friend, or in the soothing silence of your car or shower. Ask yourself:
How did the earth shape me? How does nature appear in my core memories, and how is nature part of my identity?
Which ancestral patterns inform my genes, both good and bad? Do I come from pioneers, farmers, explorers, abusers and people-pleasers, good cooks and comedians?
What have I taken on as my identity, and how much of that am I open to changing?
What do I choose to keep, and what will I prepare to release?
Writing the story of You:
If someone excavated your soul, what would they find? Crisp fall football games, hoarse throats and strong coffee, kettle corn from Greenbluff and a slice of pumpkin pie? Your grandmother's fuzzy cheek and flowery perfume, the dirt bike you rode as a child, and the bully on the school bus? Raised voices, the anxiety that cuts up in your sternum and makes you sightless, groping, pleading with a God you're never sure you believed in? The back of a parent, turned away, the lover's hand too far to grasp, the times you were a shitty friend, and that day in your car when you realized you were stone broke? Would they find your hope, compassion, despair, rage, peace, dignity, and grit?
If someone unlaced you and pulled you inside out, what would run through their fingers? What are you made of? What did you survive, and how?
Which parts of yourself are asking to be remembered? How have you always found beauty, and when are you still a happy child?
I ask these questions because at the beginning of every change is a crumbling and breaking down. Before integration comes disintegration. It helps to know what might shift or fall away, and what has always been there. What will remain.
"Listen to the wisdom of the child who knew how to get through whatever he/she/they had to get through. That is what survives collapse. That is what gets handed down. That is what is in the earth." --Iris J., Madrona's Pulse Teachings
Whatever you are preparing for and integrating, I send you the blessings of your deep self: the parts you know about, and the parts you have yet to rediscover.
Sarah B.
Church of Gaia Integration Director