Fasten Your Seat Belts and Fly With These Four Beloved Practices
Are You Ready?
Rollercoasters. Phil, my InterPlay cofounder, and I used to do our planning at a theme park. Nothing better than the thrill of a big sky, a brief kinesthetic rush, the luxury of uninterrupted chats in long lines, and the fun of each other’s company.
I don’t need a roller coaster these days. Life is enough. To be an elder requires me to dance with suffering, intimate with Sister Death, disease, and addiction, and to navigate the reversible epigenetic impacts of so many systemic crimes of greed and hate hurled at humanity.
Fasten your Seat Belt!
In 1989, Phil and I leaped into the pool. We aspired “to change the world” because why not? Four fateful words. A couple of artists with a lot of mojo? We sensed a different world lying in wait, a world that doesn’t split mind, body, heart, and spirit. A world where humans synch up with everything and everyone. A world that relishes the creative spirit that rises from EVERY FLOWER IN THE GARDEN. A world that dances with reality does not avoid it and opens regularly to new ways of moving. We felt it in our bodies when we danced.
Thirty-five years later, InterPlay definitely changed our world. Wow! Listen to InterPlay copresident Toni McClendon exalt on the joy of restoring the oral tradition and the relief as play inpires social change on the InterPlay Podcast. It gave me chills. Toni once called me Queen Bee. Now, she is the one to buzz.
A natural-born InterPlayer, Toni is an African American storyteller in Pittsburgh who knows that when creative connection gets trained out of us, sometimes brutally, we suffer. But restoring our birthrights changes that. When she and other leaders help communities reboot their spontaneity and take steps to regain a more beloved sense of one another the result is consistent and testable, which is why today there is BIPOC InterPlay, Queer InterPlay, Men’s InterPlay, and 1000 more ways to InterPlay. InterPlay trains leaders to do it on Zoom, in person, and sometimes over the moon, like Kaira Jewel, below, in her InterPlay Leader Ceremony.
If you are up for heeding more body wisdom and the deeper You, if you are ready for fun-loving, caring, year-end release, discernment, and a hoopla, join the New Year’s Parallel Universe of InterPlay led by Phil and me. Come for part or all Tuesday and Wednesday, Dec 31, 2024 & Jan 1, 2025 • 10 am – 5 pm Pacific Time both days.
If you are lucky enough in your 20s, 30s, 40’s, and up to be on your way to Elderhood (I sure hope so) or suspect that 2025 could be rough, ensure the community support you will need to uphold Four Beloved Practices. Humans do best when we
Honor our spirit teams (imaginal and earthed), receive their support, and add more as needed.
Invoke creative ways to restore joy and health and to metabolize suffering
Live from a sense of purpose and belonging.
Dance with Suffering and bow to limits.
When our body and soul can knit together these beloved pathways in community, our feet begin to feel the dancing ground of our ancestors. We don’t need institutions to do this; we do need partners and playmates. Ask anyone in the Art of Ensoulment Coaching Circle. The ground is rising to meet us. The beauty way is real!
I’d love for you to join the Winter Journey into the Four Beloved Practices as creative, whole-making, life-expanding, earth-caring ways. Attend the January 8th Welcome Retreat or jump right into the whole enchilada. I’m especially interested in supporting dedicated spiritual practitioners from all backgrounds, including coaches, spiritual directors, therapists, and expressive artists who are ready to step into and credential the wisdom of body and soul. Click this invitation to learn more.
"The Art of Ensoulment is a deeply spiritual, embodied practice of creativity and exploration.” Rev Ruth Garwood, InterPlay Cleveland.
The Art of Ensoulment: A Playbook on How to Create From Body and Soul could also be a good journey tool for 2025 or a guidebook to share with a small group. Everyone says it’s beautiful! Phil calls it “a rich resource with both practical and mystical advice about claiming our full lives. Soul gets its spotlight! The print version is lively, colorful, and the words dance across the pages. But even without the visuals, I found lots to ponder!”
I’m also teaching for Spiritual Directors International this Winter on Making a Living as a Spiritual Companion. My session on The Economics of Grace – The Practicalities of the Work of Spiritual Companionship explores 1- Offering and receiving payment as a form of respect for service. 2- Sharing yourself on substack and email. 3- Having a vision for the money you need and how to gracefully move toward it.”
If you made it this far, enjoy these parting words flowing from the leaves of the Tree.
Indigenous elder Cgunta Elae as shared by Hilary Keene,
“God sleeps in our hearts when we are not dancing. When we dance, he wakes up. When we get angry, or jealous, or irritated with someone, all we can do is wake up God. God then chases the trouble away. To wake him up, we must dance.”
The tree that can't be killed
What is of love is eternal, and flourishes,
bearing the fruits of grace,
even from stumps burgeoning forth with leaves
that are for the healing of the nations.
Steve Garnaas-Holmes, Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Thank you for being part of The Dancing Center. I am excited about the way Divine Intelligence guides my offerings—not too much, not too little. That being said, I would love to have you join as a paid subscriber for any length of time or comment as I prepare for 2025. I am focusing on two special projects: I’ll be writing about my vow To Take My Whiteness on Myself as a Condition of My Liberation and collaborating on an Illustrated ChoreoPoem in book form called The Great Dance. As a creator, I have to administrate my offerings and make them affordable for people who can’t afford them. In times of depletion, your support makes a difference. Subscribe or make contributions here. Many bows.
I love that picture of Toni!