SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome every week. Welcome everybody.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Every week.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Every week. To our weekly dispatch. We are really glad to be here today and uh thinking about Father's Day, which just went by. And I had um sent uh congratulations to Ada Luisa who acts in that role.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Father, mother.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

Yeah, I guess somewhere both. Anyway, um we were I was thinking about and we were talking about how um there's a sense of uh loss that I've been feeling this year, even though you know yesterday was so full of my lovely children, and I felt really proud and happy and filled fulfilled. And um and but on the other hand, on the you know, a lot of this year, a lot of the last anyway, the last part of the year, I've really been feeling a lot of suffering and pain and I don't know what's the word for it, just just angst and horror over the patriarchy, and the way the patriarchy is causing so much harm. Um just break heartbreaking amounts of harm and um just wanting to and and recognizing that spectrum, you know, of both how how there is a possibility of a masculine uh that that is gentle and kind and caring, and that's the job of being um being masculine is to hold hold people in their in a container, and um, and there's this uh toxic possibility that we're resent with that we're we're experiencing so horribly these days. So um we thought we'd talk a little more about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Yeah. I think it's really interesting because that is kind of the the language that's bandied around in this year, right? The manosphere, the toxic masculinity, the patriarchy that's you know, forcing women or others on the spectrum of gender to bow down to what they perceive as safe for them, right? And so it, you know, it's really interesting how we probably have all come across stories and languages around this. And there is a loss, there is a loss of of possibly identity or of uncertainty whether, you know, am I masculine enough? Am I too like it this is so masculine? Um, so tell me more, tell me more what's what's been like blossoming in your heart.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Yeah. Well, and you know, I've I've lived most of my life as um, you know, even made fun of for the fact that I have many more feminine qualities than a lot of men. You know, I'm not I'm not competitive, I don't do sports, and you know, just a lot of that. And and but I've always I've embraced that. I like that, you know, and and I've also spent a lot of time um, you know, in feminist work, if you will. Um just really wanting to lift up the feminine and lift up and teach my children, my kids, my girls, um that they have power and that they're strong and that it's important. And um and so but I recognize what I'm recognizing is that as the world has, I mean, as that's kind of become the the language of the progressives, if you will, um there's a whole group of people who are feeling horribly threatened by that, and who are feeling they've been uh emasculated, and um and and the response, of course, is to lash out or to look for a hero. And there's uh somebody or a model, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:34

It's a model of what it is to be masculine.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Yeah, and so they've got the Secretary of War, you know. And uh and you know, it it's on the one hand, it feels like it's um absurd. It's you know, it's uh so absurd to watch. And um, I just read something today about, you know, we can make fun of it, we can laugh at it, but that's actually contributing to the fascism because we um we don't take it seriously and we don't uh we're not taking it seriously enough and looking at you know the the history that's gotten us here and how and how the people who are feeling that way, why there are so many people who feel that way and are being drawn to that. And so looking at the the roots of those problems, we've um you know, there's a lot more work to be done than just laughing at it. And in fact, laughing at it and causes that more divisiveness because you know we're we're looking down on this, the others are looking down on them, thinking you're not smart enough to know better, right? Um so I think that's an important part of it, which kind of leads to this sense of how do we uh well I I love on um Sophie Strand's word rewilding the masculine. I think we might read a little bit of her work because she does a she has a beautiful book called The Flowering Wand, which I've used many times actually in men's groups as guidance. Um it's very interesting that this young 20-something year old woman has created this incredible book that can help men find their way back into uh to reality. So that's a bit a bit.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Yeah, it is a bit. So, you know, it's also, I mean, aren't we calling for the rewilding of so many aspects of our lives, like rewilding our spirituality and in some ways rewilding our death and dying process too?

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Because, you know, it's like we're we've taken this extreme um handing over of our of our own power to the industry of death. And so we don't know what to do, and then we feel like left out, or you know, we might have a myriad of feelings around it. But rewilding masculinity also joins in with rewilding our entire reality, our entire world, and you know, going into nature and walking barefoot, right? Right. Rewilding means sleeping according to the sunshine in the night. I there's just so many aspects of of this moment in our my history where rewilding actually does make sense. I mean, to the to the point that even in my front yard, like five years ago, I killed all my I did kill on my lawn. And and I, you know, I have clover and and uh bee balm and dandelion and all kinds of like crazy flowers out there that are just like wild. But we're in drought here in Colorado, and my garden looks great because it's all the wild plants who are used to being tough. And so, you know, if I were to bring this into this masculine, like, you know, what are our natural attributes, both as men and women, on a continuum of attributes that we can say, you know, let's leave room for them to shine a little bit more. Even when a man is gentle, that is still masculine. It's your you're caring, you're tending to your loved ones, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Yeah, exactly. And and that's the redefinition, really. You know, we don't have to define masculine as angry, mad, powerful, tough, tough, yeah. Right guy being more. Yeah, yeah. Doing push-ups, you know. Um and that's wow, we could we could learn so much. Uh, and and it is too, like we were talking, we m we mentioned earlier, this kind of spectrum of of um so rewilding in a way, what it means is to to find our way back to the earth, right? Find our way back to what what humans are not separate from everything.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Find our way back to ourselves in so many ways, right? I was just gonna say this morning I was also reading an article about uh somebody who went to Thailand to learn Mai Thai.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

And it was so fabulous because this author talks about um how there is an innate need to find ways to fight. And he said, you know, the people learning to get out all that extra energy in a kind of in a grounded and safe space is actually really good for folks. He's like, if you're doing, if you're doing all this training, you're doing all this like fighting in a ring with like somebody who's checking you, like that's not okay, this is okay. He's like, you're not gonna go out in the world and try to fight everybody else. Right. You know, you know, you're spent. You're spent. And and also the rules apply, like you want to do it the right way. So I can't, I don't remember who the author was, but I and I haven't finished the article, but it was so good because I thought about how many times we attribute fighting with masculinity, yeah, violence with masculinity. And, you know, women can be the same way. They're you know, we are not exempt from these activities or these desires. In fact, you know, we get the cute little term of being mama bears when you know right, right. And, you know, but you know, we don't give that kind of labeling to men and they're that you know, when that that something bubbles up, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:12

So that's a really good point. I mean, I I'm a I have my black belt in karate. When I took karate um many years ago, uh I started when I was 50 years old, right? So I was one of the older people in the class. Um, in fact, my sensei was only a little bit older than me. And um and what she told us, and she was really a great example of exactly what you're talking about, um, because she said the number one um thing to do in any kind of violent situation is make it, you know, try to help it stop, you know, is to try to calm things down and do everything.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

A keto, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:51

It's like exactly. Do everything you can possibly do before you have to ever use this stuff, and just have this as your toolbox if it comes to the point where you have to, but uh everything you do uh up until that is like the last thing you want to go to. Um, and you're so you're not going around looking for somebody to try out your moves with, right? So um I love one, I don't think it was her who said this, but somebody said your first karate move should be That's really good.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah, so you know, I mean rewilding means learning how to fight in a way that keeps the body safe, the soul safe, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:39

That uh Oh, we should say to the people on the on the audio that what I did when I said that was anomaly.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Oh yes. I bow down to you. So uh, you know, I uh I I have to say I'm I I've been a boxer before. I and you know, I I always knew like, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna I get to learn the stances, I learn how to punch. And I never did it to protect myself, but I knew that I wouldn't be afraid to to do it, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

And yet that doesn't make me more masculine. It doesn't make me uh it doesn't deter from me being a woman.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

And and a man who is a boxer is sometimes deemed like tougher, right? So we are so engendered by labels. We're so prone to saying, there's a man, this is this has got to be the stereotype, the trope, the whatever. And so rewilding means to have like wild things grow out of us, right? You, you know, poetry and hugs. And you know, for me, it's like, you know, I learned how to hit right. So it's it's a spectral of humanity, of of who we are, who we can be. And that's I think that's rewelding, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Yeah. Well, and it is um recognizing that whole spectrum and and that whole connection. I I think it'd be a good time to read a little bit of what Sophie Strand said, because she, of course, is a brilliant writer and uh very poetic in her writing. But uh she said she talks about going back to the everything and kind of, you know, it's not the opposites are there and exist. Um, the masculine, the feminine, the dark, the light. All in between. Yes. Um, but it it's we we need to kind of as she says, melt our ideas of sentience as a purely human property or as a purely animal property or purely individual property. And anima or animation is uh inhalation carrying the molecules and spores and pheromones into our bodies from the landscape, and then we exhale, sharing cells that have clung to our deepest cells, slept inside the pith of our blood. With every exhalation, we decant ourselves back into the world. How could we be one or two or three? We are more gerund than cold hard noun, more animacy than strictly animal. Yeah, it's so beautiful. And you know, she talks about everything comes in these dualisms, but or or but she said, Oh yeah, she said, holding out your hands, why do we hold out our hands and say there is there's this and there's that? Because things and and think that everything comes in dualism, she's just how many hands does the tree have? How many hands does a peony or the piliated woodpecker? How many hands is the mycelium using using to crochet intimacy from plant to tree to plant through the soil?

SPEAKER_01 13:43

The animate earth is a verb.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

I love that. My corezial system sewing together a whole forest. That is, I mean, God, thank you, Sophie.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Thank you, Sophie.

SPEAKER_02 13:56

That is that when I think of you know how we can hold this thing in balance and and find our way back to a place where we don't have to define do uh duality. You don't have to define one that masculine as cre as this cruel, horrible thing, and you don't have to find masculine uh feminine as you know as soft and vulnerable, vulnerable, yeah. Right. And you can find the way that we're all of that at once. That's to me the wild forest, you know. That's what the forest shows us. So yeah. We've uh we've heard that from the Sufi practice. You know, the only true scripture is the scripture of nature, and so that's because anything you ever need to learn, you can learn by going out and watching how the forest does it.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Well, and to that point, I think that one of my last poems that I read in my one of my poetry books that I subscribed to, uh, there was a particular poem that I loved, and it I think it was talking about duality. There is no duality because even as the sun and there's light, it's there's like the the penumbra. It's still a little light, but it's also mixing with darkness. Just as the dawn after the long night, it's still pink and it comes in and you know, little sweet colors. There is no like light switch, like dark, light, dark, light, dark, light. It's it's a spectrum of color.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

And I think when we start to see the um I I kind of hate to say toxicity because it's overused, but the the the sense of suffering that happens, it's quite often because uh because of the um comfort that in some cases it's more comfortable to think that there is a switch, you know, and that you're you're in the you've got you've turned your light on, so you're good, and everybody else that's on the other side has forgotten to turn on the light. Right, right, right, right, right. And and it's true of all spectrum of political, you know, um, this the the whole idea of you know laughing at the people who don't know any better is is that is just as much that kind of sense of we know we've got our lights on and they don't, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Um which could which creates this the divisiveness which has become so horrible.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Right. So so let's just talk about that because um I'm definitely not a laugh laugher of others because you know I'm a former special ed teacher. We don't we don't know.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Don't punch down, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Right. And also, you know, Hazra Inyak Khan, my favorite quote still is everyone to their own evolution.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

So if everyone around us is in their own evolution, what does it mean to rewild the relationships that we have with one another when people are so distinctly different from each other, right? Yeah, so so as you see masculinity branded in a way that is like, you know, hard and boundaried and at times destructive, how can we meet it? And you know, like the breathing in and out, sharing that, decanting ourselves into them to be like, I see you, and you know, I I I offer my cells to you, my my own crocheted self into the reality that you live in, you know, because it really, I mean, we can't say much because they're all uh on their own evolution, but how can we still be crocheted into their resistance, into their existence, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Right. Or recognize that as we pull on one of the strands, we're tugging on them, you know. They're on the other end of that strand. Even though um, yeah. And and then you come right back to that Namaste that is the best move, you know. You I which basically means I bow to the to the divine in you. I see the divine in you. And so, yeah, I think that's um a great great point, especially as we're kind of thinking about, you know, that this is all good to talk about, but how do we live our lives this way? I mean, how do we make a difference and how do we help to rewild and reconnect everything and everybody? And it's gotta be that recognition that we're all just walking, we're all bozos on the bus.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Ram Das, yes. Yeah, we are bozos. And you know, I mean, I just really love appreciate how you, you know, you've tasked us with rewilding masculinity. And I'm gonna add, like, I I want to rewild humanity.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

And as we, you know, approach others, I also think that yes, we can bow down to the divide in them, but it also requires us to learn some new skills, like, you know, to inquire with curiosity and grace, you know, the story of another's life. And not necessarily just say, Oh, well, that's why you're such a bozo, you know. It's like, oh, I hear you, I see you. And, you know, I bow to the divine that has taken you through this.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

And that's all we need to do, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Yeah. And and and I'm glad to be walking with you in on this trail, you know. So yeah, that's that's not the sense of you're the bozo, but thank God we're all bozos together, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

That's right. That's right. And I think that that's that's part of the rewilding aspect of of our stories these days, is like, Yeah. Yeah. I you know, call to action and grace.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

Yeah, yeah, so much. And paying attention and listening and hearing each other. I mean, it's hard to do that in in our world sometimes, especially when we're trying to do it on this crazy computer thing. But um but the one of the ways that I've found has been very, very rewarding is just to make it a point um wherever I am, whenever I am, to just say hi to somebody, say hello, you know, strangers and and ask them their ask them about their story, ask them what's going on. And and and uh we just did another of our um uh market days with the nonprofit, right? So we have a new nonprofit, you know, it's it's about helping people with end-of-life uh advocacy and affordability and accessibility. And so we've done two now where we went actually yesterday I didn't go because it was Father's Day, but um two dear friends of mine took it for me. And um, but anyway, what that is, it's a booth at a farmer's market that talks about, you know, what are you grieving today? And um so what we found is um, and this is just a perfect example that people walk up and you know, people also go, Oh my god, no, thank you, you know. But the people who do step up with courage, you know, and with some vulnerability, um, are just eager, they're yearning for an opportunity to tell their story. And it has nothing to do with where they lie on the spectrum of politics or where they lie in that in their their religious beliefs or anything else. Um, because we met all sorts and we had people tell us, you know, that uh they knew they were gonna see their their beloveds in heaven again, you know, and all the stories, but it's just the opportunity and opening up that opportunity for people to tell their stories is that's right, so important. And we can all do that and we can change the world that way, I think. This, I mean it's gonna happen in that kind of a realm and day to day, person to person, human to human in your own community. Um it's not gonna happen on Facebook. It's just not gonna happen on Facebook.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Yeah, I mean, maybe maybe there's ways to guide things, but yeah, that's yeah, it's it's that uh it this time space is too truncated at that point. I think it is about either being in front of people or even sometimes I pray for people I see as I'm driving past, you know, like, oh, that I noticed this. And I've been really again, I've I've I've done this over the course of my life, but active imagination. I know it's like poo-pooed in some circles, but you know, if if I can if I can just like get into this meditative zone and just reach out in my mind to love and serve somebody who has either been horrible to me or I know and are in despair, but I really can't access that is that is like my work. That is just you know, like three minutes of me just throwing my my energetic field all the way to touch them and just yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

I feel it out, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:21

And then come back.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

Absolutely believe that those ripples. Yeah, yeah, well, and whether or not you believe that, um, you know, you're you're even if it's not absolutely, you know, affecting something uh in the world, you are affecting yourself. And by affecting yourself, by putting yourself in that mindset of caring for people, and that mindset of being in a compassionate, loving, caring person, you go out into the world a different person, and that makes a difference.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

Um, so that's what we can do. That's our opportunity to rewild and re-remember re-remember. Remember.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Remember.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Remember. We are members of that incredible um wild mycelial network of everything, not just humans, not just animals, not just trees, but every every every resonant and reverberating and vibrating atom we are vibrating with. So let's do our best. Let's just try to uh raise it up. That's our job.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Well, I can thank you so much for thinking about this topic because I think it's it's delightful to just sit around and talk about it. And hopefully, you know, this will be a conversation that encourages others to really begin their rewilding.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Yeah, yeah. And definitely if you can read Sophie's book, we'll put it in the podcast notes. And uh and we'd love to hear from you. We have a uh Substack where you can engage with us on a chat. We would love to hear from you and hear your thoughts. And of course, listen to the podcast and tell all your friends and subscribe and love and like and all that stuff. And uh we and thank you for all you do in the world and please be in touch. Yes, adios.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Adios conversations at the end of life.