Our Wild Community
Mystics need human friends too
Sitting on a wide stump under the redwoods, I can hear myself breathing and the birds singing. I watch a spider spin, its threads now lit by sunlight, now invisible. The river is running below me telling its story of continual change. I haven’t talked to a human all day. And yet I feel completely held in community, not alone.
It’s funny isn’t it, that when I return to my car, maneuver my way through parking lots and traffic, maybe stopping at the grocery store on the way home, I can feel so much more alone with all these human lives around me. Maybe like me you can sink into connection and belonging in the natural world more easily than in the far faster moving, noisier, mam-made world. A sense of alienation begins to creep in, covering over a deep longing for a different kind of community.
I know that being with and loving humans is a vital part of my spiritual life. Even as conversing with the more-than-human world becomes more and more available to me, I want to share with friends who know me and entwine their stories with mine. A deepening intimacy with the Earth, with myself, and the sacred deepens the connections I have with the people I know who are on similar journeys.
I can emotionally soar and sing songs with the wind for days but even Mystics need human friends.
We need human friends for joy and laughter and co-creation. We also need them for friction and inspiration and different perspectives. And we need them to reflect us back to ourselves. Human community provides a special home for us to return to after transformative experiences.
Sometimes, especially in those wonder-filled days of reclaiming connection with the Sacred Wild, it can be tempting to imagine the natural world as all good. We can create an idealized image of nature as this pure place, so separate from the difficulties and flaws of humans. This separation of Sacred Nature and Profane Human has actually served to exile us from the innate wild within us and to justify disassociation from nature. Nature becomes something out there, something we have to travel to get to, something which only special people (with vacation budgets) on special occasions deserve. These distinctions between human and nature have justified destruction of the natural world around us by placing “nature” in parks that can be protected while our neighborhoods can be paved over.
We are in community with nature and with humans. We are meant to be living together. Finding ways to be in relationship.
Sometimes when I find myself sliding into idealizing the Wild ones, I am offered a lesson. Sitting on the beach, low tide waves steady and calm, I watch the Sandpipers run up and down the waterline on their fast little legs. They are each finding pops of air in the sand that direct them to their next snack. Feasting in the morning sun. And I notice one Sandpiper is crowding the others, poking his beak into the holes they have just run to rather than finding his own. What a little asshole. This is clearly his entire strategy for getting his snacks- to steal someone else’s. So much for humans being the only jerks in all of creation.
We are all here bumping up against each other, being hungry, learning to share.
“When you know how to listen, everybody is the guru.” - Ram Dass
As you rebuild kinship with the natural world, how is that allowing more kinship with your human community? As you learn to listen more deeply to the wild conversation going on around you, are you also listening more deeply to the people in your life? As you meet the diversity intrinsic to the natural world with new awe and respect, are you also celebrating the diversity in human lives?
If we saw all humans as interconnected parts of the Sacred Wild, what might change?
Relationships are spiritual teachers too. We grow in relationship to others. And some people are so easy to love, and oh man we need them like fresh water. They soothe and nourish. And some people are hard to love – and through them we learn about the places our love cannot stretch to, and in exploring our limits we expand.
My teacher Ram Dass used to talk about “the yoga of relationships”; the word yoga meaning a discipline that yokes or links you to universal consciousness. He said the relationships can be a potent spiritual path to awaken us from the illusion of separation, but he said “It’s the most profound yoga that I know of, and it’s also the hardest one…”
Seeing relationships as a part of our spiritual path does not mean embrace everything equally and certainly not forgiving everything. I do not see the spiritual as all amorphous oneness here on earth; boundaries are vital. And we don’t need to fix or change people to make them fit our idea of right living or endure people to be a martyr of kindness. Other people are not our proving ground or our test or our service project -- they are simply part of our Earth. They are our Sacred Wild too.
I believe we need to go to the natural world to recharge, to attune to a conversation that includes more-than-human voices. We need to consciously connect to the earth around us as animate, alive, and seeking relationship with us. We need to quiet the human world awhile so that we can hear differently. YES. AND we also need to return home to the human community we live amongst and share and listen and learn from each other.
I have heard– The time of the guru is over. Now is the time of the Sangha, the supportive community. I feel this in my bones. No One has the answer, together we have the pieces needed.
Spiritual truths will be found around campfires, and in wisdom circles and support groups, at dinner tables and dances, in story and art and song, during ceremony and making meals for each other. In learning to navigate selfishness and genius, stubbornness and generosity, disappointment and happiness, play and effort, service and receiving. And in learning to love each other in the unique ways we each need to be loved.
I do not know what is next for humanity, but I do know we will need to come together to create a path forward. We will need to center compassion and shared joy, generosity and accountability, and a wild wish to create something new with friends.
And I am so glad you are here with me at this time.
And now an opportunity to build community with me!
I am over the moon (and rolling in the dirt) to invite you to the launch of a new venture I am co-creating with my dear friends and colleagues, Michele Walker & Corinne London - Intimate with the Moon & Soil : Our new community learning space hosted on Mighty Networks.
This community will be a place to :
• reconnect with a sense of wonder and animacy in everyday life
• explore your inner landscape through reflection, dreams, and imagination
• engage in meaningful conversations and explorations with Melissa, Michele, & Corinne
• share creative expression in a supportive, non-performative space
• participate in gentle rhythms shaped by earth and moon cycles
• belong to a community devoted to curiosity, depth, and discovery
Each month with a free membership, you get :
Monthly themes that are explored through journaling prompts, expressive art exercises, and online conversations
Monthly Nature Communion prompt
Invitations to courses and groups within our community
Invitations to join in live with guest speakers for $10
Quarterly online gatherings to invite the seasons in
And there is a paid tier for deeper connection, the Touching Mystery Collective! There you will get:
A dedicated community feed to deepen in conversation, with weekly questions or inspirations
Monthly live member meetings to introduce the month’s theme (recorded for you to watch later if you can’t join live)
One recorded guided inner realms exploration each month
One recorded guided art reflection practice each month
One monthly Meet Mystery live group with a surprise experiential offering - just show up ready for anything!
Book or movie clubs (or maybe podcasts!) throughout the year
Additional practices and rituals
Invitations to join guest speakers with no added cost
10% discount on courses and groups within our community
Discounted rate for individual eco-spiritual direction sessions with either Melissa, Corinne or Michele
I would love to get to know you better in community. Join us if it feels like a good fit for you!
