Love Amidst the Forest of Thorns by Lexie Wolf

“We’re turning on each other when we’re who we need most. There’s more distance between us than there’s ever been – at a time when we need relational connection more than ever before. And that’s the real Gulf of America.”

- On Singing to the Beloved in Times of Crisis - The Emerald podcast, Joshua Michael Shrei

I take refuge in love.

This was a mantra I repeated to myself in the past few weeks, a period of spiking anxiety.

A mantra adopted aspirationally. As mantras sometimes are.

Because sometimes I do not. Take refuge in love, that is. Rather, when I feel the weight of the world or the voices of my fears amplify, I turn away from what I know to be true. I curl up into a little ball inside myself and forget that I am loved. That I am love. That there is nothing in this life that matters except that love.

Until I am able to remember again. Forget, remember. Forget, remember.

So I practice. Most days you’ll find me in meditation as the sun is rising or thereabouts. Chanting the Gayatri mantra. Practicing yoga asana, moving with my body to relax and release. Asking for my freedom. Asking this ego of mine to yield to the cosmic I Am.

Sometimes my dear ego holds on. She’s sweet but a little immature. Only trying to help, but she misleads me sometimes. She tells me I have the soul of a monk, and to go find a cave and stay there until my heart opens again.

But often she is wrong. Sometimes I need a space to heal that I cannot create by myself through my practice.

Joshua Michael Schrei’s incredible Emerald podcast landed in my heart when I needed to hear it. Listen to the episode called “Singing to the Beloved in Times of Crisis.” I can’t do it justice with a mere mention or quote here.

“The wounds of these times cannot simply be addressed through rational analysis and diagnosis, nor can they be addressed only with the short-burning flame of outrage. We need a deeper resourcing. At a time of a profound pan-societal longing for meaning and sacredness, connecting to the cosmos as beloved and seeing the sacred in every phase of the beloved’s waves has deep implications for how we resource and replenish ourselves, how we align our movements to the actual ebbs and flows of the natural world, and how we begin to heal the divided sociocultural space between us.”

The “deeper resourcing” Shrei describes is in part a shared, connective, and deeply devotional space. Your healing is my healing. Your love feeds me and mine yours. I was deeply resourced this past weekend. Literally singing to the beloved. In ceremony, ritual, practice, and song. In Sangha – sacred community - with open- hearted human beings.

The anxiety washed away. Melting, softening, releasing, relief.

There is refuge to be found in love. Especially, as Shrei describes it, “love amidst the forest of thorns.” Together, we rise.