Let the beauty we love be what we do
In April, I moved into the 2nd floor apartment of a quaint multi-family home that felt like hitting the jackpot to my son and the answer to ancestral prayers to me. The home has beautiful features. My favorites are the covered front porch, copper painted radiator pipes with leaf engravings, deep window sills ideal for sun worshiping plant roommates, and a view of Mahicantuck, the “river that flows both ways”, also known by the colonizer’s name of Hudson.
The apartment also has its rough edges - bedroom rug stains that withstood professional cleaning, exposed brick with sections where small, irregular shaped pieces jut out, flimsy baseboard coverings that run along the bottom of kitchen drawers and cabinets, broken, worn, and missing pickets in the front yard fence, and my favorite - a faint list of names of people scrawled on a closet door leading to a poorly installed central AC unit.
There is also a lingering energy in the space that at times feels cold and wanting. An energy that I’ve been clearing through sage and song since the day before we moved in.
Taken all together, I still love the place.
What i love most is the living room / dining room. The warm spice oak wood floor, brown satin walls, and the abundance of natural light streaming through three large windows conjure a feeling of warmth and ease. The furniture in this room is a mash up of pieces brought from my old home and recently acquired items, including a used dining room table with pine green tufted velvet chairs and a soft textured area rug with complimentary hues. The beauty of the furnishings is deeply satisfying to my Taurus Sun ways of being.
This is also the room where I’ve spent the least amount of time since moving in. Take that in. The room which nourishes a sense of beauty, warmth, ease, and satisfaction is where I dwell the least.
The room where I’ve spent the most time is my bedroom which until last week also functioned as my coaching and consulting office, my music practice room, my meditation space, and my streaming and reading room. While the furniture associated with these practices - a futon bed, a desk with a monitor, ancestral and goddess altars, portable keyboard, congas, and a four tiered bookshelf - fit snugly, the energies I need to cultivate and channel in any of these expressions often feels constricted.
Also, at any given moment, the deeply ingrained unconscious pull to be productive (damn you, racial capitalism!) can grab my attention and yank me out of slumber, creative play, sensual pleasure, an improvised riff, favorite shows, and/or engrossing books. This felt acceptable until last week.
Out of nowhere and also a place deep inside me, I heard a voice say, “You don’t want your coach partners and organizational clients in your rest, pleasure, and play space.” I’m learning to listen to these spontaneous and ancient voices. Within two days, i moved my office furniture and accessories out of my bedroom.
This simple shift has brought many blessings. I now get to work in a light filled room where I periodically gaze at the sibling trees peering in. My desk sits flush against a wall adjacent to the apartment entrance door. Its proximity to the threshold between me and the outside world makes it easier to clear my work space of energies that are not mine to hold at the end of office hours. When I want to read in the service of my work and/or delight, I can curl up on my couch or sit comfortably in an armchair to immerse myself in teachings, poems, history, methodologies, and stories at the pace of deep processing.
The shift has also created greater room for rest, creativity, pleasure and play in my bedroom. My keyboard, which was jammed in a corner, now sits by a window where i can witness life unfolding around me. My congas and cajon, which were placed as decoration in corners of rooms, are now coming into formation as the world percussion drum set I’ve long desired. My bed has reclaimed its place as a space of rest and pleasure.
The rearrangement of furniture has sparked a disruption of habitual patterns to be productive and make do and a seeding of conditions that make it easeful to reach for what I love.
Many years ago, a dear friend shared a Rumi poem with me in response to my frustration and despair about my perpetual postponement of what i loved. At the root of this delaying was a deep seated judgment that what i love is not as important as the work of justice making. This friend was the first of many wisdom teachers who invited me to consider that what I love is a worthy offering to the Earth and perhaps my most transformational contribution.
As I moved between the spaciousness of my rest, pleasure and play space and the beauty and warmth of my work and community room, the opening lines of Rumi’s poem, Spring Giddiness, flowed into my consciousness:
May the beauty you love be what you do.
Special Invitation to Black, Indigenous, and Immigrant Women of Color/Culture and Gender Non-Binary People of Color/Culture:
If you are seeking ways to center what you love in your offerings to the world, I invite you to the Rebirth Retreat which I’m co-facilitating this October at the Watershed Center in upstate NY with Ana Polanco, a wisdom keeper, coach, and Family Constellations guide. To find out more, visit our information and waitlist page.