rabbit, rabbit | november
whispering up the chimney on the first day of the month.
On the first day of the month, a tiny gift for you! the best things I’ve read, listened to, and learned over the last month. If you want more, check out last month’s edition.
📚 what I read.
An absolutely beautiful piece by Barbara Mahany, who has one of the most beautiful, thoughtful internet spaces. A collage of wisdom for the post-election chaos — poems, ideas, reflections, essays. May we remain undaunted.
“But here’s what I mean–being gay is not contagious, but being free is. Seeing something up close that you were told was evil and sinful be good and life giving and, frankly, holy changes things.” My beautiful, brilliant IRL friend Hunter Wade posted this wise, soulful reflection about coming out on the Internet. The world is lucky to have her.
I read this poem by Maggie Smith for the first time a day or two after the election, and I’ve thought about it several times a week since then. Let us talk more of how dark the beginning of a day is.
Ring theory (“comfort in, dump out”) has, for some reason, come up so many times in conversation this month. It’s the best kind of framework — simple, elegant, useful. It can affect how we do allyship, how we care for our communities, and how we hold space for grief.
Zach Lambert on the gifts of inclusion - “what I’ve learned from queer Christians and how the LGBTQ+ community makes the church a better place.” Say it louder for the folks in the back.
“Watching the Martha documentary this week reminded me that domesticity is a powerful thing, living and lifestyle are powerful things, and they can be wielded for the right reasons: not in service to making billions of dollars, or the individual nuclear family, or a fundamentalist tradwife homesteading fantasy, but to a more convivial way of living.” Alicia Kennedy’s On Martha made me put the new documentary on the *tippy top* of my list.
🎧 what I listened to.
My local public radio station.
The podcast episode where Richard Rohr talks about an alternative to reading the Bible literally (this episode was cited in my master’s thesis - I couldn’t resist).
The albums Speaking in Tongues by Talking Heads, Go Farther in Lightness by Gang of Youths (my sadboi fall pick three years running), and Blue Rev by Alvvays.
💡 what I learned.
When you’re in the anxiety spin — when you want to think your way out of it by figuring everything out and making a plan — sometimes your body needs to go first. When your body calms, your thoughts will (somehow, miraculously) calm, too.
I often worry that if I stop to fully feel my feelings, I’ll be sucked down into an overwhelming and unpredictable and endless feelings vortex. But the paradox of feelings is that when you actually stop to feel them, they finally stop shouting.
Regardless of whether we were tapped in or tapped out by November 5th, we held election stress in our bodies. Between the election results and the winter darkness, it’s reasonable and normal for us to require more gentleness in our lives. It’s time for early bedtimes and yin yoga.
When you’re unsure about the future, unsure that God/the Divine/the universe will have your back *this time,* think back to when you prayed for close girlfriends and belonging and a community. Now look around. The God who got you here is the same God who’s getting you there.
Until next time, dear friends
lk
Was so looking forward to this month’s edition!! And then I saw my own words— what a gift and delight!! Love you friend!!!🫶🏼🫶🏼