The Land That Loves (Us):

Indigenous Peoples Day is political. It is a call to action, to movement, to care. It is a call to name that our ideas of reconciliation are dead util we actually tell the truth about the land, about colonization, about how we got here.

Columbus Day has its origins in a mixed bag of culture, colonization and Catholicism. President Roosevelt declared it a national holiday while lobbying the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service order. And so, as it is with many holidays, we expand colonization in the name of democracy while destroying the lives of Indigenous peoples and the sacred land we call home.

So, here’s what I want us to explore today. If we celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day without acknowledging our relationship to the land, what are we missing? As Indigenous people, we recognize that the very essence of who we are, our cultures, our daily lives, everything is a gift from Segmekwe, Mother Earth. Journeying with humility, care, and gratitude is a life well-lived. But how do we get there if we’ve lost our way?

So today, let’s journey back to the land together.

It all starts at childhood. Doesn’t it? Doesn’t everything?

Think back to when you were young, an interaction you had with nature, a moment when you held a pebble of sand or touched the rough skin of a pine tree. Remember what it was like to walk the earth humbly, to have questions and curiosities drawn from play and imagination.

For many, trauma finds us in childhood. It is painful, difficult, where our first moments of dissociation and heartache appear, when we find ways to escape our bodies and hearts because it all hurts too much. We are told that there are quick fixes out there if we only try.

So let’s take off the band-aids, and put aside the quick fixes. And let’s return to the land that loves us so deeply, so well.

We are going to do a mix of a safe space exercise and a return to nature. We are going to go home, back to the land, and have a conversation with Aki, the land, the earth, the dirt.

Find a quiet corner of your home. If you’re able, close your eyes. Take three deep breaths.

1 breath

2 breath

3 breath

Find your way to a nature landscape—ocean, woods, mountains, desert, swamp, hills, prairie, let yourself find a way to the first landscape that you’re led to. It is a safe place where you will connect with Segmekwe.

When you get there, you find a simple shelter— a small house, a tree house, a fort, a cottage, a tent. You look inside and notice your favorite things there. You smile. You’re home, at least for a little while.

After you take a look inside, you head back out, back to visit with the land, Aki. You notice the sky. You hear animals in the distance, and you say a word of thanks for the power of kinship.

You turn to face the horizon. What do you see? What do you notice about your body, about your mind and your heart? What are you feeling?

If you start to feel unsure or anxious, take three more deep breaths. Relax your shoulders. Remember that the land loves us.

You’re holding a candle and a match. Light the candle, and set it somewhere on the ground beside you. Place your hand on that ground, or on a nearby tree, or at the edge of a body of water.

Take four deep breaths, one for each of the four directions, and as you do, let Segmekwe, Mother Earth, speak to you.

1 breath

2 breath

3 breath

4 breath

Accept what you’re hearing, feeling, understanding.

You blow out your candle. You say a word of thanks to the earth for always holding you, always speaking, always caring, always practicing relationship, kinship.

You return to your shelter, where you find a hot cup of tea or coffee waiting for you. You find a comfortable place to land, and there, you take out a journal and pen or find the recorder on your phone and you remember your experience. You remember what the land spoke to you, and you hold onto it.

You vow to begin a new season of this relationship to Segmekwe. You say thank you again, four times, for the four directions. You whisper it to the air and let it find its way back to her.

Migwetch, thank you

Migwetch, thank you

Migwetch, thank you

Migwetch, thank you.

Open your eyes.

Perhaps a few of the band-aids, the quick fixes, are gone, and we are a little more healed—or at least getting there. Perhaps days like Indigenous Peoples Day are about the people, about our journey toward decolonization. But they are also about how we do that through relationship to ourselves, each other, and the land.

May we remember.

Iw.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaitlincurtice.substack.com/subscribe

So, as autumn comes to us, this external factor, this change, we ask what it means to re-examine things around us—not in a judgmental, I haven’t gotten the s**t done kind of way, but with grace and kindness, gentle glances to notice what we might not have noticed before.


So, I’m offering us a Recalibration Ritual, a way to ground ourselves in the knowledge of external factors and expectations while holding steady to our own magic.

I’d love to know if you try out this ritual and what it teaches you, so please let me know by responding directly or sharing your experience in the comments.

I plan to practice this ritual throughout September, and can’t wait to see what moments of grounding come from it.

If you’re interested in further expression, grab a journal or open a new document on your computer and keep track of these rituals and what they speak to you in this coming season.

The audio for this ritual is included above, so that you can listen to it as I guide you through. And please, share this with someone who might need it, someone who is leaning into the coming season and asking what magic can be found there.

Recalibration Ritual

Find a quiet corner on the couch, your bed, or the floor of your favorite room at home.

Light a candle or two.

Take 3 deep breaths and speak over yourself, I have arrived.

Close your eyes and let your mind wander to a favorite nature scene. Maybe it’s mountains, forests, lakes, beaches, winter snowstorms.

Breathe deeply, not shallow from your chest but all the way from your belly, in and out, and let yourself wander there for a minute.

Open your eyes and slowly look around at your environment.

Say quietly or in your mind, I honor this life. I honor this season. I honor the changes. I honor my own story.

Continue with your own substitutions. What do you honor about your life, your spaces, your body, your experiences? Name 3 or 4 things you honor.

Take 3 more deep breaths.

Now turn your attention to those external factors that are sure to show up in the coming season.

Speak to them:

I will acknowledge your presence in my life.

I will set boundaries with you.

I will hold steady to myself when you show up.

I will release you.

Blow out the candles if you have any lit as a sign of that release.

Take 3 more deep breaths.

Close your eyes.

Come back to your nature landscape, the one you visited at the beginning of the ritual.

Stay here as long as you need to, and when you begin to worry, speak to yourself, Recalibration is a gift, and I will accept it.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaitlincurtice.substack.com/subscribe

I wrote this poem in the front window of a Starbucks in Atlanta. I remember it. I remember where I write a lot of my poems, though huge chunks of my books are lost on me.

So technically, it’s part of the Somebody That I Used to Know series, but it’s also a poem I want to re-introduce to the world. The most depressing and magic thing about writing, about poetry and story, is that decades can pass and the same words you wrote back when can remain true.

Cycles often repeat—war, turmoil, the changing of the seasons, life and death, grief and celebration. Whatever it is, our human existence on Mother Earth is marked by such things, and we cannot seem to escape it.

I don’t remember why exactly I wrote this poem, but it was likely born out of grief that the world hurts, that we hurt each other. Whatever was happening then, the words fit perfectly into this time as if they were meant to be in 2022, and that’s the terror, and that’s the magic.

So, here’s a poem for us, and I’ve even recorded it for you, so you can listen to it if you’d like.

I won’t be adding commentary to this poem, because I think enough Christians have been writing and talking about shalom without properly understanding its depth and meaning. I’ve been guilty of it too, and I’m learning along the way what appreciation and appropriation are and how we handle this on all levels, with mistakes and commitments to do better.

So I’ll add these words I found from Rabbi David Zaslow about the real depth and meaning of shalom:

If I am a political left-winger I am only flying with one wing. If I am a political right-winger I am only flying with one wing; yet it takes two wings for an eagle to fly. It takes the integration of two opposing positions for there to be real “shalom.” The word dialogue comes from the Greek “dia + logos” meaning “across words,” or “across reason,” or “speech that goes back and forth.” It’s easy to have a left wing or a right wing “peace rally” with people who already agree with us. But this is not the wholeness that is implied in the word “shalom.”

In the Hebraic view, shalom brings the binary mind together, integrating the left brain modality of thinking (linear) and the right brain modality (intuitive). When I say hello to someone I say “shalom.” When I say goodbye to someone I say “shalom.” What is more opposite than coming and going? Hello and goodbye? Shalom is the most radical union of opposites imaginable. Shalom brings together people who disagree with each other so that each will listen deeply to the “other” side. It is the people you do not agree with who have the greatest gift for you – the gift of the potential for wholeness.

When I searched “shalom” on Getty Images, these are some of the photos that appeared:

Now, I don’t know much about search algorithms, but shalom is about bringing wholeness, bringing seemingly opposite things or beings together. So, shalom is an embodiment of all things holding their sacredness—together. Shalom is all of these photos and so much more.

Shalom has a magnetic heart, as the title of my poem goes.

I hope you enjoy this poem, and may we lean deeper into wholeness however it shows up for us.

Shalom, her magnetic heart

You and I are "other" to each other,

foreign creatures,

locked in our independent skin.

You and I, we're unnerved

when we're together,

we're fractured, disconnected,

thin as moth-wing.

And yet, the same stuff

that tears us from each other

gravitates us to each other,

and all along,

the earth keeps spinning

to help us shake the

regret-dust from

our shoulders.

I cannot assume you,

and you cannot assume me.

And yet, we began in the same

womb of thought,

the same dream of beginning.

We started and we will end,

and in between we can

detonate bombs

or

unmake them;

We can tighten the noose

or

make climbing ropes;

We can pull triggers

or

bury our weapons

beneath the trees

in our city parks

and let our

oneness

grow out of their

metal mouths.

You and I are "other" to each other,

but desperate enough to invade

these spaces--

desperate enough to fill up the

missing places,

patch up the broken links,

re-engage where we've

abandoned.

Shalom-- She is a sacred word,

an everlasting act.

Shalom-- She is an enduring

vision on the

darkest night,

and that magnet-force that keeps

fighting against our

pulling

and

tugging,

because she puts us

always back

where we were before--

hand in hand by the fire.

Shalom-- She knows us better.

Shalom-- She binds together the

blistered souls,

and we quiet ourselves,

eyes locked,

all "otherness" dissipated

in a stream of

perfect light.

Would you like to lean deeper into The Liminality Journal?

For paid subscribers, I’ve currently got a separate series of Casual Blessings that will hit your inbox regularly once you sign up as a paid subscriber! Just click the box below to sign up:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaitlincurtice.substack.com/subscribe

Friends,

Welcome to The Liminality Journal! Subscribing to The Liminality Journal gives you access to some of my original poetry, which often doesn’t make its way into my books or other publications.

Here’s a poem I recently wrote called On Afternoons Like This, reflecting on one of my favorite times of the day: afternoon rest time. If you’d like to hear a recording of me reading the poem, click the audio player above. Hope you enjoy it.

On afternoons like this one,

I trace the lines of our one-hour rest time,

wondering how much

it will stretch past us.

I wonder if rest is an enigma

or the most simple thing we

embody as humans.

We might nap,

the kids building with LEGO bricks

while listening to that audiobook

for the hundredth time.

We might wait here in bed,

letting the sheets and blankets

get warmer, letting

the sunlight slip slowly

across the window’s curtains.

We might drink one last

cup of coffee,

naming our dreams

again and again.

One hour, and we’ve

drawn a shape

that may not make sense

to anyone but us.

It is the shape of a bird in flight,

of a house held still,

of a beautiful child

dancing in sunlight.

It is the shape of God or

God’s breath,

the shape of nothing

and everything.

It is the shape of us,

what we needed

in the stillness and space,

what we needed

when all the world

went quiet around us.

Don’t forget, most of my writing will remain free, because I believe that sharing my words with all of you is what creates this community. For free subscribers, you’ll still get access to my essays and some original poetry.

But if you’d like to subscribe for a paid account, you’ll get access to the following:

* a look into my life as an essayist and poet

* participate in discussion threads with me

* glimpses into notes from my personal journals

Onward, friends.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kaitlincurtice.substack.com/subscribe