vol. 12

spring offering

here we are at the beginning of many cyclical things,
spring equinox, when the days & nights are equal again, march 20th
aries season, the start of the astrological new year, march 20th
super new moon, the first super new moon of the year, march 29th
& today the first day of april.

in maine, we’ve just gotten through our fool’s spring, & today is known as april fool’s day

which reminded me of another beginning…the fool is the first card in a tarot deck. many of us who use tarot cards view the deck as a story more than individual cards. in this view, the fool is the start of a journey.

when i use the tarot to supplement a session, i use jessica dore’s book, tarot for change, as a guide. about the fool, jessica shares a seneca folk story…

basically, a witch throws a group of men into an ice house planning on them freezing & dying. in at least one version of the tale, someone warns the men, ‘just don’t sit down on the ice chairs’. to avoid sitting, they sing & dance until their body heat begins to melt the ice. they do this until the sun shines through & they survive.

dancing can feel silly & dare i say, foolish. a goofy choice in the face of fear. we tend to look down on foolish things, calling things corny, cheesy, etc.

however, rigidity has been found to contribute to poor mental health. if we’re too rigid with our expectations of ourselves or too committed to following rules for rules’ sake, we can suffer. if the men had followed the rule to simply go into the ice house & wait, they would never have survived.

so,
- what ice houses are you ready to melt?
- what silly dance can you do in order to survive right now?
- & who is in your community of dancers? one person probably would not have been able to melt the house alone.

as bell hooks says, “rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. healing is an act of communion.”

happy april fools day
not the pranks version
the communion of fools dancing our way to sunshine version.

REDISTRIBUTION
this spring, we’re sending $94 to mainetransnet in honor of trans day of visibility march 31st.

happy thawing to you
love, lindsey