Thereās been a lottttt of grief. But thereās also been a lot of joyā¦
and beauty and magic and play and sobbing on the bathroom floor and being super gay and wondering if itās ever going to feel okay and praise and prayer and delicious friendship and healing and and andā¦
The land is one of the most magical things that inspired of Aravah Sukkot Festival. A beautifully tended permaculture oasis that has been around for over three decades.
We canāt wait to welcome you to this Garden of Eden!
M A N N A āŗ 2024 / 5784
Been in the slow integration of this incredible gathering of souls.
Still stunned that @cinnamonscone and I miraculously pulled this off.
Itās been hard to share about Jewish community in these heartbreaking times of violence in Palestine but broken-open and humbled, I will make an attempt.
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150 people gathered in the soft prairie sanctuary on Chumash land in New Cuyama, CA. We sung, and danced, and bathed in the sacred waters. We sat at the altar of the sacred fire and the sacred water. We were blessed by our incredible elders, including our Chumash elder Carmenā who taught us the song of the crow, and translated the words of the oak.
We cried for the loss of life of our relatives in Gaza. We grieved for all the pain and suffering of Jews, past and present, we mourned the missteps of our Jewish relativesā¦ we dared to imagine a new way forward. We dared to imagine a new way forward. We dared to imagine a new way forward.
And in that courageous attempt we failed and we stumbled and we found moments of success and beauty and alignment. We found points of difference and points of connection. Participants came with emergent offerings and shared impeccable beauty, art, and offerings of so many different kinds.
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Making spaces for people to pray is one of the sacred tasks creator gave me in this lifetime. Rites of passage, festivals, ceremonies, weddings & rituals of so many kinds.
They say you teach best what you need to learn.
Creator, please help me continue to rise to the occasion of holding my communities through these epic rites of passage and community convergencesā so that I may too be held in growth, witness, joy, celebration, grief, prayerā¦the real deal stuff of being a human being.
Help me to show up to the grief of these times. To a post-Zionist future of Judaism that stands in indigenous solidarity and humbles itself to our past and our present as both oppressed and oppressor.
#doykeit
Musing on the cycles of time and waves of life and the inevitable change that happens as we turn.
Allowing myself to be changed by these times. Allowing myself to be changed by violence and horror. Allowing myself to be changed by overwhelming beauty, care and devotion.
Always humbled by the power of praying to the holies, by the simple act of lighting a candle and calling on the benevolent ones. We are so much more than what we perceive with our senses. Woven into the multiplicity of the web, we are so tiny and yet so powerful and yet so tiny.
The grief continues and so does the love. #welcome #spring
1. BIG shouts to my amazing sister @godseyeoils for this magical rebirth of her absolutely stunning sacred ritual scents ā Image @scottkeneally
2. True via @for.the.wild
3. My love
4. My sister
5. In praise of spring
6. More
7. Interdependence
8. The cutest book club (minus @wyldrootz )
9. My bbs
10. Not in our name @im4humanintegrity
Grief is funny and by funny I mean heartbreaking and awful and wonderful and cathartic and terrible and painful and prayerful and itās amazing how death makes the living return to a grief like that of babies and how when babies cry we are reminded of just how simple our needs really are.
Just out here trying to love and be loved and eat good food and stay hydrated and be entertained and sleep wellā¦
Itās been a really hard season. Itās been a really long year. The passing of beloved elders. Struggling with autoimmune. Watching the weaponization of Judaism. So much nuance needed to survive these times and sometimes the only thing that will do is a doom scroll or animal videos on TikTok or a simple walk in the rain or just laying on the floor and crying. š
Some studio magic from our week of test shoots at the Cosita! We love how this team paired our Pear š(no pun intended) Vinyl Backdrops with one of our travertine tile surfaces. Weāre so excited to see the final shots!
Let us know if youād like to test in the studio down below and weāll let you know when we do another!
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#foodphotography #testshoots #photostudios #prophouse #vinylbackdrop #foodphotographyandstyling #foodphotographybackdrops #floralphotography #propstyling
Nothing about this so called āwarā is rooted in Jewish values. Call a spade a spade, this is colonial violence that puts capital and the defense of capital above human life, including the lives of innocent children.
I feel the ancestral trauma that lives beneath these acts of violence and PRAY, I pray that Jewish people (and all people for that matter) can have the space, time, resources and courage to heal the inherited and accumulated wounds.
I pray we can locate ourselves in this intricate & interconnected web of life and embrace the prophecies that tell of a time when all us humans see ourselves as one human family.
As American Jews and āAmericansāliving on Turtle Island, benefiting from the colonial violence and genocide of indigenous people, it is absolutely our responsibility to speak out, boycott, shut down business as usual, call our senators, pray, and be brave in the face of such horror.
Itās that ongoing inner and outer healing work... Healing our internal wounds before they create prejudices, healing the manifestation of those wounds as they become our external bias, and just always, always remembering to return to the love as quickly as possible. If we canāt do it in our own hearts, how can we expect politicians & presidents to do it in their lives?
