From a Seedplanter
A letter from Sequoia Samanavaya’s founder, Sara Jolena Wolcott, M.Div.
Dear ones:
My heart overflows with gladness as I read through the contributions for this first edition of the Sequoia Grove Journal.
Sequoia Seeds are so small. From them can arise giants.
I started teaching my first online course, ReMembering for Life, on the eve of leading my first pilgrimage for the Summer Solstice in the Sequoias in 2017. My first two students were two good friends, Anna Mudd and Christopher Fici, both of whom had witnessed me labor with re-originating the story of climate change into the Doctrine of Discovery and the Great European Witch hunts. The two believed that what I had to teach was important enough that they carved aside time and offered financial resources to learn from me. I prayed then that the work we would do together online would be, somehow, akin to sitting at the red paws of the Giant Sequoia trees, who deeply inspire me.
Within a few months, both of them had had life-changing experiences, and they were creating ways of thinking and creating that they had not before experienced.
I immediately knew that we something extra-ordinary was happening in the Grove.
Colonization, which we see as part of the roots of current ecological, social, economic, health, and spiritual crises, thrive on poorly structured, wrongly compartmentalized ways of thinking. There are artists and bureaucrats but somehow not both, and certainly not both at the same time. Academics are not supposed to also be digital artists (unless that is their field) and create art that disrupts the notion of land ownership of the very Seminaries that house them. Thought patterns - including for artists - along with our bodies and our what we see as possible for our institutions - are constricted. The immense creativity that humans are imminently possible of when in connection with Earth and with the power of Her Life Force is paved over with exhausting cycles of work, parenting, and sensory dullness. Rarely do religious institutions, regardless of their belief system, have the time and energy to do what is cultivate the emerging creative Spirit which is at the heart of the aching, joyful journey of decolonization.
And yet, after a short time, my thoughtful students were thinking in new ways. Those who had always been creative were, now, suddenly, creating in new ways. I recognized the questions and their ways of coming up with answers as eco-theology: epistemologies and ontologies of understanding, articulating, and expressing (often not in written format) the human-Divine-ecological/cosmological relationships. And these “new” (for each student) connections and creative outpourings kept happening. Something here is really working, I thought to myself, as I continued to develop more courses for existing and new students drawn to our emerging practices of ReMembering and ReEnchanting that we, under the banner of Sequoia Samanvaya, were crafting.
One of my answers to, ‘what is really going on here’ is simple: it is the movement of She who moves us; the emergence of a new world that is sprouting up everywhere, in all kinds of small places.
If that is what is happening - even if that is only one aspect of what is happening - then the question, how can I showcase the work of my students, also is, in part, a question of, how can we listen to the movements that are happening between and amongst us more deeply, to hear what is wanting, in this precarious precious planetary moment, to be born?
Several years later, this Journal brings together the creative outgrowths our growing community. We offer our questions and our prayers, our wonderings and our songs, and the (often hard) lessons we have learned about shifting families and institutions.
Here. Look. See. Listen. Let yourself be touched by their beauty and their voices; their dreams and their nightmares; their images and their prayers. Let yourself be lifted up. See others who have taken classes. See yourself. See what is possible.
Not every piece here is a direct result of our work with people, but every piece arises from a deep part of the person who shared it. Some contributors are well-respected artists, writers, and photographers in their own right; for others, this is their first time being published in a thoughtful, artistic, unorthodox Journal which recognizes that ReEnchanting the World as essential for surviving climate change.
I cannot thank our Editor, Isabel Maria Mares, enough for the love offering of her time and brilliance as she and I labored together to midwife this Journal; to more fully introduce you (singular) to – you (plural). And to offer these pieces as gifts to the wide world.
Our first edition: Gathering Fire, Summoning Wolves
To gather together in the Big Work of what we call ReMembering and ReEnchanting is akin to gathering around fire, even if it is the blue lights of our screens and not the soft warm light of the fires that enable human survival, calm anxiety, inspire myth-making and enable the creation of regenerative cultures. As a Californian, the recent wildfires that have ravaged my State remind me that we need a better relationship with fire, as well as our larger ecosystem.
No one enters our Grove a blank slate. Everyone bears embers. Some embers need a lot of caring for; some less so; all seem to benefit from joining with others in the fires we tend.
And sometimes, from the shadows emerge those parts of ourselves which are akin to wild wolves.
After one of my mystical experiences, I felt myself letting out a call, a summons, to those wild wolves. That call sounded through woods and mountains; skies and deserts. Others responded with calls of their own. Our pack is finding its way home.
This Journal brings to you just some of the beautiful souls who have brought their fires and their wolf-songs come to our Sequoia Grove. May it be warming; inspiring; uplifting. Perhaps you too will choose to sit with us for a while, on your wanderings and deepenings.
These offerings
Perhaps because I act as a spiritual midwife to so many of these creators, to my eyes, each creation shines the way a baby shines to the midwife who witnessed the birth. We need one another to midwife the ideas, institutions, myths, curricula, poems, songs, and dreams of such Big Work as is ReMembering and ReEnchanting. Indeed, you may well enjoy this beautiful podcast on spiritual midwifery that I did with midwife Krystina Friedlander and Rev Rhetta Morgan, both of whom contributed precious poems to this edition.
The questions that Anna Mudd and I started asking around “ecological family histories” in that very first ReMembering course over three years ago has become an entire line of creative work around telling new children’s stories during the Apocalypse, which Anna wrote about for this Journal. Amy Kietzman, who joined Anna and Chris for Part II of that very first ReMembering cohort, has just written (birthed) this tremendous series, Tiamet’s Children, which is getting its first publication here. It is simultaneously a new origin myth of our sun, of herself, and of this moment in time. Christopher recently finished his PhD and is now teaching at Iona College, which he writes about here.
Sometimes we go and sit next to one another’s fires. Dougald Hind, with whom I occasionally collaborate and frequently discuss, has generously gifted us a glimpse of the fire he has been cultivating from his homebase in Sweden. Sometimes people leave our community bearing embers that are sometimes bright enough to start their own fires elsewhere. Rachel Arlene Redeye Porter, whose early involvement with Sequoia Samanvaya was so valuable, is one of many who started her own initiative, Two Row Solutions, and is now the Editor in Chief at Rematriation Magazine, a digital storytelling platform for Haudenosaunee and Indigenous women.
Most if not all of these pieces howl – and sometimes mutter – to the Divine Feminine. As a minister, I always hold space for multiple religious traditions, as well as those who come without another spiritual lineage. Given the work of returning to harmony with Earth, it is no surprise that She shimmers throughout this Journal, for which I am grateful. Overtly: in the prayers to Hectate offered up by GG Neroda; the reflective considerations of apologies and returnings offered up by Andrew Murray Dunn; the song by Briana Halliwell and Zoli Kertesz; the powerpoint/conversation led by Michal Ann Morrison on remembering the Minoan civilization as part of the origin story of Western civilization; the beautiful paintings by the English artist Lis O’Kelley, most of which emerged in the wider context of our ReMembering for Life course; the images offered up by the Canadian-based artist Emily Rose Michaud; the prayers by a Catholic man who prefers to stay anonymous.
Nor is it surprising that several pieces are wondering into what it means to create institutions that can enable humans, as earthlings, as manifestations of Her. As Ram says, future institutions are those which are coming forth from and in harmony with Earth. We can neither only create new myths and poems nor new institutions: both must inform the other. As Dorothy Cameron writes, Art is essential. It is essential to problem solving. It is essential to human dignity. Art process is essential to enabling institutions to address the wholeness of life, and it must be done as a community. Leonard Joy tracks the power of communities, both in standing up to what is wrong and in shifting entire political-economic systems. When Anna Smedeby studied with an artist even as she works for an international governing body, she noted that most artists have bones and skulls in their homes, and explores a profound question: what might it mean for institutions to learn from artists - and more actively engage with death?
Given Sequoia Samanvaya’s intention of honoring living indigenous wisdom and voices, I am delighted that both the first and the last contributions are poems written by indigenous women on opposite ends of the world. Given our theme, it is quite appropriate to start this journal with a poem connecting ancestors with fire, by Kristine Hill, from the Tuscarora nation, whom is one of the most acute listeners of fires I have known. As this is Winter Solstice, we move straight into death with a poem written by Robert Walker, who has dwelled deeply with the ancestor-honoring West African tradition carried by Malidoma Some.
David Zung’s photography and sketches, which beautifully join with so many written works, often encounters death: both what needs to die, during his sojourn photographing the Black Lives Matter movement this past Summer, and honoring those who have passed over.
Kristine Hill shares some of her ongoing listening to fire. Gayano Shaw’s beautiful poem in this Journal arose from a prompt I offered for an event closer to a worship service than a webinar I led at the invitation of Dougald Hind titled, When Your Ancestors Are the Problem. Gayano subsequently gathered a remarkable cohort, primarily based in the UK, to participate in a ReMembering course together: don’t miss their collective singing of A Winter Song from within a cave at the edge of the sea in Wales.
Given the close connection between birth and death, and the hope of the messy arrival of Spring, we close with a beautiful piece on menstrual blood by Erin Matariki, who recently is joining the Sequoia Samanvaya community as part of the RIVER collective of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples from Aotearoa/New Zealand and North America as part of their larger commitment of regeneration, greater sovereignty and disentangling the Doctrine of Discovery.
The community of people who have dipped in and out of our courses has in it many more people who could have written for this journal. Many we did not ask, or did not ask in time - a result in no small part of the speed through which we pulled this together. Don’t worry: there will be more editions. I am already excited about our next one.
In Gratitude
To our readers: Thank you. There is so many places to which you can give your attention. Thank you for giving some to us. May you get something of beauty, value, and nurturing substance here.
To our contributors (who are also our readers!):
Whether you are a professional artist or if this is your first time sharing your creative voice: thank you for the work that has gone into you developing your knowledge and craft.
Whether you have been with us since the beginning or just joined: thank you for offering your prana (breath/life-force). Whether you join us from India or New Zealand, from Wales or Texas, from California or New York: thank you for working with us on figuring out time zones so we can gather together.
Whether you are indigenous or settler or somewhere in between: thank you for engaging in the journey of decolonization. Whether you contributed to this journal or are looking to contribute to a future edition or are curious to join us, thank you for reading.
Whether you had the courage to ask for a scholarship or the courage to offer the finances so that other participants could receive a scholarship for our courses: thank you for engaging your financial resources, as well as your temporal and heart-resources, into these efforts.
Thank you for adding some of your fire to ours – especially at a time when we so desperately need a better relationship to fire. Thank you for listening and responding to the howl of the wolves, the movement of your blood, and the mutterings of She who moves within You.
Sara Jolena Wolcott, M.Div.
Seedplanter, Spiritual Midwife and Founder, Sequoia Samanavaya
From the Hudson Valley on the Winter Solstice, 2020
Photo: Sara Jolena Wolcott, Brown’s Pond, December 2020