Many times throughout the day I find myself caught in the threads of a spiders web.
On the porches, across the paths…. There’s a beautiful Charlotte-esque creation in the Lighthouse door that’s been getting more beautiful by the day when I remember to duck on my way in or out. That spider and me? We’re basically roommates now. It’s a gleaming tangle of threads strung from here to there and these strings slow me, stick me, and dazzle me when the light hits them just right.
I often pray for myself and others to be ‘tangled back into the sticky web of life, not at the top or in the center, but just in our right place among the family of things’ and it’s happening.
We’re tangled daily.
Just like the silk of the spiders web, I can see how the crystalline water of Vermont’s streams and brooks and rivers is also a kind of web. Ebbing and flowing, changing its tact, rising and tangling us back into something organic and alive in ways that’s beautiful and right and utterly crushing and hard to bear.
The amount of devastation woven right into the bursting and vital beauty of Summer in Vermont right now is asking me, and probably us, to stretch far beyond our comfort. Far beyond what our bodies or minds can imagine.
What kind of calisthenics or morning practice can possibly prepare us to bear both the grief and the joy of what it means to be alive in a rapidly changing world? A changing climate. A changing hometown. A changing summer. A changing moment.
I was sitting in the Buddha Garden here at Rootstock when I learned about the second ‘hundred year flood’ to hit the Kingdom in 2 months and, lulled by the buzzing of a hundred bees, dissolved in a kaleidoscope of every color of the rainbow blooming around me, kissed by a rose-scented breeze, in community and in communion, it occurred to me that - especially when things are coming undone all around us - it’s essential for whoever can hold it to hold tight to beauty, and sweetness, and grace, and play, and wonder, and acceptance, and “alrightness.”
Alright-ness.
Ok-ness.
That’s Life-ness.
Not callous ignoring of pain and suffering, no. Not indifference or apathy or numbness or delusion. I’m not talking about bypassing the work of helping people in need, or skipping the part where we feel and metabolize the grief and loss and fear. I’m not suggesting that we stop working on solutions or find ways to be resilient…
I’m talking about the grand and all-powerful Both/And.
Accepting that we are alive during this intense and challenging time and insisting on living fully - beautifully - in the midst of it all is its own kind of activism. It’s life-giving activism. Holding tight to songs and fire and joy and laughter when the forces outside of you - and maybe inside too - are singing a different song is a kind of survival.
Both/And: We’re living and we’re dying
Both/And: It’s ok and it’s not ok
Both/And: I’m relieved I’m thriving and my heart breaks for folks that aren’t
Both/And: I’m happy and I’m sad and I’m angry and I’m hungry
If we’re listening, really listening, we know that right now is a good time to conjure radical acceptance knowing that people and places that we cherish are going to struggle and suffer and die. Our leaders and systems and mechanisms of civilization are faulty and toxic and going to fail us. Life as we know it and as it was sold to us is shapeshifting before our eyes and we need to shift with it.
Stretching our hearts and minds to be able to carry the paradox isn’t just a good idea at this point. It’s a matter of survival.
Can you do that?
Can you take in the devastation and the beauty in equal measures?
Can you feel the brilliant pulse of life and trust in the naturalness of death?
Can you inhabit ‘what is’ while working towards ‘what must and will be?’
On this beautiful and bright morning, I pray for our ability to do just that.
Let the rising water wash away our stuckness, rightness, and certainty.
Let the intense heat sweat out the poison and fear and confusion.
Let the fires burn away any entitlement or greed or apathy.
Let the wind scatter seeds of hope and promise and possibility.
May we all trust in the perfection of this imperfect moment and cultivate the presence and caliber to hold our gaze steady, keep our attention focused, and welcome what comes with gratitude.
More and more, I feel like an end of life doula. Not just for my guests that come to sit with the medicine, but for all of us. The American Dream is dead or dying and it’s time to dream a new dream. Exponential growth is killing the world and it’s time to dream a new dream. Happily Ever After was never real to begin with and it’s time to dream a new dream.
This silly little imagination farm called Rootstock is actually a laboratory and classroom and playground in service to exactly that: dreaming and living a new dream. We’re practicing ways of collaborating, ways of becoming resilient, ways of repairing what we rupture, ways of being indigenous to this Earth so that we have a shot at enjoying life in this magnificent garden for seven or seven hundred more generations.
Here are some invitations to bring you into the circle, into the experiment, and into relationship with another way of navigating this exhilarating and exhausting moment:
Friday (tonight!) the men gather in the Sun Circle! There’s still time to join.
Saturday (tomorrow!) the women gather in the Moon Circle! There’s a spot left to join.
Sunday (August 4) The Stone Circle will celebrate Lughnasadh, the first harvest with a ceremony and potluck. Come praise the Earth’s bounty and remember what’s real.
All of these offerings above are free or by donation and comprise Community Weekend here on the hill. The first weekend of every month is an opportunity to ‘re-village’ and we enjoy co-creative ceremony, work service, potluck meals, evening baths in The Oasis, and we weave our lives together. You’re invited.
There are some other options for how to engage the beautiful and hard work of shapeshifting, healing, and homecoming. Let’s see if any of these resonate with you:
Registration is officially open for our Fall microdosing immersion and we’re gathering a community of 15 courageous people to heal alongside the Mushroom Teachers and the medicine of autumn.
Are you in need of some support to let go of patterns and habits that no longer serve you? Would you benefit from a community of conscious and beautiful people who are rooting for your transformation? Would you like to learn how to work with mushroom medicine in a lasting and transformative way?
Juliana and I have been watching hundreds of people move through our protocol with consistent impact. It’s working. It’s not just working but it’s changing lives in the direction of the big and grand Both/And. People are finding presence and acceptance and sweetness and wonder again. They’re finding their center and moving from that place and it’s incredible and humbling and happening.
There’s a handful more spaces available for this immersion and it’s a PERFECT companion to support you to navigate election season, the Holidaze, and the dying of Summer with grace and consciousness and support.
Everything you need for the immersion is included when you register along with a day long retreat here on the imagination farm. Also, folks that immerse are guaranteed booking for a private or group retreat within one year with either Juliana or I in case you needed another reason to join in. Need a payment plan to make it work? Just reply to this email and let me know that and I’ll make it happen.
A forest bath, sound bath, hot bath…and candlelit potluck picnic! Introducing The Bathrobe Sessions featuring Her Mana.
This is the kind of beauty and sweetness that our bitter moment needs to stay alkaline and aligned with the Big Both/And. The canopy of the bathhouse will have begun its blazing autumn crescendo, the baths will be hot and chemical-free as always, and a gifted duo by the name of Her Mana (listen on Spotify!) will have arrived all the way from Texas to lull us back into our hearts and the heart of the Earth.
Tickets are available for baths + concert or just concert and they’ll be doing two shows: an evening set on Saturday, September 14 and a brunch session on Sunday, September 15th.
A dazzling sonic soundscape in a clothing-optional, wood-fired bathhouse is an interesting and new way to while away a weekend. Prove to me that I’m not crazy to think this is an amazing idea, gather some friends, make a beautiful dish for our potluck picnic, don your favorite bathrobe and let’s live!
If you’d like to come experience The Oasis during a Community Bathhouse we’d love to welcome you. You can learn more and sign up online.
The 100 Hour Fire is on the horizon and, since our last love letter, a handful of generous and adventurous beings have signed up to participate. Thank you! We’re still focused on gathering people that want to come help hold ‘the village’, not simply inhabit it, and would love a few more folks to heed the call.
What does it mean to ‘hold the village’ well, there are as many answers to that question as there are people in the village. What can YOU offer? Maybe you’re an amazing dish washer or chicken roaster? Maybe you love to split firewood or tell stories? Maybe you like to make early morning coffee deliveries to the people that keep the world alive? Or maybe you love to make sure that lights are turned off and wood stoves are shut down so the village can rest safely? Maybe you like to paint signs or plant garlic or teach yoga or make music?
Five days of ceremony is a strange and beautiful thing in our modern world. It rubs right up against everything we know to burn 100 hours of wood to warm a rock and hill before winter. It challenges our priorities to make serving a fire more important than serving our employers. Stepping into a container like the Transformation Fire is an experiment in ceremony and co-creation and it’s amazing. Once we gather a few more tipi poles (that’s code for people that want to hold the tent up with me) we’ll start to reveal what’s on offer and invite more folks to come and animate those days.
I opened booking for October/November/December last month and all but one of the sessions filled quickly. The session I have open (Nov 25-27) happens to end right before Thanksgiving and it is for a unique kind of being who doesn’t need to subscribe to a conventional holiday. If you’re interested and haven’t already attended a Discovery Zoom, sign on up to learn more and get access to book.
I’m so grateful that folks feel so called to come and work with me and it’s always a mix of grief and relief when the portal opens. I feel the frustration when folks that need support don’t get a spot and I celebrate when folks nab them, the big Both/And.
I’m delighted and honored to share that for the 2025 season of group medicine work at Rootstock that you’ll be among an amazing Medicine Family! Juliana Rose and Hanna are on board to step into the Mystery alongside me and an amazing staff that I’ll introduce to you more fully later… For now, know that we’re planning to be here to serve the Mushroom Teachers, to serve you, and to serve Creation with safe, sturdy space to come home to your life.
Booking for January, February, and March will open on October 24th and will have a bunch of spaces for one-on-one work with me and group sessions with the Medicine Family and we can’t wait to welcome you here.
If you didn’t know, Juliana and I offer a monthly Psychedelic Integration Circle for folks that have or haven’t worked with us. It’s free or by donation and you’re invited! The next one is Tuesday, August 6th and you can register here.
Well, I think I said it.
Probably not all of it but surely enough.
I hope that something in this email felt nourishing for you or important or enticing or simply worth your time.
You really could be doing anything else with your time right now but you’re here with me, in the ether, in this moment, in this experiment and I’m so grateful for that. It’s the being here - in it - together that makes the meaning.
Thanks so much for your support and attention. I wish you a day full of gleaming spider webs, rain drops on mullein leaves, the smell of fresh cut grass and tomato vines. I wish you a day brimming with the simple joys of life.
Bless your day and your beautiful beating heart.
With love and gratitude,
Beana
p.s. The Temple. Her name is The Belly and she’s alive and becoming. The scale and scope of this project has been intense and humbling. It’s a huge undertaking to make a space like this on a hill like this and I’m trusting in the unfolding… I needed to change horses in midstream and find a new builder and there’s still some heavy lifting to do with running electric and finishing the space. Signing up for offerings is one way to help build the temple (it’s my favorite way) and sending cheddar (aka money) is another. There’s another $25k worth of work that needs to happen before the snow flies and I would be so incredibly grateful if there were any angels out there who could help us cross the finish line. You can share via GoFundMe, Venmo (@rootstockretreat), or by check. Please and thank you.
Transformation… the key to navigating life. Rootstock is a safe and healing container to support it. I’m looking forward to spending time in the space. Always grateful that you and your cohort sustain and nurture it. 💖