Alchemizing Through Sacred Practices & Imagination
plus David Gate's gorgeous new book!
Hello friends,
For those of you who are new here, we are in a series called Five Ways to Alchemize the Soul.
If you’d like to read the first intro post to the series, click below:
And as a reminder, here are the different ways we alchemize the spaces of the soul:
Through the grief/rage process
Through sacred practices & imagination
Through cyclical living
Through creative resistance
Through dreams and vision-casting
Today we are exploring alchemy through sacred practices and imagination.
Melissa Febos once said, “There is no pain in my life that has not been given value by the alchemy of creative attention.” I read this quote in
’s new book Permission, which is just gorgeous and gives so much room to ask the deep, difficult questions so many of us ask as writers.But the reality is this: we have to find ways to alchemize pain, to alchemize our soul’s home. And Melissa (and Elissa) reminds us that we do that through creative attention.
And I think creative attention is about sacred practices and imagination, both being a consistent part of our life.
As an Indigenous woman, I share about ceremony a lot—it’s part of our cultures, our stories, our ways of being connected to one another.
As a mystic, I share a lot about ritual—the ways we hold intentional space for the sacred in our daily lives.
It’s important to create space for what’s important to us—I have a red chair in my office that is often my reading and journaling space. I know how I feel when I sit there, and how it opens me up. I encourage you to find space that allows you to show up fully for yourself, for your own soul—alchemic spaces.
I want to share two rituals and two journaling prompts focused on the power of imagination. Alchemy is slow, steady work, often born through repetition and care. Practice it this way.
2 rituals:
watch something grow—take time daily to pay attention to the growth of something: the seeds in your garden, your own sense of awe, a child in your life. Find a way to share these observations with your family or community.
connect across timelines with ancestors and future generations, either through writing notes to them, connecting in prayer, or envisioning yourself as fully connected to those who came before you and those who come after (for those interested, I am hosting a workshop called Living Resistance with our Ancestors on July 29th if you’d like to explore some of this more).
2 imagination journal prompts:
Imagine ten years from now, you wake up in the morning and step outside your door. You’ve been grieving something, but this morning, you wake up feeling a little differently, like the grief has been working its way through you and will soon be turned into something else. What is that? What will you create from the season you’ve been in?
Reflect on this quote by George Bernard Shaw: “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” What have you been imagining? Ask yourself honestly what you hope to alchemize in your life, and begin making a plan to create healing medicine, however that shows up.
As we explore sacred imagination, ritual, and alchemy, I can’t think of a better way to connect you to David Gate’s work. David is a poet, homesteader, and beautiful human being—and you’ll find that out as you read his new book, A Rebellion of Care.
This book is: A moving manifesto in poems and essays, inviting readers to embrace their humanity and live fully alive in our age of social change, hyper-capitalism, and pervasive loneliness.
Our society makes us hard, distant, and rageful. I find it again and again, and as someone who struggles with alchemizing rage (I shared about that last week), I need space for poetry and essays that remind me of the softness of this resistance work, too.
Look at the cover of David’s book:
A description: about 25 black ants are gathering together around a large vase full of wildflowers of all kinds that is tipping over—they are working together as a community to hold up the beauty, to declare that care is about rebellion and hope. I could cry just staring at the cover, because it evokes so much for me.
Care is radical as hell.
And here is what we know about alchemy—we do it in our own bodies, in our own souls, where the work begins, but alchemy//care//resistance//kinship must also be communal, must lead us out toward one another, toward Mother Earth, to make peace and dream up a better future and fight for that future with ferocious love.
I want to share with you a few moments from the book. Hold them close to you. Order David’s new book, which comes out this week.
Make space for care, for ritual, and let it bleed into the ways you resist in a hurting and chaotic and war-hungry world.
I start with this one, called “Sensitive Content”, which made me smile and feel so seen:
This poem may contain sensitive content.
It's me.
I'm the sensitive content.
David writes about poetry, about church, about masculinity, about grief and fear, about solidarity and kinship; I appreciate his honest tenor, the way we moves through topics and conversations with grace, kindness, and a ferocious sense of love.
And this line, I needed it, especially in the world we are currently inhabiting:
Most empires fall when they are devoured by another, when a greater force overcomes them. But what is unique about capitalism is that it teaches us to devour each other. It feeds on us until there is nothing left to consume.
This, friends, is why we need poetry. This is why we need words, why we need to gather in spaces and write, why we need to create prophetically, and yes, why we are alchemizing the spaces around our souls every damn day.
One more poem I’ll share with you as we head into our days, into our week, into the world waiting for us to alchemize something shitty into something beautiful, a poem called “Old Layers”
Be at peace with the dust you are creating even as it shrouds the mantelpieces & photo frames & pictures of your younger years when you were no more beautiful than you are right now
So much in this post. I needed it all. My day will enfold differently because of your words and how they landed at just the right moment. Thank you.
Grateful to be following this as I walk in the place where everything alchemizes for me. Here in the brilliant sunshine one day and the drenching rain the next on this little island that is both the most removed place I know and the most connected at the same time.