Choosing This

We are at our eighth spell trying to answer the question: how does the damn light get in anyway? We began where the sky met the ground. We practiced kindness to the ghostly. We blessed the flames, resisted legibility, befriended barriers. We returned to the place and we blessed what remains. 

In this chaotic year, we’re now instructed to choose this.

And what are we choosing? This basket of birds came as an image of our complicated interdependence—collectivities we belong to even if we didn’t choose them or don’t like everyone in them. Our families. Our neighbors. Our political friends and enemies—those who share our values and those who don’t. 

All of us in this collective basket, together.

For a long time the working title for this spell was “With All These Bozos.” Because at this point in our journey, we need to look around and consider how we respond to being stuck in this basket together with those who are different from us, some of whom are wearing downright ridiculous hats. But over time we realized the magic of this spell was in the act of choosing. Not just acknowledging that we are all entangled, but choosing how we respond to this entanglement.

In this strange and stressful time, how are you choosing to exist? What and who are you choosing to love? Where are you choosing to focus? And what makes you honestly grateful to be here, right now, in this strange basket with all these bozos?