stability amidst change

a year of nonbinary practice

Hi sweet humans,

I’m writing to you on the first day of winter, the shortest day and longest night of the year, a day among many other days and also one filled with centuries of ritual and attention and meaning-making. A day both so ordinary it happens every year, and something so special that humans have been noticing it for a long long time.

One of the things I did actually love about growing up in the conservative church my family attended was some of the teachings — that god is in the ordinary and every day as much as the once-in-your-life-altering experiences. Which I took to mean, every moment we are alive contains infinite possibilities — for pain, sorrow, joy, boredom, despair, upset, pants-peeing belly-filling laughter, on and on. An anchor I have carried with me through all kinds of belief changes and identity uncoverings. The other thing I loved was something a pastor told me once: that even if you aren’t 100% paying attention to the ritual words, they still have power, which I have taken to mean that we don’t always have to put so much pressure on ourselves all the time to be aware or focused or totally fully meaning it. Things happen without us making them happen. We’re a part of the thing, and it wouldn’t be the same without us, but we aren’t the center of it or even the point, necessarily.

Last year I learned from my friend Jen about a ritual called the 13 wishes, where you write 13 desires for your year down on little slips of paper, fold or roll them up, and every night for 12 nights you pull one out and burn it, until the final night you’re left with one wish for the year that you are responsible for tending to. The rest of the wishes the year, the universe, god, the mushrooms under your feet, the placebo, the mystery, the spirits, whoever takes care of for you.

Last year I started my wishes mid-january, pulling cards each night as guidance for the months ahead, returning to them throughout the year. This year I felt prompted to start this ritual before the winter solstice. In the midst of the 12 days my partner had surgery, and I missed a couple nights here and there, leaning into my learning as a young kiddo that ritual has its own kind of expansive magic, one that will wait for you amidst the happenings of ordinary life.

This morning I felt prompted to finish the wishes, so I stuck my hand in the cup from my partner’s grandmother and four of the five remaining wishes popped out and rolled away, which I took to mean “go burn these in a little wish bonfire on your kitchen windowsill.” I stood at the window and watched the notes turn to ash in the first winds of winter. I pulled cards for the last quarter of next year, and for the year to come. And then I pulled out the final wish, which read “stability amidst change.”

Friends, I do not remember writing this wish 😂. Which means, I think, that sometimes the meaning makes us. As I (a little fearfully) undertake a year of practical study in what stability amidst change can mean, I was thinking about this work of learning about and writing about binaries — and how binaries are a way of approaching the world, ourselves, and each other that promises in many ways a kind of stability amidst the chaos of the world around us.

I think that the rigidity of binary approaches come close to a sense of stability, or at least a replacement that many of us have swapped out, or were taught to swap out, instead of a sense of internal stability — by which I mean trust in ourselves, the practice of being present to what is, within and without, approaching ourselves with as much compassion, and as little blame, judgment or shame as we can muster, along with a big heap of not taking ourselves too seriously. If the people in our lives didn’t create space for us to learn that, probably because they didn’t have it themselves, then having a system that will sort the world into two clear categories feels very relieving in a lot of ways. Something solid you can lean on and return to. You know, except for the constant buzz of unease that you’re doing something, or all of it wrong, against which you have to buttress yourself with self-righteousness and meticulous evidence that someone else is actually in the wrong and deserves to be punished more than you.

All that to say, this feels like a very nonbinary wish, to learn what stability feels like, tastes like, looks like, sounds like — in short to learn to sense what stability in any given moment might be, in a world and in a year that at least in the so-called US, promises us a whole lot of change and chaos and binary approaches.

I hope, as your calendar year draws to a close, that you are able to take a moment for meaning-making, whether you are making the meaning or the meaning is making you.

I’m sending you so much love from the creeks and the sycamores and the hawks and the bridges that say free palestine today,

Kali