Entanglement
-by Kate Forster

I think it’s a deep consolation to know that spiders dream,
that monkeys tease predators,
that dolphins have accents, 
that lions can be scared silly by a lone mongoose,
that otters hold hands, and ants bury their dead. 

That there isn’t their life and our life.
Nor your life and my life. 
That it’s just one teetering and endless thread and all of us, 
all of us, are entangled with it as deep as entanglement goes. 

One of the more essential initiatives we have begun at Gateway House in recent times is the “Sanctuary Group” as we respond together to the clear mandate of our times: to build strong, resilient, local community.

What Does Resilient Community Really Mean?

Resilience is not an idea, it’s a muscle. It’s the muscle of our hearts. It’s the capacity to stand with and for each other, in both darkness and light. It’s a collaboration between our specific charisms i.e. gifts of the spirit and bearing of each other’s hopes and fears.

I like to build fires. When I was little, maybe from the age of 6 years, I would go down to the woods across the street from my house, all the time...as often as I could. It was a beautiful world with a creek curling through the 400 acres of undisturbed woodland. There I would build forts & dams...and fires. I loved the feeling of making warmth and light from what wood was found on the forest floor. I brought rocks up from the creek to create a stone circle. Often bringing slices of a pork roll or eggs from my house, on weekend mornings, you might find me making breakfast over my fire. I knew how to use a hatchet and knife, trained well by the adults in my life…

Over the past weeks a very close friend of mine, well beloved by many, had open heart surgery . It was sucessful…thankfully.  He's come through the literal physicality of having his heart opened. I watched him surrender to the inevitability of going under the knife with extraordinary serenity. Now his spirit is exultant, He is holding a model, a witness for us of what it means to have our hearts be open and receive the great Mystery of being alive. Confronting fear and hospitalization is it’s own kind of descent; anesthesia  is  like a journey to the underworld…

Fueling the Fire at Gateway House! We are profoundly grateful that Gateway House has received an offer from an anonymous donor to match all contributions up to $10,000 through the Autumn Equinox. 

So far during this matching campaign, we have raised $1300. Gratitude for this generous support.  We welcome your  offerings. Together may we amplify the Field of Plenty as we honor and celebrate the harvest of community.

Lughnasadh is the Cross Quarter Day between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox, celebrated on August 1.  At this time, the katydids ramp up their evening song, tomatoes are getting red and plump, and if  you look closely you’ll see a few tree leaves starting to change color. We are at summer’s zenith, yet there’s an urgency for the imminent arrival of fall. Summer's expanse is narrowing as we approach  fall preparations. There is a poignancy in the air…

I sit on my porch taking in the abundance of green and observing the incremental bloom of the flowers in my somewhat raggedy and troubled garden. Meanwhile in the midst of a plethora of commentary, news, bombs, I’m inspired to put my pinky finger in a foxglove blossom. The sensuous just-so fit of my skin against this delicate bloom. Earlier in the day I observed a bee going in and out of the foxgloves, collecting nectar and pollen, and even taking a nap…

I just returned from a desert sojourn to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico for the Western Constellations Intensive Conference…There I camped in a canyon under cold stars and scrambled to keep my tent secure as the constant wind blew through…

We are experiencing the momentum starting at the Vernal Equinox, to Easter, and now right into Beltane, the stirring energy is relentless...and potent not only in ourselves, but all around us.

As we continue to ride the chaos and potentiality of the rising spring energy, I am honored to share the ongoing initiatives of the Outer Edge and Gateway House.

Do we feel like we're sitting in the empty tomb? Can we fathom how anything will resurrect, much less democracy? Are we gazing ever-more deeply at the Kali-Ma statues on our altars, adorned in skull necklaces? With a face that looks like it could, indeed, eat demons?  What image, or prayer or lament, even, rises out of our dark and restless hearts. I ask you: write and tell me: what's on your altar?

Here we are, beloveds. As we keep saying to each other with our hearts ripping open, as the growing truth becomes astonishingly clear, where the inescapable reality that we are amidst a profound shift in the global world order. Like nothing we have experienced in our lifetime, right? Right, I say again? How do we grapple with this…what? What to call it? 

And yet, I am here, at this time in human evolution. Depending on your faith or how you understand reality, I reckon with the truth that my spirit chose to incarnate at this time. At this moment of history. 

I am here for a reason.

Our heart's break at what feels to be the increasingly surreal vortex of this historical moment. No one of us is untouched by the chaos ensuing in our social and political fabric. How shall we ride this great tidal wave of uncertainty?

So much of what is being promulgated by our current administration in the name of faith is anathema to the essence of core religious values.

 So I hold a vision of Sanctuary before us.

By popular request, we are offering a second Sourcing Lament: Writing As Ceremony online workshop in collaboration with Katharina Lindauer. Dancer, musician, sister Constellation colleague, and Process Psychology guide, I am honored to be offering this workshop alongside her.

As we enter into the great cycle of light and dark expressed in Advent/Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hannukah, Diwali, and Yule, so many, both in ancient and contemporary times, have created ceremony to live into the holding of the light as the end of the year draws close.

Please join us for these Outer Edge and Gateway House offerings. I wish us all a holy and merry end of the year.

The beautiful catastrophe of being human.... 
Here we are, my beloveds, in our complicated, excruciating, unfathomable truth of what feels to be a critical, historic moment. I implore us to take heart. Throughout our lineages, the suffering and resilience of our ancestors has enabled us to live now. All they lived through, has brought us, you and I, into this very specific moment. We can source their resilience and wisdom.

Join Amii Legendre and Kathleen Mandeville for this exciting and unique workshop, utilizing the practices of family constellations and somatic* movement to transform our narrow places* while being witnessed and supported in community.

I'm pleased to share with you a veritable array of events and offerings. This time of year, as we approach the Autumnal Equinox, is the opportunity to be in balance. Even as we are on the cusp of a season's change and the particular historical moment  we are in in our nation and the world; community is where we can find a sense of equilibrium.

The Outer Edge invites you into deeper engagement as we navigate into the Autumn season, with a rich lineup of experiences to support your inner and outer worlds.

As a systemic and family constellations facilitator, I've come to understand more potently how captured we are by our own personal narrative. It's as if we live inside our own egoic consciousness and yet we are born into a system, a family of origin, which is also informed by the systems of our ancestral lineages and the cultures, landscapes and way of being that informed those lineages.

By popular demand we bring you this second 2024 session of “Our Lives As Prayer,” a workshop co-facilitated by Elizabeth Cunningham and myself, Kathleen Mandeville at my home, Gateway House Multifaith Sacred Arts Community, Rosendale, NY.

I’ve just finished reading the chapter “Allegiance to Gratitude” in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s brilliant book Braiding Sweetgrass…