Refuge is partially defined in our dictionary as, “…a condition of being safe.”
Being in search of refuge means that you are unsafe and feel afraid. You are living in fear for your survival. You have reached the point in fear and/or in circumstance that you can no longer take care of yourself alone and create an environment of safety, you are driven to ask for help and rely on the reaction of kindness and compassion from the people around you. Not only do you have to ask for help, your situation in life demands it.
I once needed help like that, so I asked for it and received it. Now I can offer help and give it. But, I would not have reached this centered place without help.
The words sanctuary and refuge are so important to me that I have been compelled to explore these ideas and stories with other feminine identifying and non binary individuals across our country in my current project, The Nature Of Refuge. I have since its inception in the spring of 2017, to the present 2022, been conducting and presenting this project for the past five years. Through the project’s birthing process on Orcas Island, WA with the building and living in my own personal sanctuary in the forest for five months and the documentation generated. Next, leaving Orcas in the fall of 2017 and hitting the road, crisscrossing the US living in my Truck House, my next phase of rolling created sanctuary, conducting the primary resource materials of video interviews, blog writing, portraiture and landscape photography. Winding my way across regions of our country and then swinging back to the west coast to dive into the awesome task of culling all my documentation to devote my attention to writing the book of this sacred experience, The Nature Of Refuge, in print, online, and audio formats. This writing and recording aspect of the work, I am currently devoting my creative force to along with evoking the ageless art of storytelling as performance, gathering my audience around the campfire to tell stories to press back the dark.
I have been the road continuously for months at a time, years at a time. I have made pit stops, emergency ones and purposeful rest. Practical stops to refuel as it were, and spiritual vision quest detours. My Pantheon of Queens, my interviewees, have called me to their doorsteps and I keep showing up to hear their stories. It is beyond words, the honor at being their witness. I have deep gratitude in receiving the gifts of these different sacred stories of vulnerability with the individual personal insights into refuge and sanctuary. Their stories have changed me, I believe for the better.
There is this to consider as well –
The United States has historically been held as the ideal of sanctuary in our global community, I am documenting that ideal in juxtaposition to the working reality of achieving safety and community in this country. I am doing this through interviews, writing, photography, and multi-media live performance as I focus on humanizing individual American sacred feminine stories. I am having conversations with individuals across all political, social, color, religious, LGBTQ and gender orientation lines; every spectrum in our social rainbow. I am sitting on these individuals front porches, stoops, a piece of carpet, or in their campers and having a conversation with one another where we really listen to each other.
I am reflecting these stories of fear and vulnerability in the endeavor to expand our compassion for one another, to contribute to the path of proactive communication in a nation of dissenting social voices. We are in the midst of a massive social overhauling and upheaval that is much needed, but I also believe there are aspects of our idealistic foundation that are worth preserving. The humanitarian endeavor in releasing our colonialism mindset and step fully into the 21st century birthing of integrated diversity, this is worth fighting for.
We got this, together.
I would have never been able to reach this point of knowledge and integration without help when I was at my most vulnerable. We as a nation are at our most vulnerable at this time in history.
We need to extend safety to one another when we are uncovering our collective deepest fears of one another, of ourselves.
This is where we are at as a nation currently so deeply divided.
This is the nature of refuge.
