Welcome if you’re new here! Good to see you if you’re old here! unsubscribe anytime whoever you are! It’s been 5 years since my last newsletter, there’s goodies and a coming out to share, but first an update from yours truly:
I moved to rural New York with my beloved partner Luke. We have two chihuahuas now.
I took a break from consulting to spend 3 years facilitating the world’s most influential organizations with LifeLabs Learning.
I had the Earth drop out from under my feet in 2023, when my father passed away unexpectedly.
This initiation of loss has been the hardest experience of my life. I’ve spent the past two years largely cocooned with that great teacher, Death. And now I find myself re-emerging from the underworld, bearing gifts from the grief that I unequivocally cherish.
So, my coming out: I’m stepping into full-time spiritual vocation, and am pursuing rabbinic ordination.
Why is it that claiming spiritual vocation can feel like coming out? Maybe because, like queer coming out, a lot of you may roll your eyes and say “no duh, we already knew that about you.” Maybe it’s the shame. In a culture overwhelmed with materialism, shame says that matters of the spirit are fake at best, self-indulgent bullshit at worst. But shame is a map. Shame reveals an outpost of the enemy, identifying beliefs that do the hard work of oppression from the inside. In the urgency of unabated genocide and global authoritarianism, shame might say to drop our soul-tending practices and RUN.
Sweet darlings, you and I know that the human soul is at the frontline of the battle against rising fascism. Resisting more colorfully, more freakily, more unapologetically is strategic in this fight. I consider this one of my responsibilities as a love warrior in our times. I must be accountable to my own spiritual aliveness, so that I may have all of me with me in the struggle for justice. Not to be happy, not to be in a good mood, but for aliveness of the soul itself. Daunting, considering how damn depressing this all is, but that’s why we’re not meant to do it alone.
Spirit, soul, creativity, all that good stuff, aren’t breezes that we either catch or don’t. The professionalization of the arts and religion loooooves that myth. In this political environment, we can’t wait for those ephemeral breezes. Good news: there are countless wisdom maps that provide accessible, actionable pathways to beef up our soul muscles. Soul-tending, a term I learned from my beloved Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, is a birthright that threatens empire (if you do it right). That’s why I’m a lifelong student of soul-tending, sitting at the feet of my own ancestral Jewish mystic clown lineages, as well body-wise forms like Cynthia Winton-Henry’s Art of Ensoulment. I may still be an organizational psychology nerd, but honey we got some soul work to do! So I’ve been thinking about what soul-support our people need and cooking up ways I can help.
The goodies: I’ve got a 1:1 spiritual accompaniment program, Seven, for those seeking the intimacy and accountability of a one on one relationship. In Seven we do big soul-tending, and make sure you get the spiritual growth you deserve from whatever endings and beginnings life is currently serving. Me and my long-time co-conspirator Elana June have two deeply queer, deeply Palestine-loving Jewish study offerings for the Hebrew year 5786. And to all my creatives - The Arts for Social Change Jam is BACK and promises to be a timely, immersive sanctuary to feed our radical artist hearts.
If you’re so moved, write back to me. Tell me how you’re doing. This newsletter started almost 10 years ago and we’ve all been through a lot. I’m grateful to be connected to you amidst it all. Thanks for being someone I want to come out to.
With love,
Annie-Rose