More than one hundred people from around the world gathered for our June Resilience & Possibility conversation with Diné elder, artist, activist, mother, grandmother and ceremonial leader Pat McCabe (Woman Stands Shining). As always, Pat invited us into a different way of seeing, relating and being. She gave a transmission through her grounded presence and some guidance for how to be in these times. Pat called us to remember who we are at the core and to source ourselves in our Original Beauty.
We Come from Original Beauty
Pat opened Sacred Space by guiding us into a simple meditation on the breath. "Our breath is holding us," she reminded us.
Every inhale is a gift from the Green Nation, the plant beings, the waters, the birdsong, the sun, and the countless relatives with whom we have shared the breath of life, throughout time. "I bow to your breath and I bow to my breath," she said.
In our shared breathing, we connect with the practice of sacred reciprocity and separation dissolves. Pat declared, "There is no individual. There's no way for us to be alone. It's definitely a situation of 'I am because we are.'"
The principles of Ubuntu and Indigenous traditions around the world remind us that our Inter-Being, our radical interconnectedness, is the truth of who we are, by design. It is our Original Beauty that can never be erased.
Just as she pushed us to think beyond the concept of “sustainability” and invited us instead into a “mad love affair with the Earth”, Pat challenged us to think beyond the idea of resilience. This term has trended worldwide as we collectively grapple to survive, heal from trauma and mitigate the disastrous impacts of fascism and climate change. Pat shared from her lived experience as a Native woman that she is tired of her community being described as simply “resilient”. The term can unintentionally reinforce a worldview, and a stereotype, that is primarily centered on the experience of trauma and struggle. Instead, she invited us to begin from another place:
"We come from Original Beauty. That is the baseline of Mother Earth. That's the baseline of our breath. That's the baseline of Cosmos—a benevolent creation."
Rather than trying to bounce back from hardship, she encouraged us to instead return to the truth and the Original Beauty of who we already are.
Placing Ourselves Before the Truth
Living in a time saturated with so much fear and delusion, we asked Pat how she remains centered and connected to possibility. She reflected on the importance of repetition and shared some guidance that she once received from Spirit:
"You are responsible for placing yourself before the truth frequently."
Returning again and again to the truth of the living world is essential. She told a story of when she went on a Journey to the Ecuadorian Amazon and sat in the rainforest alone, asking the Mother what she needed to carry back to her people. After asking three times, Mother Earth finally said, "Life. Life. It's all about life.”
Pat reflected that this truth has become a compass for her life. Whenever she feels untethered, she returns to the Earth—to the places where life is undeniably present. "Going to Mother Earth is one of the most profound ways of placing myself before the truth," she said.
She also reminded us that this practice isn't only solitary. We return to truth by gathering in community, asking meaningful questions, and calling upon the unique medicine each of us carries. These are the practices that help us remember ourselves and participate more fully in the unfolding of life.
She encouraged us to engage in a daily practice of connecting with awe, of delighting in birdsong, talking with plants, giving blessings and protecting water, putting our hands in the soil, practicing ceremony, and building kinship are all essential ways to help us remember what is real. It is easy to get swept by the currents of despair or into the distractions of modernity. We have to be intentional with our practice by sourcing ourselves again and again in what is real and true and possible.
Listening for Outrageous Proposals from Spirit
Throughout the conversation, Pat returned to the importance of listening to Spirit, not only with our minds, but with our whole being and with our lives. She reflected on Pachamama Alliance's origin story, 30 years ago, as an act of listening to an "outrageous proposal from Spirit" that came from the call of the Achuar people to go "change the dream of the North."
The need and the invitation to change the dream of the modern world, from extraction to sacred reciprocity, continues today. Listening must then inform our actions. Communities of practice, that are rooted in a kinship worldview, support us to live into these new ways of doing. Pat described her work supporting land return initiatives between Catholic nuns and Indigenous communities who are dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery, as an example of what becomes possible when unlikely allies come together in service of life. We can all build a new world, together, in a shared commitment to live from kinship and solidarity. In closing, she offered a simple but powerful mandate:
"Become unlikely allies enacting radical bridging, listening for outrageous proposals from Spirit."
Her teaching for how to open ourselves to these outrageous proposals was both beautiful and practical. Rise before sunrise. Make an offering. Present yourself honestly. Call upon that which serves Light, Life, and Love. Then listen.
In a time when so much compels us toward fear and separation, she offered another way forward. To remember our Original Beauty, to place ourselves frequently before the truth of life, and to become available to the ways Spirit may be calling us to serve. May we continue to breathe together, listen deeply, bridge across our rainbow of differences and become the unlikely allies our world is asking for.
Watch the Recording