We are in the last month of Summer, and the energy is shifting as we move closer into Fall. The days are shortening and the once green leaves starting to not yet change color, but are different than the verdant Spring and Summer foliage (at least where I’m writing this in Los Angeles, which is finishing up its last 100 degree day). Back to school season is in full swing, and with it brings a change in routines. No longer the long lazy days of summer. Instead, it is fresh crayons, new teachers and classmates, and a whole new daily routine.

And so it is as the wheel of the year turns, and gives us a new opportunity to create and practice the next set of seasonal Rituals.

This month we spoke with:

• Kaitlyn Graña

• Espen Artio

This season, we invite you to think about:

• What is the beauty of ritual and making rituals/

• What daily routines and rituals do you try to do regularly?

• What are you rituals in service to?

• RITUAL MAKERS Story coming out September 11th

• JOIN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: SIGN UP NOW for “The Neighborhood” where we lead our cohort through a seasonal BINGO BOARDS that build community connections in our neighborhoods and community spaces. Join now and enter into a seasonal Bingo game, where the winner gets to donate to the mutual aid cause of their choice. Sign up at www.ritesofpasssageeducation.org

Subscribe now

DOWNLOAD FULL ZINE BELOW:

The power of neighbors is a monthly series based on liberatory community roles: each month we interview community members who engage with that role and create a zine and a story based on their perspectives on their work.

Artists Zine viewable here

This month I interviewed two Artists who are 65+ who’s creative practices I’ve been inspired by:

Tanya Joyce, is a lifelong painter, poet, and writer, She lives in the Bay area and had her first solo exhibition in 1959. She has had an art studio in San Francisco at Hunters Point Shipyard since 1984. You can view more of her work here

Sheila Coppola is a relief and intaglio printmaker, and painter. She founded Sidereal Fine Art Press housed in a refurbished pole barn in Tukwila, WA, and currently serves on the Tukwila Arts Commission. You can view more of her work here.

The messages I got about creativity is that it is curiosity mixed with action. There is an impulse to change the material world through the making whether through bringing joy to a home through painting your teapot, creating a new recipe to pass down in your family, or making a piece of art for your wall. There was something also about conversation, and collaboration in the creative journey: how the world around us becomes a collaborator and conversations are started through what we create.

Quotes from Interviews

“Creativity is a willingness to explore combined with actually exploring. […] “Doing it” is creativity. Something unexpected always comes in. “Yikes! I’m out of green paint! Maybe I can mix blue and yellow.” Something like that. There’s a lot of “thinking on your feet” in creativity. […] Doing it IS creativity and “doing it” usually turns out to be at least a little different from what we thought about in the first place.” -Tanya

“I see the role of art in the world as multi-faceted. Some artists use it to portray beauty, some to share stories, some to provoke reactions or to call us to battle. For some artists it’s to provide a cautionary tale, for some, it’s to connect peoples by building bridges between cultures. Some artists investigate processes or invent new ones. Some are pathfinders and some are experience providers, while others are educators. I would guess I fit best in the role of the question provider. I would ask; look deeper, wonder about what you are looking at, ask what it means to you, ask how it relates to your world, ask how things connect and interweave and why they do. Ask why that’s important to you. Is it mysterious to you and if not, why not. Ask if the artwork has changed you, and if so, in what way, and then ask why.” - Sheila

The Story of the Artist

It took me a long time before I could call myself an artist. I thought artists were these fancy people who lived in impossibly big lofts in the city with their clothes all artfully mussed with paints. I thought artists were people who showed at major museums and everyone knew their names. I didn’t realize that pulling out a sketchbook to draw the cars in front of me when I was stopped in traffic, or picking up a rock to take home because the curve of it’s markings was enchanting could mean that I too was an artist. ‘Artist’ has always seemed like such a big word. It seemed like a glamorous career path available to very few through celebrity or old wealth.

I had always been curious about the world: exploring the curve of a branch on a tree, or the way light fell over my grandma’s face when she sat by the window. When I was young, I was often compelled to capture a moment on my camera, or write a few lines about it down on paper in my unsure handwriting. I wanted to get my hands dirty learning the world around me through touch and play. I wanted to make some kind of mark on the world, and make something. One day I wanted to learn to make my pants flare at the bottom and I asked a friend’s mom to teach me to sew. One year I decided to paint a teapot as a gift for my aunt. Every object I altered became somehow more alive to me. I had changed them with my hands, with my vision.

As I got older, the task of making something seemed to become heavier. My visions were more specific and the materials more cumbersome to find. Then things like working to eat and pay rent seemed to be always in the way as they are when you become an adult. My desire to create began to ebb and flow. It came in waves: moments fully imbued with inspiration and creation followed by longer bouts that felt dry and stale. Life had a way of flowing around me, pulling me off center and away from my joyous practice of creation. It was after all just a lark, a hobby, I wasn’t an Artist.

But recently I’ve been obsessed with baguettes, getting the perfect crunchy crust, and the springy spacious inside. I’ve sourced special flours, learned new techniques for bread making, and tried recipe after recipe. Each version turns out a little different. Maybe it was more humid one day, or a new bag of flour was opened and it reacted slightly differently. There is a skill to the practice where it is possible to gain consistency, but also there is a type of magic in the ingredients reacting differently or an oven that gets a little hotter on one side than another.

My friend Andrew has been coming over on weekends to taste test, and my baguettes are starting to get pretty good.

‘Maybe we could make something out of this?’ he said the most recent Saturday. ‘Like a picnic?’

It did seem fun to get to share my progress with my friends. I started imagining a red gingham picnic blanket for the classic picnic feeling, and thinking I could find some cute plates for us to use. Andrew made jam from his cherry tree last spring that he could bring. Something to think about.

At the office that week, a coworker asked what I had been up to that weekend.

‘Oh i’m still trying out baguette recipes’ I replied.

‘You are always making something’ she said, and began telling me about her weekend in the park with her new dog. I was only half listening to her, thinking… that can’t be true. I’m not always making things. As her story concluded she walked back to her own desk, but the thought stuck with me for the rest of the day: was I always making things?

That night at home in the back of my cabinet and found a plate that I had painted myself years ago with little violets all over it. It would be so cute for the picnic. Maybe I could make a couple more? I called Andrew with my idea and he was delighted! Our vision for the picnic was coming together. He thought he might write out some of his favorite poems on cards and tie them to each baguette, so as we ate we could read poems aloud to each other.

‘Am I always creating something?’ I asked him midthought.

‘What? Yes. That’s what’s so exciting. The things that we’re making can bounce off each other and inspire something completely new.’ he said.

I thought back to our weekend sourdough taste tests and how he loved to bring something new to sample with the bread every time he came over.

‘We inspire each other to make more things.’ he said.

I had to order some food safe paints to make more violet plates, and I had to find some plain plates to paint on, maybe at a thrift store. The next week I spent reading online about what paints survive washing machines, and how to prepare a plate to be painted, what brands other people had tried and liked. I went to the thrift store the following weekend looking for plates and found a couple that I thought could work. None of them were the same size or shape but they had a kind of conversation between their shapes that I liked.

I used to not see myself as an Artist because I didn’t understand that art was about making things. I didn’t realize that wanting to change how a plate or a pair of pants looks and then actually doing it, meant that I was a creative. Wanting to learn to cook or bake is a type of art. There is an intimacy of learning the world through shaping it. It will humble you. But somehow it will always open up new opportunities for creation. Planning an event, or making a doodle in your notebook, anything that you imagine and then implement is an act of creation. Art is the vision of something that can be made, followed by the trying to make it.

Art actually belongs to all of us: anyone who changes a recipe when they’re cooking, anyone who builds something from their imagination, anyone who makes anything at all. I learned that I actually am an Artist & that I make things all the time. A lot more of us are Artists than we think.

What’s coming next?

• Join us for our Summer Bingo! Build community connections with friends and families, and the winners will get to chose the mutual aid cause the proceeds will be donated to. Donate at our website, or contact us if you’d like to play along without donation: Learn more

• On August 28th we will launch The Power of Neighbors Zine highlighting the work of Ritual Makers.

• We have a discount now on our 5 remaining 2026 Ritual Play Planners Get yours today !

Welcome to Chapter Ten of the Power of Neighbors Zine & Story Series: Artist.

The heat of the summer is upon us for those of us on this side of the hemisphere, and the local flora are bursting with flowers and midsummer produce. Thankfully, the trees are gifting us with much needed shade, because despite the heat, I can’t help but be inspired by the garden blooms to crack open my water colors and attempt to capture the beauty of the season. For a teacher, such as myself, summer has become a season, yes of rest and recuperation from the frenetic energy of the school year, but more so a season of creative exploration. The extended hours of sunlight offer for more time for slow and thoughtful paint strokes and the heat (though at times less than ideal) helps the paint dry faster allowing for more layers than the winter months might give. And it is through this creative respite that I am able to transmute the reflections of the past year into curiosities for the coming year. As I have been reconnecting with the sacred rhythms of the Earthly year, I have come to look forward to my summer time creative retreat and the sense of wonder, hope, and connection it tends to bring.

This month’s story explores the archetype of Artists. As such, we are wondering about what it means to create, what it mediums of expression we are drawn to, and what inspires us to create.

This month we spoke with:

• Tanya Joyce: Painter and Writer

• Sheila Coppola: Painter, Print-maker, and Arts Commissioner for the City of Tukwila

This season, we invite you to think about how you define creativity.

• What are your creative gifts and interests, and how do you incorporate your practices into your daily life?

• What inspires you to create and what mediums are you drawn to?

• Who do you share your creativity with?

• What would a world guided by care and creativity look like?

Follow along as we explore together.

Check out our Zine Scenes below and stay tuned for our upcoming ARTISTS story out August 14th!

• ARTISTS Story coming out August 14th

• JOIN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: SIGN UP NOW for “The Neighborhood” where we lead our cohort through a seasonal BINGO BOARDS that build community connections in our neighborhoods and community spaces. Join now and enter into a seasonal Bingo game, where the winner gets to donate to the mutual aid cause of their choice.

Download Zine BELOW:

P.S. YOU MADE IT TO THE END!

Here’s a little something special for you! Below is a picture of a flower petal sketched with pastels. Drawing is one of my favorite was to learn about plants, and this was from a couple years ago practicing for painting my delphiniums (I’m enamored with their blue-purple color!)

Creativity Invitation: Find a natural item from outside (leaf, bark, flower, rock) and spend some time drawing it focusing on the process and what you notice about the subject. What textures do you enjoy? What patterns do you see? What wonders come up as you draw?

The power of neighbors is a monthly series based on liberatory community roles: each month we interview community members who engage with that role and create a zine and a story based on their perspectives on their work.

Caregivers Zine viewable here

This month I interviewed two Caregivers who work with youth:

Tiff Sanchez, works as the Eastside Youth Organizer in Los Angeles, at East Yard communities for Environmental Justice. They also commit to the carework in their partnership and raising of their two children.

EYCEJ is an environmental health and justice non-profit organization working toward a safe and healthy environment for communities disproportionately suffering the negative impacts of industrial pollution. They are currently fundraising to help them continue their work to fight polluters in their communities such as those around the Boyle Heights warehouse fire turned biohazard also known as the Lineage catastrophe. You can donate here.

Franny Waldear, lives in Olympia, WA and has been a nanny for the last 6 years for youth ages 0-6 years old.

The messages I got about care giving from these interviews is that CARE is the act of pouring love into each other: assuming best intentions, expressing feelings, helping to feed and protect each other, and lovingly holding the structures where play, exploration, and mistakes can happen.

Quotes from Interviews

“ Human beings have this weird sense of wanting to own things. Imagine saying you own water? It’s ridiculous. And yet water shows us that when we’re not in relation with her, she can easily overpower us, mudslides and flooding she can even break through concrete. ” - Tiff

“I think children thrive in a container where they know their limits and expectations. I also believe that the container will change continuously as their brains and bodies grow and evolve. I try my best to be calm in the storm of learning how to have emotions. I aspire to be warm, affirming and curious while holding my own boundaries and boundaries around their safety and well-being.” -Franny

The Story of the Caregiver

I’m spending the day with Maggie. My friend pulls up the driveway in her old Honda Camry, with bags of supplies and Maggie strapped in her car seat in the back. It’s quiet here except for the sounds of someone fixing their house in the distance and the occasional birdsong. You can hear the gentle rustling of the leaves in the wind. My friend and her daughter live in the bustling city with concrete and a constant flow of cars past their house. I’ve been to many parks with Maggie in the city, watching her share the sandbox with other kids, swinging so high on a swing set that her eyes get wide at the top like she thinks she might fall off. But this is her first time coming here, and this place is much different than the city.

My friend parks and gets out of the car. She envelops me in a warm embrace, unbuckles Maggie and starts unpacking the bags of supplies: Maggie’s favorite snacks, a change of clothes, sunhats, a blanket she likes to nap with, and many other treasures. I lean down and say hello to Maggie: ‘We’re going to be hanging out here, just me and you today’ I tell her. ‘I’m going to show you the orchards, and the chickens, do you want to see them?’ I ask.

Maggie wrinkles her nose and looks at me mischeviously: ‘yes’ she grins. The little ringlets of her dark hair are up in two high pigtails, and she’s wearing tiny jean overalls.

‘Okay, lets say goodbye to your mom, she’ll be back soon!’

Maggie runs over and throws her tiny arms around her mom who reaches down to hold her. ‘I’ll be back soon Maggie-ray’ Her mom says smiling, ‘You have everything you need?’

‘Yes! My birdies are in the bag?’ she asks, lurching towards the bag to find her favorite little finger puppets.

‘Yes they are my love,’ says my friend, giving her a kiss on the side of her head. My friend heads back towards the car, mouthing ‘thank you’ to me as she leaves. I’m spending the day with Maggie so her mom can run some errands, and have some time for herself today.

First thing is to get all Maggie’s stuff inside so I hand her a smaller bag of snacks and ask if she can help me bring it in. We both waddle down the path to the front door under the weight of the supplies. Inside, i start pulling everything out to get an idea of what we have. Once the bag is empty, I put some snacks, a water bottle with a sippy lid, a blanket, sunscreen, and her sun hat back into the bag.

‘Do you want to see the place?’ I asked Maggie.

‘Lets see it!’ she replied.

‘Okay, I got to get some sunscreen on you first, Can you come over here?’

I squeezed the white goo into my hands and carefully rubbed it into her plump arms and on her cheeks.

‘Does that feel okay?’ I ask as she squeezes her eyes closed so as not to get any sunscreen in her eyes.

‘Okay lets gooooo!’ she said, impatient to explore.

‘Do you need to go potty first?’ She looked a little puzzled, so I said ‘Lets try before we go. It’s a long walk. You don’t want to be down there and have to go.’

We went into the bathroom, and she used the toilet, I held her up so she could wash her hands, and then we were out the door. I slung the bag of supplies over my shoulder, reached for her hand, and off we went. We walked down a path at a gentle incline with full bushes of nootka rose, and ninebark on either side. At the bottom as the field opened into the orchard, you could see chickens pecking the ground and scratching the dirt under the fruit trees. Maggie pulled in close behind my leg. ‘Chickens’ she said as if she had seen a ghost.

‘Yes, are you scared?’ I asked. She nodded her head up and down, still clutching my leg. ‘I was scared of them once too, but then i got to know them better, and now i don’t feel so scared.’ We decided to sit where we were at a bit of a distance so we could watch the chickens for a while. I laid out a blanket for us to sit on in the sunny field. I got her sunhat out of her bag and plopped it onto her head.

With children each moment is an eternity, getting each task done before the other, holding the context of another’s bodily functions, nap times, food schedules. Things can also move so fast around young ones with the emotions, attentions and activities moving under our feet. I wondered how much i let my own context lapse sometimes: forgetting to eat, not getting enough sleep, not drinking enough water.

Maggie giggled and pointed at one of the chickens wiggling around in a dirt bath.

‘You know the chickens take care of the trees?’ I asked

‘They do? How?’ asked Maggie looking from the chickens to me and then back to the chickens with an eyebrow raised.

‘The chickens scratch up the soil and leave their poops which makes good dirt. Dirt is food for the trees. The chickens will also help eat the bugs that might damage the trees, and the chickens get to stay cool in the shade.’

‘Ohhhhh’ Maggie replied.

‘They take care of each other, and then we get to eat chicken eggs, and apples from the trees. They’re making something we like, so then we want to help them out and take care of them too.’

Maggie looked up at me taking in this new information.

‘Its a pretty good system huh?’ I asked.

‘How do you take care of the trees?’ Maggie asked.

‘I bring them the chickens, and I prune them so their branches don’t rub together, and so the fruits stay low, I water them when it’s been dry for too long, I try to help them when I notice pests are eating their leaves, and I sit with them sometimes. I thank them in the fall when they give me fruit.’

‘That’s a lot’ said Maggie. “Can I go meet a chicken?’

‘Okay’ I said ‘but try to move slowly and be gentle so we don’t scare them’

We made our approach towards the chickens and the apple trees, and the chicken all seemed to scurry and scatter away from Maggie as she reached towards them with curious hands. As she came towards one that was golden like straw it kept its ground and when she got close enough, it pecked her on the ankle.

She jumped back and let out a wail of a cry. Her face was scrunched up in fear, so i swooped her up and brought her back to our blanket. She started to sob so I cradled her to my chest, whispering into her hair that though the chicken’s peck was scary and surprising, She was safe. That the chicken wasn’t going to hurt her. As she continues to cry and i try to rock her back and forth:

I began to think about how much our feeling of distress comes from an unmet need, not just for children startled by sqwuaking chickens but for humans of all ages. Someone needing touch, needing comfort, needing food, or needing relief from experiencing bodily or mental discomfort. I felt so empowered to try to provide Maggie with her need of comfort and safety in her moment of distress; but sometime I struggle when it’s the distress of a grown-up, a peer, a community member. Like when a neighbor yells at me, someone honks in traffic, when my coworker picks a fight, my first thought is not to offer them food or companionship, like I did with Maggie. Instead, I have been known to be reactive when faced with other’s big emotions.

Maggie’s breathing is slowing down, and the sobs have stopped. She even shot a teary eyed glance at the chickens again.

Maggie’s visit has taught me something new. Next time someone comes at me with aggressive words, maybe I can find a way to offer them food or water, or ask about their day. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep my composure in that situation yet, but I’m going to try. Later when my friend comes back to pick up Maggie, I stand in the driveway waving goodbye, and thinking about the little lessons we all teach each other through moving with care.

What’s coming next?

• Join us for our Summer Bingo! Build community connections with friends and families, and the winners will get to chose the mutual aid cause the proceeds will be donated to. Donate at our website, or contact us if you’d like to play along without donation: Learn more

• On July 24th we will launch The Power of Neighbors Zine highlighting the work of Artists.

• We have a discount now on our 5 remaining 2026 Ritual Play Planners Get yours today !

Welcome to the Neighborhood! Summer is officially here and so is our VERY FIRST Bingo Board for Community Building, and YOU don’t want to miss out!

This season we are focusing on our community of friends and family (chosen family included, of course). This weekend officially kicked off the start to our game, and we’re ready to get playing!

Did you know that by signing up and playing, YOU can get a chance to win the Bingo Pot and donate to a Mutual Aid project of your choice. This season we are flexing our relational muscles, building up our care networks, and getting out into our communities together.

Watch here for a quick run through of the layout of the game and the rules to participate!

Introducing the Summer Bingo Board!

How it works:

1. Join on our website to sign up to enter into the communal game.

2. Download your Board and start gathering bingos.

3. For every 5 in a row (across, down, diagonal) you get a bingo! Send us your checked off board and we will add your name in for each bingo. The more Bingos, the better chance!

4. Invite a friend (the more the merrier and the bigger the Bingo Prize!)

September 5th we will call the winner of the BINGO pot!

Build community connections, raise money for mutual aid, and bring JOY back into caring for our communities with BINGO BOARDS FOR COMMUNITY BUILDING.

The Winner will be chosen September 5th, gets to choose where the donations go!

What’s coming next?

• SIGN UP NOW for “The Neighborhood” where we lead our cohort through a seasonal BINGO BOARDS that build community connections in our neighborhoods and community spaces. Join now and enter into a seasonal Bingo game, where the winner gets to donate to the mutual aid cause of their choice. Learn more

• On July 15th: The next chapter of our The Power of Neighbors Story highlighting the work of Caregivers

• We have a discount now on our 5 remaining 2026 Ritual Play Planners Get yours today !

In this month’s Caregiver zine we’re talking about how we build spaces and cultures of care in our communities and in our world. One of my favorite parts of caregiving in the work that I do as an early childhood educator is through storytelling. We read books upon books each day, each with their own lessons, values, and perspectives that we get to share, discuss and question. And I am often reflecting on the many ways these stories impart wisdom on how we care for each other and the planet.

A big part of our classroom community culture is to be kind and mindful of all living beings, even bugs and crawly creatures that some people might not prefer. In our dominant culture, bugs and crawlies are often depicted as gross, disgusting, needing to be exterminated. In think-pieces, presidential, addresses, and social media posts grown ups can often use “buggy” terminology to de-humanize and villainize groups of people. And it has made me wonder what these narratives teach us about who and what deserves care. What is worthy and what is not. And where do these lessons begin and perpetuate.

In our classroom, we share stories that teach us that bugs, crawlies, and any things/places/people that might be different or new to us play a role in our world, that we all belong, and we all deserve care. It doesn’t mean that everyone has to be willing to hold a spider bare handed or be okay with a mantis walking along your arm, but it means that we approach all things with curiosity instead of fear. Because curiosity is a key component in building a culture of care. And thus, part of my personal pedagogy is questioning and building our relationship to some of the littlest creatures on the planet who often evoke some big feelings and fears from humans.

The scenes below are a short poem I wrote for my cooperative school as a way to get the children curious and comfortable with the local non-human neighbors to our playground. Now most days we have a group of children off on a “bug hunt” looking for a new bug to report back to the group.

Enjoy!

-Cait

Welcome to Chapter Nine of the Power of Neighbors Zine & Story Series: Caregivers.

The wheel of the year continues to turn, and we have officially entered into the Summer Season. The seeds we have been tending to over spring are now bearing fruit, and the challenge of this part of the year is harvesting what we can and passing along what is in overabundance. I know I have been eyeing my neighbors cherry tomatoes in hopes that they will be up for a mid summer swap once my cucumbers are ripe and ready!

This month’s story explores the archetype of Caregivers. As such, we are thinking about our systems, cultures, and models of care in the world. What does it mean to have a culture of care? What does it feel like to give/receive care? How do you show care to yourself and your community? How does your community care for you?

This month we spoke with:

• Franny Waldear, Nanny and Farmer

• Tiff S., Organizer and Activist

This season, we invite you to think about who is in your care network and how you show up for your community in roles of care. From watching a friend’s child to cooking a meal to dropping a note of gratitude to a neighbor, there are so many expressions of care in the world. What are your favorite ways to express care?

Check out our Zine Scenes below and stay tuned for our upcoming Caregiver story out July 15th!

• Caregivers Story coming out July 15th

• JOIN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: SIGN UP NOW for “The Neighborhood” where we lead our cohort through a seasonal BINGO BOARDS that build community connections in our neighborhoods and community spaces. Join now and enter into a seasonal Bingo game, where the winner gets to donate to the mutual aid cause of their choice.

Download Zine BELOW:

Share Rites of Passage Education

The power of neighbors is a monthly series based on liberatory community roles: each month we interview community members who engage with that role and create a zine and a story based on their perspectives on their work.

Connectors Zine viewable here

This month I interviewed two Connectors in the arts:

Tina LaPadula, is a theatre teaching artist who helped launch Arts Corps with other teaching artists, and now works at the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture as the Arts Education Manager.

Jean Yoon, lives in New York City and produces and manages public programming at an arts organization, where they are also developing a magazine. Outside of work, they organize DIY happenings/dance music events. You can follow Jean’s Substack:

Building Connections is complex, because on a larger scale it can be about audience and resources, but on the person to person level it’s about trust, reliability, reciprocity and accountability. In both interviews issues of money and access in the arts came up, but what was more striking was the heart behind a group of people who want to dedicate themselves to a shared goal, and connect amazing people with each other.

Quotes from Interviews

“Over time the web of connections between people and partners (who are also just people), becomes the critical infrastructure of exponential possibility and power. That’s how movements grow and change can happen.” - Tina

“I was both surprised and not surprised at the tide of hungry, self-serving energy that gets kicked up when you do something that draws people’s attention. On the other hand, my friend Sean out of nowhere [..] asked if it would be okay to test out this mobile bike tea and snack cart [at our party], and he did—he biked all the way out to the site we were throwing the party and set up his cart and a camp stove and kept water boiling all night. […] [I]t was so beautiful because it wasn’t something we had asked for or required, and it was such an excess, in the positive sense—there was this beautiful excess of love and creative energy that our friends donated to our party.”

-Jean

Opportunities Tina Shared:

WA State TAT Lab – Applications open now through July 28th. Teaching Artist Training (TAT) Lab - ArtsWA

The Story of the Connector

There’s something scary about reaching out, to someone you used to know or someone that you never really knew that well. It’s kind of embarrassing like an admittance that your life isn’t perfect and fully formed. How do you even know that they’ll want to hear from you or remember you? Do we bother sharing our hopes and dreams with each other? Do we take that chance at vulnerability?

I think we underestimate how the repetition of seeing the same faces again and again can create bonds. As we all churn around in a kaleidoscope of circumstance and timing, what meaning can we make of that? Do we know for sure when this is the last time you’ll ever speak to them?

The email sat in my draft folders for a week. It was a simple update on my life to someone I hadn’t spoken to in years. But to send that email without prompting, not knowing if he would be interested was what was stopping me. I was usually good at making connections. I had been planning DIY shows with bands for years: cold emailing bands and venues and people to borrow equipment from. It had developed a kind of camaraderie, me and the other people who planned shows. We would see each other at the record shop and the pizza place hanging our show flyers. We would ask each other for advice on bands or venues to book if we got stuck. We would share equipment and congratulate each other on our line ups.

Somehow that felt easy and this felt hard. I had decided that I wanted to get into publishing and now I was cold emailing people i met forever ago, to see if they knew of opportunities, and to ask advice. Each email took me an eon to write, typing and retyping while I tried to sum up my experience and trajectory. I was asking for their time. I was asking for their time to help only me. This wasn’t a community event I was planning that the venue, and the bands, and the people who came to my shows all wanted to see. It feels different when you don’t already have a following, when there aren’t already people believing in you. More importantly, it feels harder when you’re trying to make something happen all on your own.

That’s why I was starting these emails: it’s possible that I could find someone who was going to believe in me.

The man I was currently writing to had been a reader at a publishing conference that I had attended 10 years ago. I had gone up to talk to him after his reading and discussed the themes in his work. He gave me his card and that year we met up one time in a greasy sandwich shop by the East river in New York City to talk about the publishing industry. I wasn’t seriously considering becoming a writer then so I never contacted him again.

Next on my list was someone who had volunteered for porch fest I helped plan 7 years ago. I had heard from a friend of a friend that he was working at a small literary magazine now in Chicago.

Am I grasping at straws so distant that its laughable? Or does the fact that I know and remember these people make it worth the chance?

I think we underestimate chance in our lives. Who lives next door, or who we study or work beside, forms the landscape of our reality. I would have never gotten into booking DIY shows if my friends hadn’t all been musicians and artists in high school. None of this would have happened if a band hadn’t asked me to record vocals for them on that one album, or if I hadn’t ended up living in a punk house right after high school where I could book whatever show I wanted, and work with other people wanting to book shows. None of that happened alone, so I wanted to get into rooms of people who cared about the quieter acts of thinking and publishing and writing.

Even if I could have a simple email exchange, or get into a one off zoom meeting with someone who could point me in a good direction… maybe the connections would start to grow around me. Maybe a path forward would reveal itself if I just talked to enough people, learned enough about the industry, and found people who were willing to take the time to connect me.

In the DIY music scene, people did it for the love of the community and the connections were based on trust and who kept showing up. It is idealistic and in execution was not pure or without its flaws. But the act of offering something, working together, finding shared goals, and coming through… there was a kind of magic to that. We’re told that making it is all about your following, your name, your money. But maybe it can be about being willing to ask for help, and how you connect? I’d seen first hand what a handful of people who just believed in the same outcome could build together.

I hit send on the email, and pulled up a new message box to start a draft to the next person on my list.

What’s coming next?

• SIGN UP NOW for “The Neighborhood” where we lead our cohort through a seasonal BINGO BOARDS that build community connections in our neighborhoods and community spaces. Join now and enter into a seasonal Bingo game, where the winner gets to donate to the mutual aid cause of their choice. Learn more

• On June 22nd we will launch The Power of Neighbors Zine highlighting the work of Connectors.

• We have a discount now on our 5 remaining 2026 Ritual Play Planners Get yours today !

We have made it to our last month of spring before the wheel of the year turns into summer. The seeds we planted back in early spring are now blooming, and the hints of summer harvest are showing up in the garden beds. As they do, so do the pollinators of the garden, the birds, bees, and butterflies that help to keep the garden blooming as they nourish themselves.

This month’s story explores the archetype of Connectors. We are sitting in reflection about those who help join together ideas, resources, people, and groups to build networks and systems.

This month we spoke with:

Tina LaPadula, Arts Education Program manager for Seattle Office of Arts and Culture.

This season, we invite you to think about who and what you connect with in your daily lives. Who are the people and places you connect with in your neighborhood and social spheres?

Check out our Zine Scenes below and stay tuned for our upcoming story out June 10th!

What’s coming next?

• Connectors Story coming out June 10th

• SIGN UP NOW for “The Neighborhood” where we lead our cohort through a seasonal BINGO BOARDS that build community connections in our neighborhoods and community spaces. Join now and enter into a seasonal Bingo game, where the winner gets to donate to the mutual aid cause of their choice. Learn more at https://ritesofpassageeducation.org/product/join-the-neighborhood/

Download our Connectors Zine HERE:

The power of neighbors is a monthly series based on liberatory community roles: each month we interview community members who engage with that role and create a zine and a story based on their perspectives on their work.

Sustainers Zine viewable here

This month I interviewed two Sustainers:

Anne Bean, organizer around wealth redistribution and debt, who is creating a community space in Seattle called The Rose Cauldron.

AnnaLise, hosts creative community events around skillbuilding in fibercraft and organizes with @MaskbloqSeattle you can follow her @seriesofloops if you want to join a sewing or crafting meetup in Seattle.

In conversation with both of them, physical resources like food and housing came us as well as intangible resources like time, and learning to give and receive in balance. Sustenance is not the same as wealth, it is closer to a balanced reciprocity.

Quotes from Interviews

“I’m trying to redistribute a reasonable amount of my generational wealth back into community. In order to do that sensibly for myself and others, I redistribute a percentage of my net worth to a combination of a mutual aid fund that I run and others’ grassroots aid projects and personal needs. If you have generational wealth, I’ve found the Resource Generation website to be really helpful.”

-Anne Bean

“On the physical front, I want community to have unfettered access to nutritious food. Emotionally, I want community to have more downtime. These two are also so linked because of the ways in which having to labor under capitalism constrains our ability to feed ourselves. I’ve been thinking a lot these days about the relationship between capitalism, our food systems, disability, illness, and wellness. If we had more free time, it would be so much easier to feed ourselves and our communities nourishing, heart-filling meals to support our bodies and minds as we navigate life.”

-AnnaLise

Anne’s References in their Interview:

KC Davis’ STRUGGLE CARE

Dean Spade’s MUTUAL AID

Resource Generation

The Story of the Sustainer

Sustenance: what keeps us alive and what keeps us together. In order to know what is deeply and truly sustaining, we need a view on what supplies we need to survive, and an eye on where we are trying to go. Sustenance sounds simple, but it never is. In fact many of us have been tricked into believing that we don’t have inherent needs; that if someone is unable to sustain, it was because they somehow do not deserve it, not that the supplies of survival were withheld from them.

To study the Sustainer is to study where the need is, and the truth of the matter is that we all need supplies, so where are we going to get them from?

I was running down the road as the sun was setting, my backpack filled with supplies I was bringing back to my friends. There is something expansive about dusk, like the whole world is ahead of you and anything is possible. The street was quiet and suburban, lined with oaks and bushes of yew and forsythia. Everything looked how it always did, some houses with neat shrubbery and short lawns, lights on inside with a TV playing in the living room to no audience. Other houses were rough and overgrown: with debris strewn around the yard like bits of plastic and rusted metal, mixed with towels and newspapers disintegrating back into the earth. Sometimes you could see a torn tarp flapping in the wind. My heart pounding in my ears and the cool evening air rushing past my face, and I was grinning ear to ear.

I rounded the corner to my house. The one with the letters painted big on the door, and cloth pendants strewn around the garden like evidence of a party many months ago. Our yard was overgrown but it felt homey, like a place that was visited often if not cared for exactly. Inside a group of young friends huddled around a table chatting and listening to music on their broken down chairs in their sneakers and jeans. Everyone looked up and smiled at me when I came inside. I said hi and brushed past them into the kitchen to put away my food. In the kitchen there was a big pot of soup mostly eaten on the stove and crumbs covering the counters from bread slices brought home by our friend who worked at the bakery.

I started putting groceries away, popped into the bathroom to replenish some toiletries, and then poured myself a bowl of soup, and joined the others in the living room.

The walls of the living room were covered in art that had been fished out of trashcans, old posters, and zines. Everyone seemed jovial lounging and laughing around their finished soup bowls, crusting over on the table between them.

Do we have too little or more than enough?

None of us talked much about money, and it wasn’t cool to make any obvious displays of wealth. But we all knew that some of us had it differently than others. To be honest, it was kind of hard to even assess your own positionality. What was enough extra to be one of the ones hiding their wealth? What was little enough that you really had struggled?

All i knew is that we were all trying to make it on our own. It’s just that some of us were less on our own than others. We all were there on the shared values of making a culture of sustenance and joy. We made our own zines, wrote our own music, made our own food that was always ready to be shared. Some of us organized with food redistribution, some of us with harm reduction, some of us worked with books for prisoners, but we were all in on the same fight. We wanted our time back. We wanted our skills back. We wanted our community spaces back.

I think it’s important to ask:

What is being sustained? What do we contribute to? What are our values?

It’s not simple because more than one thing is often being sustained at once. Maybe its a vision for community who supports each other mixed together with a popularity contest? Maybe it’s valuing social value over wealth, but then the wealth is never talked about. It’s not going to be perfect. The way we currently imagine wealth will always creep back in: social clout, money, access, forms of domination.

Sustenance is not about wealth at all, but an ongoing sustained action. To keep working towards, to never be perfect.

It’s late and many friends have gone home, only a few sit on the couch quietly reading or working on a flyer. The chairs are all askew pushed out from the table and the dishes lay where they were finished. I start to gather the dishes to bring to the sink, which is already overflowing with dishes from yesterday and this morning.

There is always lots of work to do in the places where people gather. I try to organize the dishes to do a few of the big ones before i go to bed. I’m not going to clean them all because I know then I will be bitter tomorrow when the sink is filled again. Better to leave most of them dirty.

I’m lucky to live in this community who talks about big things over breakfast, and shares food with each other. It’s a community that wants to learn skills, and create things, and go outside. But there are also messes that never get cleaned, and priorities that aren’t aligned. Sometimes people get lost in the fun bits and forget that what it actually takes to sustain anything is labor.

How do we find the values that sustain us? How do we commit to the labor that can seem rote and mundane? What is it we really need to be sustained, and what are we willing to give up?

I think the answers are different for everyone.

Becoming a Sustainer guide book:

There are so many needs in our communities: food, housing, clothing, and medicine. But what we really need to be sustained in all these endeavors is our time back. We need time to invest in the labor that sustains us. We need to find joy in sustaining each other. We need to find balance between giving and receiving.

What skills do you posses? Can you cook for your friends? Do you have yard space and want to learn to grow food? Can you write and organize thought? can you divert waste streams back to those who need it? Can you plan events? Can you support youth and childcare? can you organize knowledge? can you play an instrument? do you know how to make your own clothes? Do you know about health and how to care for human bodies?

We have the skills to sustain ourselves if we start looking back to each other for sustenance. Being a Sustainer is about attention. We need to pay attention to what we already have and what we are working to develop in terms of skills.

Next the question becomes how can you share your skills?

What does your community need and where can your skills plug in? This can be a very difficult question. But it can become as simple as making sure your friends or coworkers or family members know what your skills are, and then following through to help them when they ask. A Sustainer is someone who follows through. I think we all know that we all can’t sustain everything, so this is about finding the particular things that you feel able to follow through on. What types of actions do you feel motivated to complete. Start there.

Once you have learned to give: you must also learn to receive. This means both addressing the ways in which you do not allow others to help you, and finding those who want to help you in return. How do you find a natural balance between giving and receiving? That is a balance so delicate, so imperfect. Its something we have to learn with our own bodies, and minds. The balance must be struck because we want to, not because we are trying to be ‘good’ or seeking redemption. Nothing in nature is designed to always give without taking.

We cannot learn how to give and receive in balance if we do not know ourselves, if we do not know our limits and our skills. If we do not have time to be present and connected to each other. There is a reason they are trying to steal our time, our attention, our time together. These are our most powerful form of sustenance.

What’s coming next?

• SIGN UP NOW for “The Neighborhood” where we lead our cohort through a seasonal BINGO BOARDS that build community connections in our neighborhoods and community spaces. Join now and enter into a seasonal Bingo game, where the winner gets to donate to the mutual aid cause of their choice. Learn more

• AnnaLise is hosting a mending night in Seattle on June 1st

• On May 27 we will launch The Power of Neighbors Zine highlighting the work of Connectors.

• We have a discount now on our 5 remaining 2026 Ritual Play Planners Get yours today !

As we move closer to May Day (and the cross-quarter day Beltane) we are firmly in the burst of spring. The flowers are popping with color, the trees, too, seem to invite celebration as their flowers fall like confetti upon the Earth.

This month’s story explores the archetype of Sustainers. We are sitting in reflection about those who help create, build, and organize resource and sustains. Those beings who have the skill of understanding the long haul and the necessary foundations that need to be in place in order to get there. Trees are more than just wood, leaves, and roots. They are an entire ecosystem, they are home, they are sustenance, they are teacher. Many trees live for hundreds of years, and their wisdom of the Earth is deeper and longer than any of us humans. So what can we learn from these essential sustainers, without whom we ourselves and so many others would not be able to breath, to eat, to live.

This month’s archetype had us reflecting mutual aid and resource sharing. This month we spoke with:

Annalise: An organizer of free fiber craft meet ups & a mask bloq who also uses their art for political fundraisers.

Anne: An organizer around wealth and debt who is helping launch a magical community space in Seattle, WA.

As we move through this season, we invite you to think about your relationship to resource. Where do you feel the most resourced? Where do you feel the least? What resources do you have access to in your community? What is missing? How do resources flow within your community?

Check out our Zine Scenes below and stay tuned for our upcoming story out May 11th!

What’s coming next?

• Sustainers Story coming out May 11th

• SIGN UP NOW for “The Neighborhood” where we lead our cohort through a seasonal BINGO BOARDS that build community connections in our neighborhoods and community spaces. Join now and enter into a seasonal Bingo game, where the winner gets to donate to the mutual aid cause of their choice. Learn more at https://ritesofpassageeducation.org/product/join-the-neighborhood/

Download our Sustainers Zine HERE:

The power of neighbors is a monthly series based on liberatory community roles: each month we interview community members who engage with that role and create a zine and a story based on their perspectives on their work.

Igniters Zine viewable here

This month I interviewed two igniters:

Arceli Hernandez, organizer and nature educator, check out @818hikes if you want to join their events in LA

Chris Rogers, an organizer and artist who you can follow at @trinketsorcerer if you want to join a sewing or crafting meetup in Seattle. He is currently on a hiatus, but is excited to start up sewing meetups in the future

I heard from both of them how many ideas and inspirations they had, and the constraints of time and body on what they were actually able to pursue. Both spoke of a desire to make more space for joy, creativity, and connection.

‘the community shows up to a space (regardless of the event type) and makes each event what it is- through the conversations, the energy people bring, the laughter and excitement. A space is just a space without these things. ’

- Arceli

‘I like it when people are able to see different forms of art being created in the same space. I feel like it opens doors to ideas. It draws out curiosity that lots of folks have within themselves but may be dormant due to the pain and suffering of the world.’

- Chris

The Story of the Igniter

I arrived at the dance studio sweaty and out of breath. It was the first day of class and I had trouble finding the studio. It’s difficult to navigate the vast college campus and a whole new set of classes. It’s hard to be new. The door into the dance studio was a heavy wooden door with the type of small glass window lined with a metal mesh that you often find in athletic buildings. I pushed it open and inside there was about 20 young students in casual dance attire stretching on the floor and a gaunt older man with tufted grey hair that looked almost sculptural writing on the chalkboard on one end of the room. The other students looked up at my late entry but he did not shift his gaze.

‘Sit down with the others’ his voice rang out beautifully projected without so much as a glance.

I walked over to the edge of the room and dropped my heavy backpack next to some others and plopped down onto the polished wooden floor. Nothing much was happening beyond the subtle movements of the instructors shoulder and the sound of chalk on chalkboard. I looked around at the high windows that ran along the back wall looking out over a busy city street several floors below. Some of the students were softly exchanging playful greetings as they stretched on the floor.

‘What is dance?’ the instructors voice rang out again.

We all shifted our focus to him at the front of the room. He was short but lean, wearing all black and standing in front of a chalkboard with several human figures drawn in expressive mid motion. There were no words on the chalkboard.

‘Before I teach you, I want you all to explore this question yourselves. For your first assignment, I would like you create a dance that includes other dancers. You must choreograph the dance without speaking about the dance moves. You can group with others in the class or try to recruit others to join you, but in one week you will have to present the dance in front of the class along with what the experience has taught you about dancing. I will release you early to go spend the rest of this classtime in a location of your choosing exploring these concepts.’

We all sat there in hesitation for a moment, before he said ‘you may go’

Some of the students got up to leave chatting casually while they did, while another student asked… ‘we’re not allowed to talk about the dance at all? can we ask them to be in the dance with us?’

‘no’ said the professor. ‘you should approach them with dance rather than words, but you may ask them to stay and work with you, but do not instruct them verbally on their dancing methods.

One student audibly gasped and a few that were standing to leave had stopped in their tracks. ‘what!?’ asked a girl in a colorful and slouchy puffer jacket, ‘isn’t that going to be incredibly awkward?’

‘you may feel awkward yes, but if that’s how you feel then that is a part of your answer to what dance is to you. do you think dance is only allowed certain places and times? What purpose does it serve in your life? There is a lot of information you can get from this exercise. I look forward to what you come up with.’

We all sat there in the scuffle of mild confusion for a while longer, but once the professor had turned his attention back to the chalk board: one by one the other students started filing out of the dance room mumbling under their breath to each other. The room was practically empty before i realized that I hadn’t even introduced myself to any of my other classmates. I stood up quickly, grabbing my jacket and backpack to see if I could catch anyone in the hall to discuss, but the stairwell was empty by the time I got there.

I looked out the stairwell window to the clear crisp late winter day outside, and suddenly was very aware of how I was going to walk down the stairs. Would i walk down with my back leaning against the wall the whole time? Would I bounce? Would I slink? And if I walked down these stairs strangely on my own was it a dance? There was a kind of intimacy to my solitude. And what about if someone saw me? would they join in? or frown disapprovingly? or smile and hurry past?

I tried a few animated steps before I resumed my regular style of walking down the stairs. Once in the lobby there were several students and professors milling around. I thought i could perhaps engage them, so I walked over kind of shrugging my shoulders up and down like a silly cartoon while making eye contact, but none of them gave me more than a glance. I was mortified. I scurried out of the building to perhaps take refuge in a place more anonymous in the city. I walked a few blocks down to a park, watching other park goers walk calmly and orderly, with a few children scurrying, running and playing nearby. I felt deflated from my first attempts. This assignment was incredibly difficult. I was imagining 1000 scenarios that could make this work but they all seemed improbable with a high risk of failure.

For a while I sat down on a park bench watching the few bees that were appearing alongside with the flowers of late winter. Their bodies buzzed about, looking over the few flowers, how do they choose which ones to land on? What patterns were they all making across the park?

I decided that if I was going to get someone to dance with me, I might have to be a bit more bold. I stood up, waiting to get my courage, and then suddenly I began.

I spun around, and moved my shoulder up and down like a wave, i traced imaginary paths of bees through the sky, scanning for someone to catch my eye. Many kept their heads down, continuing on with their day, but I finally caught the eye of a young woman with tightly curled hair who made a subtle sway in return. I smiled big and started walking towards her but she was off, back into the bustle of the city. I kept dancing, but I didn’t get any other engagement, so I sat back on the bench out of breath and needing recovery from the activity. As I watched, I started to see a flow in the way people moved through the park, shuffling onto their next activities, stopping to gaze at a flower, kids spilling into the green areas, dogs pulling on leads. It was easy to overlook the rhythms but if you just took a minute to find it, there were inspirations everywhere.

After my body was rested, I got up again and walked astride a dog owner pretending to walk my own imaginary dog, and the dog stopped to look at me, so did the owner. I turned towards them as well and pointed to the park all around me. This man with his dirty members only jacket and square eyeglasses perched beneath his scraggly eyebrows, looked around the park to follow my gesture. It was a genuine reaction. My body had a language and this moment of disruption no matter how small, had brought attention to a moment. I started up my dance and he kept walking his dog, so after a moment I stopped dancing too.

I was thinking of what I would tell the class, that dance marks a moment, that it’s a form of communication, a way to bring joy and creation and spontaneity to a moment. Dance is a transition, a heightened moment of creation that can not be sustained forever. It’s an effort to create a mood or an atmosphere in the presence of others.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a young man dancing with his headphones, I grabbed my bag and scurried over, pulling out my own headphones I stood maybe 15 ft away and started my own dance. I noticed that his movements were becoming bigger and more sure. I matched his energy, scanning the park for others who might join. A few passerbys smiled, one kid jumped and wiggled as they were walking past, and finally an older woman stopped and started her own little dance steps beside us. It was electric! suddenly there was permission to dance here. I wasn’t sure how I could lead them in choreography, but the three of us dancing to our own was definitely something.

It was then that I realized so many of our norms are created in silence. We teach each other through our actions, through what spaces exist and which ones don’t. We create a resonance with each other that we all have the ability to effect. No one can hold the whole weight of a moment alone, but someone does have to be the spark. You never know what could happen with a little effort.

What’s coming next:

• If you want to join ‘The Neighborhood’ it’s a biweekly drop in group starting in June for people who want to commit to building stronger connections with your neighbors, community, friends, family, and workplaces/schools. All proceeds from the group will raise money for mutual aid projects.

• On Monday April 27 we will launch The Power of Neighbors Zine highlighting the work of Sustainers.

• We have a discount now on our 5 remaining 2026 Ritual Play Planners Get yours today !

Welcome to Chapter Six of the Power of Neighbors Zine & Story Series: Igniters.

Spring is officially here in the Northern Hemisphere. The energy has shifted from one of introspection, reflection, and rest to one of action, wonder, and curiosity. We have passed through the seasonal portal, and have landed in early spring. Now the question is: what seeds are we planting? What ideas/projects/passions are we ready to bring energy to? How do we get things off the ground? How do we get started on working towards those dreams we were envisioning this past winter?

This month’s story explores the archetype of Igniters. We are sitting in reflection about those who begin things, those who ignite the spark of an idea, a project, a movement.

We asked artist and organizer Chris (he/him) and organizer/nature educator Xeli (she/they) about their relationships to starting projects and igniter energy.

As we move through this season, we invite you to think about your relationship to beginnings. What does it feel like to start something new? How do we move through the world with a beginner’s mindset? What are the challenges of starting many projects? What is magical about igniting a spark of an idea?

Check out our Zine Scenes below and stay tuned for our upcoming story out April 10th!

What’s coming next?

• Igniters Story coming out April 10th!

• Stay tuned for information about our upcoming community meet up series “The Neighborhood” where we lead our cohort through a scavenger hunt of activities that build community connections in our neighborhoods and community spaces.

Download our Igniters Zine HERE:

The power of neighbors is a monthly series based on liberatory community roles: each month we interview community members who engage with that role and create a zine and a story based on their perspectives on their work.

Dreamers Zine viewable here

This month I interviewed two dreamers: Artist Le’Ecia Farmer, check out her work here, and Tara Burke of the Witches Muse. It’s been interesting even defining a dream: is a dream something that comes to you in your sleep? is a dream a vision of a better world? is a dream a feeling? is a dream something that chooses you? For the purposes of this project we are defining a dreams in all the ways and defining a dreamer as one who imagines the world differently and lives in possibility.

Some themes that were strong in these interviews were the pressure of the way the world currently works, the freedom of dreams, and looking towards building a load bearing shelter to protect us and our dreams towards a brighter and kinder future.

Below are two of my favorite quotes from the interviews:

‘i think and feel that textural and metaphorical understanding is the way that spirit can make meaning in the world, and so tracking that through dreams and imagination shifts and shapes reality everyday’ -Tara

‘I refuse to give up all of my mental stability, physical wellness, spiritual well being to something that doesn’t give anything back to me, and just takes and takes.’ -Le’Ecia

The Story of the Dreamer

1. The Dream

I like to lay in my bed at night watching the shadows of the oak trees outside making patterns on my ceiling. I imagine lands where the trees danced among us like neighbors, and light moved around us, dappled and orb-like. I can amuse myself for hours in this way, the night fading to a deeper and darker velvet around me, as I become enveloped in sleep.

My mom tells me that my dreams could be messages, and I always felt my dreams were like a glistening prismatic hand reaching out to envelop me and draw me into the deep undercurrents of my non-waking life. My classmates say that dreams are for sleeping, but I’m pretty sure that dreams visit me in my waking life as well. Maybe it’s called ‘day dreaming’ and it’s childish, but I do not think that is right at all. There is a logic of dreaming that runs through us all deep like a river. It draws us to the things we like, they sparkle like a light across a pond, enchanting us to try something new. The dreams are connecting us in ways that is not quite able to be explained.

Last night I had a bad dream. My family was living in a world where every bit of color was being extracted from us, if we felt joy, someone was there to capitalize on it. We were living in the jaws of a monstrous and ravenous machine. We were never allowed to rest, and we were unsure of our future. There was an ominous feeling that someone always wanted more and more from us as long as we were alive. We were instructed that working with the mechanism we’re trapped inside is the only way out, but it never seemed to get us anywhere new. One day inside the machine i discovered that there were these little pin holes in the metal all around me, and it seemed like there was a whole shining world outside the machine that had seemed so all consuming. All I wanted was to get outside and see what else could be, but try as i might, the curved metal walls of the machine would not burst open. No matter how i kicked and screamed and clawed at them, they did not seem to budge.

I woke with breath caught in my throat and tears streaming down my face. I ran down the darkened hall to my moms bedside where she rose from her slumber and instinctively moved to soothe me. Her hand running through my tangled hair and wiping my tears from my reddened face; ‘It was only a nightmare my sweets’ she mumbled in her drowsy voice barely back from the brink of sleep. I let my shoulders relax into this comfort. If my mom said my dream wasn’t real, maybe there wasn’t anything to be scared of.

What is a dream after all? Dreams flutter around me recognizable in a shade of blue, or a passing thought. It’s hard to explain, i think my friends might laugh at me if I try to tell them. My dreams speak in a language of pattern and meaning that was not taught in school. A language that it feels like I once knew, or I can almost remember but not quite. Were I to find that blue later, or write my thought in my journal, maybe that dream would stick around; getting bold enough to brush my shoulder gently, or amplify through other shades, other textures.

I’m told not to worry about my dreams too much, but sometimes they haunt me… even the good ones. It’s like a dream can stick around and something about it changes me.

2. The Dreamer

As I got older I started thinking of myself as a dreamer. My dreams mature with me. The more conversation I make with them, making a vision into a reality, the stronger they become. A dream sometimes feels like it fills my heart up, and becomes irresistible. What am I supposed to be making? What is the relationship between the imagined and the real? It’s such fertile ground, feeling like soil filled with earthworms after a rain.

I reflect back on the truth of my re-occurring childhood dreams. Do the comforts of my mom holding me in the night outweigh the scary truth to the dreams? Or is that comfort only one step in a sequence that was never continued? Was my mom supposed to go out and paint the world with color again? What proportion of the world am I painting with color now?

The pressures of supporting myself certainly get in my way. I take the bus to work, and clock in at the event venue. I scurry through the black box halls with rolling carts filled with refreshments and table clothes. It can feel like I truly am living inside that childhood dream, trading parts of my life while always dreaming of ways out of it.

A dream is like a film laying over a mundane life: a context, a texture, a feeling. When I was young, I knew the dream we were living in and it scared me. Now I know that it is not just something in my dreams. The world is being swallowed by the ugly dream of only a few, supported by their devotees who fall in line building this ugly dream brick by brick. We live inside this dream, we wake up to it every morning.

I am called to see the dream for what it is. I am called to wake us up. When you are a dreamer, the dreams choose you. My dream wants us to be free. My dream is trying to show me the way.

To find the your dream is difficult because they are slippery and often fail to take shape, but each dream that a dreamer can bring into form is one part of a swelling ocean of dreams. We have to become un-entwined with the machine, bring texture back into our lives through the relationship to land, water, wildlife, plant, animal, and human. We are being sold that we are replaceable like a machine but really each moment we are alive is a miracle. It’s a miracle just to take another breath or think another dark thought and chose to keep dreaming.

The dreams of the of the few with so called power are there in our waking life, asking us to give up, waging psychic war against us. They are the voices in our ears whispering that we are not enough. They are the fears that tell us that is just too big a risk to be different, to think differently. We all hear them like phantoms hovering over our shoulders with their hot breath on our necks. They are the real nightmares we encounter while awake.

This dream is unnatural, and you can tell by the way we have been convinced that we are in fact machines, who could go on living forever by simply replacing a few failing parts. The poetry of living has been consumed by the grind. A body does not last forever, when it fails we are gone, and all that is left of us is the whispering secrets of what our lives really meant in the end. Do we like what this dream produces? Is this a dream we wish we could wake up from?

There are other realities playing out as we speak. The world is not as linear as they would like you to believe. The color is always creeping back in, and dreams of other ways are waiting for you in the wings, waiting for just the right time if you start to make space for them, start to learn their language.

So how do we take back the dream?

A dreamer should not dream alone, to dream alone is dangerous, the weight and the meaning of it… dreams were meant to be held by community. When we each hold one part of a mundane act, more can get accomplished than we know. The logic of dreams is not the logic of success as we know it. The logic of dreams is warm colors dancing through the leaves, and plunging your hands into warm water. It is a phone call to your friend, or a chance meeting that connects you with something bigger. We are in fact a network of dreams, and if we can stay afloat together there is so much we can build.

My mom may not have known how to put the color back into this world, but I am devoting myself to learning the language of dreams. It may have been lonely when I was young but I’ve found other dreamers and I’m not alone anymore.

I know now that if we want to get us out of this we have to dream together.

What’s coming next:

• Keep an eye out for our support group called ‘The Neighborhood’ it’s a group for people who want to commit to building stronger connections with your neighbors, community, friends, family, and workplaces/schools.

• On Friday March 20 we will launch The Power of Neighbors Zine highlighting the work of Igniters.

• Only 6 left of our 2026 Ritual Play Planners Get yours today !

Welcome to Chapter Five of the Power of Neighbors Zine & Story Series: Dreamers.

This month, we are moving through a seasonal portal from winter hibernation to springtime sprouts. The intentions and systems we have been creating this past winter season are almost ready to be tested and put into practice. But before we are able to meet the seedlings of the coming spring, we must give them time to root, and as they do we get to dream about what they might eventually blossom into. It is a time of potential & possibilities, of dreams & of shifting realities. Thus we are wondering what it means to be a dreamer and how we connect our dreams to our daily life and community roles.

This month’s story explores the archetype of Dreamers. We asked spiritual care worker, organizer, and podcaster Tara of The Witches Muse and artist Le’Ecia Farmer about their relationship to dreaming and imagining different worlds.

As we move through this season, we invite you to think about your relationship to dreaming. How do you make space for dreaming and imagination in your life? What systems and structures in your life/community need a dreamers-perspective? How do you dream collectively with your community?

Check out our Zine Scenes below and stay tuned for our upcoming story out March 9th!

What’s coming next:

• Our 2026 Ritual Play Planners are still available! Get yours now at https://ritesofpassageeducation.org/shop/

• The Power of Neighbors Story Chapter 5: Dreamers comes out March 9th

Download below image to print our Dreamers Zine.

The power of neighbors is a monthly series based on liberatory community roles: each month we interview community members who engage with that role and create a zine and a story based on their perspectives on their work.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Visionaries Zine viewable here

This month I interviewed two visionaries who are stewards at the People’s Exchange in Bremerton: Rob, who runs a weekly free produce distribution with the community he is part of, and Mary who grows food and hosts monthly mending nights. Part of the process of interviewing Mary and Rob was determining how we are defining the role of visionary, and what particular skills one might need to undertake such a task. Here is what I have landed on:

A visionary is one who visions better futures and then takes concrete steps towards those goals

The Story of the Visionary

It started in the neighborhood, eventually roads became impassible, planes were down, and as weeks and months went by, little by little the appeal of our moving screens and tablets with distant news were less enticing. We were always told that the end of an empire would be some glorious and violent moment of battle; but in reality it was infrastructure crumbling after decades of disrepair. A slow and painful loss of access to food, supplies, transportation, and healthcare that was never announced.

We still needed to eat, needed shelter, heat, healthcare, and clean water. We were so trained to expect these things to be provided for us in exchange for currency that so many of us had never raised livestock, grown food, built a shelter, chopped wood, or learned to make and administer medicine. There were those before that lamented these losses of skills in the modern world, but they were often seen as nostalgic of bygone times, and even if they learned those skills they were mostly viewed as a hobby. It turns out that those hobbists were essential.

But maybe it’s best to start at the beginning:

One day I woke up and everything seemed the same as it always had before. I could still buy my food at grocery stores, the roads were filled with potholes but passable, and my garbage was still removed from my community. I went to work, and I came home. I ordered in dinner because I was always too tired to cook, and i stared at my pile of laundry that I still had not cleaned, but really didn’t need to because I had enough clothing to go almost a year without washing anything except my underwear.

I scrolled on my phone, taking in all the horrible things happening worldwide: antics of celebrities, influencers, and normal people raging in the comment sections alongside and indistinguishable from bots. I switched over to bubble bump, bouncing colorful bubbles across the screen to rest my brain from the information onslaught, and then right back to scrolling again. I’m not sure how the change began for me, maybe it’s because my upstairs neighbors were old school, or maybe it was because of their friend who invited them to start, or maybe it was a whole network of people building with each other casually over time inconspicuously in our social networks. But either way that night, someone knocked on my door. I think i groaned audibly. No one ever came to my door unannounced except solicitors or con men pretending to be cable providers or city appraisers. I was already in my underwear and actually considered turning my lights off and pretending that I wasn’t home. After what felt like 5 minutes, they knocked again!

‘just a minute!’ i yelled while running to my closet to get something presentable to pull on before answering the door. When I finally opened my door, there were my upstairs neighbors Mr. & Mrs. Brugnara. He was wearing thick blue jeans with an old leather belt and a bowling shirt, and she has on a loose floral dress with her greying brown hair tied up in a messy bun.

‘hello!’ he exclaimed jubilantly, ‘how are you today?’

‘sorry for my appearance’ I scrunched my nose and looked down at my rumpled sweats.

‘it’s no problem’ he said.

‘we made you dinner’ Mrs. Brugnara said and pulled a tupperware, silverware, and a napkin out of her tote bag.

‘oh, i already ordered something.’ i blurted out, but then i thought better. ‘that’s so sweet thank you.’

‘It’s okay ‘she said, ‘bring me back the tupperware sometime and we’ll have tea.’

‘of course’ I said. ‘thank you, have a nice night’ and when I closed the door to my apartment the silence and calm of my space returned. My heart was still kind of racing and I went to put the meal into the fridge. It looked to be homemade pasta with sausage and parmesean cheese. The napkin was cloth: a brightly woven pattern of classical looking fruits nestled amongst trees. It was a bit weird having a stranger’s things in my apartment but this meal looked like a good lunch for tomorrow. I didn’t really think anything more of it.

Months might have passed after that, me looking at my neighbors empty tupperware and that fruit covered cloth napkin. I didn’t intend to keep them that long, but I also couldn’t imagine stopping in on a stranger for the offered tea. I moved her things off my table and onto my counter and back off my counter and onto my table more times than I could count before my annoyance got the best of me.

I think it was a wednesday evening after work, when i finally grabbed the tupperware and walked up the apartment stairs to Mrs. Brugnara’s door. I stood there hesitating for maybe a full minute before i got up the courage to knock. She opened the door surprisingly quickly. A grin broke out across her face: ‘glad to see you dear’ and she stepped aside to reveal her apartment with it’s heavy wooden furniture and dried peppers and garlic hung over her well-worn stove.

‘come in and sit a while’ she said. ‘I’m making dinner.’ It didn’t seem like much, but I did sit down and chatted with her casually for maybe 20 minutes while she cooked. Mr. Brugnara wasn’t home yet, and she seemed to enjoy the company. She asked if I enjoyed the meal, and I told her that I did. And although conversation did not flow, there was a sense of comfort in the silence and the few questions we asked each other.

Even after that night, it took months more of run ins with the Brugnara’s, and shared meals, before I began to meet others who cared for the neighborhood. And it was months after that before I was inspired to find my own ways to contribute.

It’s hard to believe in retrospect but returning that tupperware to Mrs. Brugnara was the moment i joined the neighborhood. I can’t imagine how I would be handling the quiet collapse of infrastructure now without my neighbors.

What’s coming next:

• Only 6 left of our 2026 Ritual Play Planners Get yours today !

• On Mon Feb 20 we will launch The Power of Neighbors Zine highlighting the work of Dreamers.

Welcome to Chapter Four of the Power of Neighbors Zine & Story Series: Visionaries.

This month, we are fully into the winter season, a time when the structures and systems we made to survive the winter are tested. The days are colder than before, but if we have tended to our communities of care, we can get through even the harshest times.

This month’s story explores the archetype of Visionaries. We asked community members Mary, a mending and repair organizer, and Rob a food organizer, about their visions for community and how we can re-imagine our relationship to waste.

As we move through this season, we invite you to think about what systems and structures have been supporting you through this season? How might they need adjustment? What is your relationship to waste, to compost, to transforming things into something else?

Check out our Zine Scenes below and stay tuned for our upcoming story out January 26th!

What’s coming next:

• Our 2026 Ritual Play Planners are still available! Get yours now at https://ritesofpassageeducation.org/shop/

• The Power of Neighbors Story Chapter 4: Visionaries comes out JANUARY 26th.

Download below image to print our Visionaries Zine.

The power of neighbors is a monthly series based on liberatory community roles: each month we interview community members who engage with that role and create a zine and a story based on their perspectives on their work.

Facilitators Zine viewable here

This month I interviewed two facilitators: Jamae, who is the director of a parent participation nursery school in San Francisco called Sunset Co-op Nursery School, and Emnet who is a community advocacy programs manager at Seattle’s LGBTQ Center. With facilitating experiences ranging from preschoolers to adults, it was beautiful how many concepts they both shared about facilitation resonated around similar themes. There was such grace, care, and poetry in both interviews that I hope to capture in my story below.

If you’re interested in a free resource with facilitation with survivor centered support around relationships check out the connection project in Seattle.

If you want to find out more about Jamae, you can follow on instagram @mamaladysmix

A facilitator is one who guides through challenges, conversations, decisions, and growth.

The Story of the Facilitator

Many have called this land a utopia, but I don’t experience it that way. I suppose it does stand in stark opposition to the values of other nations, but my life is just as human, just as mundane, as anyone else’s. Calling it a utopia makes it sound like I’m supposed to be maniacally happy, but happiness is not what is at the center of our governance: challenge is actually the core of all we do here. As we all might know, challenge is not particularly comfortable…

I was raised by a teacher, and a trash collector. Both professions have their rewards and difficulties. My mother, the trash collector, is tasked with removing things from places where they were no longer useful and finding new places for them to belong. Her job takes a lot of muscle, ingenuity, and an ability to problem solve on the fly. She works in a team and is often tasked with cleaning up messes. Her work is physically strenuous and sometimes smelly. They joy of it, she says, is seeing nothing go to waste, and getting to see the world as a resource if you are creative enough.

My father, who is a teacher, is a culture keeper. He works mostly alone with groups of youth. He is tasked with teaching belonging, modeling how to treat each other, and cause and effect. He actually teaches about the ecosystems we live in and participate in, but he tells me that teaching is much deeper than what is on the surface. The values of our community are embedded in lessons that seem to be about science. He teaches alone so his collaborators are always the young people. He really does embody ‘staying with the challenge’. Balancing each youth’s own wisdom from their lived experiences with the values of life that our nation supports is a difficult task. My father often struggles with ethics, what community really means, fostering collaboration rather than competition, and the weight of the responsibility of raising young minds. I can tell that working in an industry of thought and leadership is not easy on him.

I myself am 16 years old, and have a younger brother who is 11. I don’t know what my role will be as I grow up, but I do know that I’m supposed to focus on what is useful, and what conditions would be necessary to challenge ourselves to be better. I know that it’s important to be open to change. Right now I love playing in the wetlands, catching salamanders and watching leaves decay into duff, I guess i share my mom’s ability to tolerate muck and mess. I’m still trying to learn how I can be of service, but I’m not even completely sure who I am or what I want exactly.

I was recently paired with a facilitator. We are each paired with a facilitator at 16, to help guide us on our path towards finding our role. A facilitator’s job is to try and help you move through times of particular challenge. We see it as a little extra care and padding in a time filled with so much growth and change. It’s really important create environments conducive to positive change. However, the facilitator that I’ve been pared with is only 17, and they are new to the role! How am I supposed to be led towards my path by someone who is so new to theirs!? They are figuring it all out alongside me, but my dad says that some of the best learning happens like that… alongside each other. My facilitator told me that we were paired because they’re hoping that i can step up into more of a leadership role in my own life rather than just following other’s leads. I do tend to be pretty go with the flow.

My goal right now is supposed to be finding appropriate challenge…I guess that means pushing myself beyond what is comfortable… but why would anyone want to do that? The idea is supposed to be that we have enough safety in our community to be able to push ourselves like that. This rite of passage is supposed to connect me more with my agency as a maker and creator of something.

The thing about learning to challenge yourself is that it’s actually really tricky: you don’t want to create challenge just for the sake of challenge. You also don’t want to try and change your own nature just for the sake of creating more strife in your life. First I’m meant to visit other’s homes so I can see other ways of living than what I’ve grown up with. Apparently being young can sometimes lead to a very slender worldview shaped by your home life. Everyone has a home here. If there is someone who doesn’t have one… we help them. A person can’t challenge themself to reach their full potential if they’re so cold all the time, and don’t have anywhere to keep their belongings and tools dry from the rain. We learn that really young: to value a home.

In order to find some people to ask if I can see into their homes I am going to a city shared meal. We’ve also been taught that it’s important to share food. We think and work better with a full stomach, but we are also nicer to each other. It will be a good place to try and meet people different from me, who might be willing to share their journey. Some times at the city meals when a few people are talking too much, my father will say loudly: ‘it’s time for the quiet ones’ and we will all fall silent: a hush on the dining area, waiting for the slow wisdom of someone who is normally less inclined to speak. The quiet ones are my favorite to hear from. It’s quiet in the wetlands where I like to play. Sometimes the best things are happening in the quiet.

This city meal is being hosted in the Crimson town square and there are tables of food set up on the cobblestone town center, and chairs and tables have been carted out in addition to the usual picnic tables under the tall douglas fir trees. The tables all make little clusters and some are in the shade, some are in the sun, some on smooth terrain and some on rougher: something for everyone. I’ve arrived before most people, I took a city bus here, and I like to be early. My dad is already by the tables setting up the food because he’s been volunteering for this duty the past few months. Maybe 10 other volunteers are scurrying back and forth across the cobblestones setting up chairs and moving platters and supplies out of the three cars parked near the buffet with their trunks gaping open for ease of movement. There are a couple old men playing checkers at a picnic table and a middle aged woman reading a magazine who is sitting across the square from the men on a bench.

I can be painfully shy sometimes, and after saying hi to my dad, and grabbing an apple to snack on, I go and sit by one of the folding tables in a shaded area by myself. I am not sure how I am supposed to start these new conversations here, much less get invitations to anyone’s house. Like I said, I prefer the quiet ones and they seem the most difficult to draw out into enough of a conversation to get an invitation. I sit in my area watching the people start to stream into the square for the city dinner. There are parents pushing strollers, and groups of teens with skateboards cracking jokes with one another. A couple elders rolled up with caretakers helping them to get seated and bringing the ones who struggled with mobility, meals right to their tables. A young family came and sat at my table in the shade: nodding hello to me, but then getting right back to feeding their toddler, making funny faces with each other, and telling each other about their days. I felt half invisible, watching the people stream in and out. I wished my dad or someone else would announce that it was time for the quiet ones, but that didn’t seem to be happening today. I finally went up to the buffet to fill my plate with pasta salad and chicken, and my dad introduced me to the other volunteers. I greeted them and mumbled some thanks for the food, but I was feeling so mad that I was having such a hard time striking up conversation today. It almost felt like the more pressure i put on myself to talk, the less possible it seemed.

When I got back to my table, I spotted my facilitator climbing off his bike across the square. As he was locking it up, I turned away so I wouldn’t be recognizable in my failures. it didn’t work because he came right up to me and asked how it was going. ‘I haven’t talked to anyone’ I admitted, face burning red. ‘Okay’ he said, ‘do you think you need an introduction?’ and even as he said it, he was scanning the area for potential candidates. ‘I have just the person. come on’ and he gestured over to a woman sitting at a funny red metal table in another shady area.

Being a facilitator seems like a hard job. They have to be so attuned with what a person wants and needs. Balance seems like such a difficult ideal to live with. We’re all so human with our messy thoughts, our feelings, our hopes and our dreams. Balance seems impossible, but I guess since we’re supposed to be focused on challenging ourselves it’s not about being balanced all the time, it’s more about knowing how to right yourself once you have fallen.

‘This is Carlotta,’ he said

‘Hi Carlotta,’ I mumbled and looked down at my feet.

‘oh you look like you need someone to sit with’ Carlotta patted the seat next to her.

‘I have to get my plate.’ I said

‘You go ahead and get that, I will be right here.’

As I turned to get my things, My facilitator caught my eye.

‘you’re going to be just fine’ he winked, and said ‘i’ll be right over there if you need me’

And he left me to learn about Carlotta, who it turned out, was also interested in learning about me.

What’s coming next:

• Only 7 left of our 2026 Ritual Play Planners Get yours today !

• On Wed January 21 we will launch The Power of Neighbors Zine highlighting the work of Visionaries.

This month, we officially enter winter, a time when the light is now growing once again, and we are invited to dream and scheme about what we hope to grow in the coming seasons.

But planning, strategizing, and prioritizing can be challenging, especially in the context of community visioning and learning where conflict is bound to occur. How do we dream and learn together to build the systems and structures we are yearning for? Who helps guide us through conflict and offers healing balms to our growth edges? What foundations, systems, and strategies can we build to better support ourselves and our communities?

This month’s story is inspired by community facilitators Jamae Tasker and Emnet Getshun about their experiences of facilitation and what it means to facilitate a space.

As we move through this season, we invite you to think about what projects you want to continue or embark on this year. What structures are needed to facilitate its development? How do these projects or visions align with your visions for the world?What are the norms and values of your community that need strengthening or support?

Check out our Zine Scenes below and stay tuned for our upcoming story out January 5th!

What’s coming next:

• Our 2026 Ritual Play Planners are READY for order! Get yours now at https://ritesofpassageeducation.org/shop/

• The Power of Neighbors Story Chapter 3: Facilitators comes out JANUARY 5th.

Download below image to print our Storytellers Zine.

The power of neighbors is a monthly series based on liberatory community roles: each month we interview community members who engage with that role and create a zine and a story based on their perspectives on their work.

Storyteller zine post viewable here

This month I interviewed two of my collaborators who have used our ritual play planner: Cait from Rites of Passage Edu and Rheanna Pless from Rhecycled. Since our Ritual Play Planner Pre-Orders are available now, I’ve been thinking a lot about how this planner has helped me connect to time as a storyteller. Each season is a chapter of our lives and each month brings with it new themes and lessons to shape our future selves.

The work Cait and I have been doing together the past 4 years has indescribably shaped who I see myself as and what futures I believe are possible. That type of change is the gift of the storyteller: to bring us to other worlds, to provide us with story arcs and help us identify what roles and characters we want to be in our life.

A storyteller is one who crafts and shares tales with the collective.

The Story of the Storyteller:

Gather round the fire, because tonight I’m going to tell you of one of the most epic ingredients in all great adventures; one that is often overlooked; and that ingredient is TIME itself.

Now all great storytellers know how to utilize time, where to speed up the story, where to pause for dramatic effect, how long it should take for the protagonist to complete their epic quest. A quest cannot be epic without the passage of time, the toil and mystery of trying to get your story to turn out in your favor. Time is a great transformer of circumstance. It does not move linearly but cyclically: sometimes change is through large repeated effort over time, and other times circumstances diverge quite suddenly. This is what is so compelling about the adventurers relationship with time: we never quite know how time will be passing, only that it will pass. The storytellers understand the role of time in an epic tale, but often adventurers themselves can loose the plot of time if they’re not paying attention.

If you wish to be a great adventurer, bending the world towards care, safety, and joy like many before you, YOU will have to master time. To learn the secrets of time will take dedication, curiosity, and a little whimsy. Like all subject matters worth the attention of the greats: time brings mystery as well as great reward. As you dedicate to time’s secrets you will start to see the world in ways you never would have considered before, and it just might be the thing that sparks your great quest.

The journey will not be easy. The secrets of time have been lost to many of us, we’ve lost our record keepers and oral histories. Many of us no longer pay much attention to the seasons and what their meaning is in our lives. Time is seen as linear and moving in one direction. We are taught to be focused on progress and productivity. I have heard that the great irony of this of course is that a lot less gets done. In these modern days, time is spent rather than savored; tasks and days slipping together lost in a sea of short term projects; and the epic tales suffer for it. No one wants to be told a monotonous story where every day repeats the same lessons. What grips the listener is the quest with a view longer than the present moment, something that takes us out of our daily lives and reminds us that reality itself can be shaped.

The great masters of time know that following the seasonal rhythm will reveal to you that no line forward is linear: time is a forward spiral. It can slow down and speed up, depending on how present you can be to your own changing needs and cycles. Each journey you go on is in its own season; beginnings overlapping endings and middles. We all live in multiple timelines of relationships, goals, jobs, phases. It is not desirable to finish everything all at once, but to allow the building and falling apart to intermix and allow space for a full expression of emotion. Because time gives us the gift and the grief of having and loosing, moving forward and falling behind. Time also encourages us to experiment and go places that might feel like a dead end: because every new undertaking may be part of a bigger story that time has not yet revealed to us.

Time its self is a material needed for every dream, every promise, and every goal, which makes it a most valuable commodity. Now, time isn’t the only ingredient you need to shape reality: you may also need courage, vision, luck, and circumstance; but many of these too are developed or can be created using the medium of time. You’ve likely heard many times of the focus and attention a hero dedicates to honing the skills needed for their path: none of these can be accomplished without first developing a deep relationship between your own will and time. Time cannot be rushed, it has its own cadence and way of unfolding for each of us. Time brings change.

The changing of the seasons apparently holds some practical poetic knowledge about the passage of time. Spring is to try new things. In Summer we see how they turn out. In Fall we grieve what isn’t working. In Winter we integrate the last three seasons, so you’re ready and nourished to start new in spring. Time is a circle that we move through. It leaves its marks on our bodies as it moves through us: a wrinkle, a new scar, the growth of hair and nails; but each spring the cyclical nature of time will call back a resonance of every other new beginning in your life, and in fall you may be flooded with memories of the past or your ancestors celebrations of late summer harvest. Time is truly a tricky medium.

I am no master of time, so if you dream of being a great adventurer and this is a discipline you wish to pursue you’ll have to study else where.

I have heard that there is a planner available for those who wish to begin their journey. The Ritual Play planner will begin your studies on the 21st of December, with WINTER. Visit it through this portal to learn more. It’s been told that this planner will also support your quest to reflect on how your actions help or hinder what you want and who you aspire to be.

What’s coming next:

• Our 2026 Ritual Play Planners are at the printer. Ritual Play Planner Pre-Orders are open now!

• On December 19th we will launch The Power of Neighbors Zine highlighting the work of Facilitators.