context is decisive.

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of attending a training institute onPositive Community Norms in beautiful Big Sky Montana, followed by a week of deep watering at Naropa in Boulder with Barbara Dilley and the Contemplative Dance Practice tribe.

Both of these places are storied and significant to me — my astrology friends would appreciate the Saturn cycle that seems to link them.

Montana was a central part of my Naropa senior project, Gaia’s Witness, which entailed a month of backpacking with a troupe of women, bearing witness to and creating performance from the toxic and complicated abandoned copper mine, the Berkeley Pit.

When I left Naropa in 2000, it was with a tremendously rich set of questions and disciplines — all combining to foster a radical view of human sanity and its role in creating a more compassionate and inspiring world.  Fast forward to 2013 (the time of my Saturn opposition for those who are keeping track) and we are here in Portland with the lovely Be Space just pushing up through the soil.

I have my own tiny story about the time between then & now.  In that story, a young-warrior-artist-in-training leaves her teachers and sets off into the world to test her assumptions. Confusion arises and falls away; inspiration arises and falls away. She dreams of a golden thread.

Bearing witness at the Berkeley Pit was a complex and devastating practice, but returning thirteen years later to train in the Science of the Positive revealed a fresh approach to much of what confronts us collectively.  Further, the years I spent at Naropa introduced me to a ground of being that has personally sustained me ever since, but returning last week with this tiny growing creature of Be Space in my heart & mind unlocked a broader sense of purpose and service with my training.

In one of the improv structures that Barbara has developed over the years, we are invited to dance “on behalf of”.  My dance – both in and out of the studio – is on behalf of a still-emerging community of people who may or may not ever meet, the people who come through Be Space each week, and the people who will encounter each other at the upcoming Life.Art.Being festival.

It is such a joy to be shaping a context in which the questions and disciplines of my training can come to the foreground for the community to explore together. Creating together with people who are equally loving of the quiet mind and authentic expression is a gift I hope more and more of us can share.

I trust that our time together in Space will allow us to engage questions and disciplines which can generate a new realm of possibility…a context we can share and adapt as the world’s needs – and our own – continue to evolve.