Tending the Relational Field

​I have seen a noticeable increase in personal relational misunderstandings since the war in Gaza broke out. Some will say this is due to astrological influences, retrogrades, solar flares, etc. But I think it also speaks to the reality of the relational web that weaves between all life on this planet. I remember feeling a similar sense of dis-ease when the war in Ukraine broke out. It was an awareness that when large-scale harm emerges, it impacts the relational field in ways that are not entirely or traditionally logical.

Yes, we can reduce what is happening to logic… of course when massive amounts of intergenerational trauma, extreme public divisiveness, and abhorrent losses of life are happening, there are psychological impacts that affect the way we show up for our immediate community in tangible ways. And yet, I also feel below the layers of logic to a more subtle realm, the energetic threads of the forces of creation that connect all things as being stretched or torn or distorted in ways that are challenging what I sense as the larger relational field across the entire planet. This includes the non-human realms that have no understanding of geo-politics or historical trauma. I remember feeling something similar the summer that seemed like a tipping point environmentally when the first local wildfires began a yearly trend of devastating fire. Now that I look back on the pandemic, there were not so subtle ways in which this played out in the collective - it was so extreme that I wasn’t even aware of the subtle layers of what was happening, because I was so distracted by the gross issues we were facing.

And there is something to be said about dropping below the surface of things and feeling into and tending the subtle. In my own movement practice I am often feeling like I am weaving or tending to threads of connection, which have always been reminiscent of the Wyrd that the Norse saw as the threads that wove past present and future. This image became so strong for me since the war broke out in Gaza that I started re-watching “A Discovery of Witches”, which has some amazing imagery that reminds me of the Norns weaving the Wyrd.

What gives me hope in the face of these massive disturbances to the relational field is that if things as atrocious as this war, the impact of a global pandemic, and the dire environmental circumstances we are facing can affect the field, so can the patient tending of the field with love and compassion. In fact, I deeply feel this is what keeps the relationship field as strong as it is, those strong human hearts who seek to find understanding, reconciliation, restorative justice, compassion, protect sovereignty with dignity, etc.

And this is why tending the ancestral field is so critical... they are critical allies in the relational field and in fact most of what needs tending in the ancestral realm is what we are facing today - gross violations of the relational field. Their wisdom in this tending and healing helps us heal and tend our current circumstances.

As I feel the relational crunchiness with my immediate community, I realize that this is the part of the web that I can tend to, with the support of my ancestral allies, and, yes, it may not be ending a war, but it does support the integrity of the larger web.

What do your spidey senses feel when they extend out into the larger web of connection?