This Sunday: Expand the Container
How the *&^% do we hold it all? | Community Workshop
Every day it is something new, some fresh, inconceivable horror. Meanwhile, we must tend to our own lives, with their specific external and internal demands.
The question floating everywhere now seems to be: “How are we supposed to hold it all?”
We will expand the container.
Join me this Sunday, July 6th at 10am PDT | 1pm EDT | 6pm UK for an hour of soul-tending in community to explore this theme of expanding the container. The registration link and details are below.
They are placing more on our backs than we can carry. We will build stronger muscles.
They are adding more to our plates than we can digest. We will grow bigger stomachs.
They are pouring more shit into our alchemical vessels than we can process. We will expand the container and feed the cooking fire.
Right now, the task is to mature alongside this moment.
And we will.
In our upcoming gathering this Sunday, I’ll share a short reading from James Baldwin and speak about what I mean by the need to “expand the container.” We will journal silently on short prompts, and then share together all about growing to meet this moment.
As always in the SELF & SOCIETY community, this may be personal or it may be collective. Regardless of where our bodies reside in this world, we are alive together in this moment in history, trying to make sense of the day to day.
So we will gather together for one hour. We will grow alongside the chaos and we will meet this moment together, transformed.
“I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering—enough is certainly as good as a feast—but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch his manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth—and, indeed, no church—can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable. This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be borne.”
-James Baldwin, 1962
This Sunday, July 6th at 10 am PDT | 1pm EDT | 6pm UK
One hour of workshop, contemplation, and community ritual
Registration link below, beyond the paywall. Please join us live if you can! A replay will also be available for paid subscribers.
If finances prohibit you from being able to join, reply to this email or send me a brief note at satyadoylebyock @ substack.com. I’m happy to offer a complimentary subscription.
If you are already a paid subscriber, there is no additional fee to attend; these monthly workshops are a perk of your subscription.