a relationship ecology response to "what do you do?"

i used to cringe at that question. now i use it as an invocation to question our monolithic pattern of work.

Many thanks to the various indigenous teachings about the medicine wheel and the wisdom of widening circles as spoken by Rilke,

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not ever complete the last one,

but I give myself to it.

Rainer Maria Rilke

to bring to you an expression of a relationship ecology form that tells a story of what I do in the world.

In this context, “do” is less about a what you are, and more about the embodied expressions of life through the seasons, spirals, and cycles. When “do” is a label or identification of a person’s value, we ignore the real beauty, complexity, and depth that permeates our do as the action of being alive.

There is a deep foundational element to the way I hold what we do as the pursuit of ones destiny, also known as our soul work. This ancient, enduring tradition is not the same as a superhero destiny where one person is meant to save the world. It is the recognition that all of us have been named as purposeful in the dance of life.

We each have a part in the play, and as we reclaim modernity as composting material, we nourish a future that gets bored by celebrating the best and is instead, fascinated by the gift of the specific.

The specific points to our unique contribution, our piece of the puzzle. It is the combination of what we didn’t inherit as well as what we did. The specific points to our heartbreaks, the disconnections we’ve faced, the natural impulse to reckon with our greatest pains. It is in our own healing journey, our longings, where we begin our way back home.

In the map I drew of my work, I have three circles enfolding each other. The inner circle is the foundational work I do with my intimate relationships. This in some ways, is my most important work. It is through this work that everything else sprouts out from.

In the inner realm, I wrote: truth and mirrors, shared practice, ritual and ceremony, and lastly feeling. Although they all sit in different quadrants, I see this as more of a spiral rather than a stark seasonal project. For example, in the widening circle after the center, there is the circle that represents the offerings to the village & the learning and practices for these offerings.

In the spiritual/winter quadrant, I have storytelling. In the mental/spring quadrant I have developing co-learning labs. In the physical/summer quadrant I have giving and receiving. In the emotional/fall quadrant I have temple, sanctuary, and rest. Of course I am not resting everyday in the fall. What I mean when I say each circle is a spiral, is that I recognize that transformation comes through an arc of change.

For a tree to grow, it requires each season. For the elements to complete a cycle, they must move from the growth of wood, to the expression of fire, to the accumulation of earth, the refinement of mental, into the grief of water for the growth of wood to emerge again.

So each reverberating out circle has within itself, its own cycle. If you are listening to this audio, I encourage you to take a look at the visual component. It is much easier to understand visually.

Recently, when people have been asking me what I “do?” I’ve been thinking about this image. Rather than getting defensive, I’ve started to engage people in a dialogue of seeing our “doing” as a much more interesting form of intimacy.

To close, I’d love to see your version of this form. If you’d like to email me what you create you can do so at cattailscomix@gmail.com

Thank you!