Guest Post

Do women feel included in narratives about soul work when the loudest voices are from men? MEA alum Douglas Tsoi and Wisdom Well subscriber Jennifer Villeneuve are friends and colleagues at Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with Stanford’s Graduate School of Education focused on kids' well-being and lifelong engagement with learning.

I float in that place Between slumber and stirring In my Liminal sleep.

As I slide the slippery slope toward retirement, I’ve tried lots of novel activities to keep my brain sharp and engage me in the way my career has. Unfortunately, most of the standard “hobbies” I tried were quickly abandoned because I compared myself to experienced writers, artists, singers and musicians.

(Adapted from The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul - September, 2021 - by Connie Zweig, Ph.D.) I trained as a depth psychologist and spent my career exploring and writing about the shadow, a name for the personal unconscious coined by Carl Jung.

Chip’s Note: My two co-founders, Jeff and Christine, were recently in Santa Fe brainstorming how we might design our new 2,600-acre ranch there to become our first U.S. MEA Regenerative Community. The property is located in the Galisteo Basin which has a fascinating cultural history. While he was there, Jeff started conjuring up this poignant poem about the occasional “fantasies” many people have of Santa Fe.

For the past quarter century, I’ve been on a journey to tend the soil and soul of communties by bringing community-supported agriculture and biodynamic farming to communities far and wide. It’s so clear to me that we should be more connected to the earth and each other and through those connections, we nourish ourselves, the land and society.

My father grew up on the shores of a small town in Puerto Rico. A little town fondly called Boca Chica. Small mouth. He often referred to it however as “small kiss” as the memories from that beachside town still softly kiss his forehead everyday.

Easter is important to me as a Christian. That said, I believe it contains a powerful message for all people, no matter your religious beliefs or if you have any at all. All great teachers and prophets, even those who rely on science and psychology for their inspiration, contain a similar positive life view if we chose to see it.

You were first introduced to Lisa Carmel a few weeks ago when she wrote a guest post called, “How Do You Use Your Voice?” She’s a very active member of the MEA alumni community having come to Baja for both a workshop and Sabbatical Sessions while also participating in MEA Online.

Chip’s Note: Mike Land traveled from Texas to Baja by himself and left two weeks later part of a new family. Yesterday’s Wisdom Well featured Mike’s rock balancing abilities. Here’s an email that he wrote a day after he left Baja to his fellow Sabbatical Session friends.