Julie mentioned Spirtweaves a few posts back, so I thought I’d weigh in here on the morning after the weekend before. For the third time, possibly fourth, Bettina Rothe brought Michael & Anneli Molin-Skelton to Vancouver. Three dozen of us gathered in a church hall on the city’s west side, sun-splashed and spring-scented, showers of cherry blossoms carpeting the sidewalks. The workshop was called Rites of Belonging, and Bettina has ensured that for one weekend a year these two gifted teachers belong to us on Canada’s west coast. Fortunate us. Blessed us. They build, hold and sustain ritual space quite magically – equal partners, co-creators, two voices & embodiments weaving the mystery with sing-song poetic interplay, working the deck, then sufi-swirling amongst us, trailing webs of energy & inspiration & beauty in their wake.
The experience of many of us was that they were unstintingly generous with their attention – one or the other materializing at our sides at exactly the right moment to nudge us into a deeper relationship with the field of study – namely the continuum that stretches from the excluded, wounded, adrift outsider to the tribal being welcomed in the supportive arms of community. Many of us found ourselves slip-sliding ‘tween the two extremes – the gap separating "yum" and "yuck," as Michael put it with a laugh ... between being stuck in isolation and wrestling with our own stories & projections, then shifting through fears & tears & sorrow & age-old armouring into the collective heart that beat so loud and clear in that room. Poems were read. Prayers recited. Rituals enacted. Ancestors invoked. And at the foot of a soaring altar built by dancer Emiella Kaufman, we were finally held in the embrace of our birthright home – gravity, the still point, our own clear centre … pinned to the earth by a large, moss-covered stone that our teachers placed on each of us in turn as we completed the journey home. So yes, I unreservedly join voices with Julie: Anneli & Michael rock.
