Devotion

Relationship beyond attachment

Original artwork by Jean Opitz

This is the first post of what will be a series of three, exploring that which links us to each other, to our communities, to our places. Exploring the great weaving within which we dance into and out of connection and relationship.

As always, I make no claims to be a certified expert of any sort; this is simply a framework that has felt clear and meaningful to me in recent times. Let me know if it also resonates with you.

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Over the past year and a half I have found myself unattached to other humans, outside of relationship. And over the same time I have experienced a shift in my relationship to place. A sort of sacred farewell - a releasing of ties - with Marys Peak and the Willamette Valley and soon after that a devotional courtship - a building and deepening of connection - with a small corner of southern Appalachia.

And I have also been wondering: what weaves us together, when we release attachments?

Attachment theory talks of insecure and secure attachments. And in exploring that, over time, I discovered that “secure attachment” - for me - simply meant that my fear was not being triggered, that I felt confident that my partner would not choose to step away.

Attachment - whether anxious or avoidant or secure - is still a sort of holding on, clinging tight. Words carry feelings within them for me, and attachment carries a sense of fear, scarcity, need. It is a word that feels apt for a nursing infant but not so much for a union of sovereign souls.

For a time, I felt that releasing attachment meant holding relationship lightly, but I have also realized that I am not one to hold things lightly. What I feel for this place, for the basswood tree that is dropping seeds on me as I write by the creek, is not something I could or would ever simply dance away from. Letting go, moving away, would be a sort of sacred process, a blend of grieving and finding new love, as I have already experienced twice in my life in my changes of place.

And yet, I would not say that I am attached. I don’t need this place, to be whole, to be complete. And still I love it. I wish to be present here through all of its seasons, all of its blooms, all of its birdsongs, all of its scents and colors and surging waters and subtle shifting energies that ebb and flow with the great cycles.

I would rather say I am devoted. That my soul and this land have - on the deepest level of the pattern - chosen to weave together in co-creation.

And when I witness couples, friends, communities that are weaving together in harmony, I am also witnessing devotion. Togetherness rooted in love.

Attachment is, on some level, rooted in fear. Devotion is rooted in love.

Sometimes, when I describe my daily morning wanders in all weather, I hear something like “wow that’s commitment” or “that takes discipline”.

What do these words actually mean?

Commitment is, perhaps, simply the shift from light to weighty. The decision, based in attachment or devotion or some combination, to weave our threads together in ways that require effort to disentangle. To call this place home. To sign a lease. To buy a house together. To take on an essential role in an organization or community. To start a family. Not forever, but for the foreseeable future.

And discipline is, then, a sacred honoring of our commitments. It is keeping our practices even when we feel tired, going on our walks even when it’s raining, being present for our partners and friends and children even when we are distraught or distracted. It is the masculine pole, the holding of the container. And - like commitment - it can be rooted in love or fear, devotion or attachment. We can hold a course out of love, honoring ourselves and our co-creators, or we can hold a course out of obligation, fearful of facing the judgment of ourselves or others should we fail.

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I am devoted to our living Earth

I am devoted to this land on which I walk, to these mountains

I am devoted to this body that is my home, that is me in this incarnation

I am devoted to my soul purpose, to the unfolding mystery

I am committed to staying present, to noticing the bird songs and the spiders and the frogs and shifting stars and planets each day.

I am committed to moving through discomfort, through old wounds, through perceived limitations.

I am committed to sharing my gifts, to weaving my thread, to holding what is mine to hold.

I am committed to staying open, even when it is easier to contract, to close down.

And - when the time comes to again weave into partnership, into relational commitment

I wish to do so from a place of devotion

To be not bound together

But rather interwoven.

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As we move through the peak of summer, the warmest-on-average days in this part of the world, I’d like to share an aligned project that I suspect many of my readers will connect with.

Wild Orchid

Ann divides the year into 72 “microseasons” - each one five days long with its own unique happenings. This is not a rigid structure - timing can vary from year to year - but we have “the time of the basswood blossoms” or - in this moment - “the time of the rattlesnake plantain”. I admire these beauties daily on my morning wanders and I am grateful to Ann for writing them a poem, an expression of devotion.