Artwork by Liz Ainslie
In this Olio, we explore our perception of aliveness and our tendency towards disconnection using our relationship to the everyday objects we are surrounded by.
Activities include a guided reflection exercise, discussion, journaling, reading an excerpt by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and dropping into our creative imaginations.
I'm Em Chiappinelli (she/they), a human in my early thirties, descended from Italian, Irish, and Jewish ancestors, born and raised in Seneca Nation in Western New York, and currently living in a farming community on the homelands of the Manahoac, Shawnee, and Piscataway tribes, bordering the Blue Ridge in northern Virginia.
As someone who grew up without many cultural practices or a spiritual story to fit life into, I found myself constantly attracted to matters of consciousness and interconnection. It kicked off with early work in impact measurement - a way to evaluate the social or environmental impact that organizations intend to have on the people, communities, and land they interact with. I was drawn to understanding the difference between what we do, or intend to do, and what actually happens on the ground. As I learned more about how complex doing that kind of work is, I wanted more tools to understand how we know what is "true" and how to work with the limits of our awareness; how the ways we were differently raised to think effect the actions that we take in the world. This led me to study and practice Buddhist insight meditation, eventually at the monastery of the beloved Burmese meditation teacher Sayadaw U Tejaniya in Yangon, Myanmar. My studies in the monastery cracked open a layer of perception I had never experienced before: it was like a fog that had unknowingly lived in my awareness was gone.
