Stewardship and Our Relational Future

What if we looked at it all through the lens of stewardship?

Hi everyone! I’m holding you all with love today and sending you blessings of wellbeing. May you know what it means to be well-tended. 💖

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Dearest readers,

Today’s letter is an invitation to join me on an inquiry, to look into a series of questions that has been swirling around my energy lately. I leave it open-ended in hopes of hearing back from you what arises with these questions.

Last week I began teaching my ancestral healing beta class, which I am beyond excited about. (If this interests you, stayed tuned…I’ll be offering a year-long version of the class for paid subscribers beginning in October.❤️) As I gathered my notes for the first lesson, I came upon a sentence I’d scribbled down in a notebook years ago:

“We are the living stewards of our lineages.”

It reminded me how much the idea of stewardship has become a sacred concept for me. I remember the first time I felt the word deeply resonate in my bones. If you recall from my post about my 50th birthday, I shared a bit about my experiences in archaeology (which you can read here). On the first day of my first dig, the lead archaeologist gave us an introductory talk and used the term "steward." He spoke of how we were to act as stewards for the past, the land, the artifacts, and the memories of the people who created them. Something about the timing, or maybe the circumstances, made that word work its way into my heart and set up camp.

In very simple terms, a steward is a person entrusted with the welfare of someone or something that does not belong to them.

I wonder if the idea of stewardship feels so sacred to me because it’s aligned with my belief that we’re collectively moving towards a more relational way of being (here’s a post that dives into this idea). My guides relentlessly speak to me about this, telling me that all living beings are unfolding towards relationality, towards a time when the focus will be on connections rather than contrasts. As I re-read the notation in my notebook, it occurred to me: What if being good stewards is a key part of shifting our perspective to this more relational way?

Instead of seeing life through the framework of ownership or possession, what if we looked at it all through the lens of stewardship?

Could we be:
the stewards of our children’s agency; the stewards of our life partners’ sense of safety; the stewards of our homes and the land we walk upon; the stewards of the money that flows into and through our life experience; the stewards of our memories and our hopes for the future; the stewards of our fears, our joys, and maybe, especially, our desires; the stewards of our thoughts, our ideas, our creativity; the stewards of consciousness itself; the stewards of the elements that make up everything, including what appears to be our own molecules, our own bodies; the stewards of our own containers of presence?

If we came to understand that nothing in our experience is ours to do with as we please, but rather that we’ve been temporarily entrusted with its wellbeing, would it change the way we relate?

For me, I think it might help take a little pressure off. By seeing myself as a steward, rather than having my identity all wrapped up in these things, I can unclench my fists and relax my need to control. And then, from this place of confidence and poise, I can take better care of what has been entrusted to me.

What do you all think? Does the idea of holding a perspective of stewardship feel like better relating to you? Could this be a way we can help one another unfold into the more relational way of being?

Blessings and love to you all as we ponder these things together! 💖

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P.S. My reflections on stewardship this week reminded me of a somewhat-related final project I did for a spiritual class many years back. I found that I’d put it on youtube 5 years ago and it’s still there. Although some of my beliefs are a bit more fluid now, I had fun re-watching this and thought you all might enjoy it too. 😁