Thank you all for another great month! Your presence here is the very best butt-kick I can imagine – a loving goad for me to keep learning and thinking and talking about trust.

As I leave this month’s Help theme, I’m struck by how much more there is to explore on this topic. Before my family’s move took my brain and body over, I had hoped to explore the fears that accompany burn-out potential; the possibility of despairing if we open our hearts too much to the bigger, systemic needs/problems around us; and questions like, What if my/our best efforts at help are only perpetuating problems? I wonder this as I see beggars on the street, and as I consider the work of many non-profits here and overseas.

However.

As a move to trust that no topic can EVER be mined for trust completely – or, rather, as a move to trust that that impossibility is just fine – I’ll close out this month as usual, and offer you some resources I find helpful for nourishing trust on this topic in an ongoing way.

You’re in my heart as I finish up my move (we load up our U-Haul tomorrow), and I’ll be back in this space to kick off a new month – Bodies, this time! – just as soon as the dust settles.

Until then, sending love,

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General help for your own stuck places:

• Getting Unstuck This is an audio series by Pema Chodron that I love so much. Pema’s voice itself is so disarming, but her way of speaking truths clearly, and with great levity, feels to me like Miracle Grow for trust. The subtitle describes the content so well: Breaking Your Habitual Patterns and Encountering Naked Reality.
• Finding Your Voice This is Jen Lee’s most recent offering – a multimedia, self-paced course with access to an ongoing, online discussion board. From the back cover:
  There are thousands of books about how to write, resources about the mechanics of telling our stories. But before we ever open our mouths or pick up a pen, there is something to overcome. Debris to clear from our path. The question, Will it be worth it? to answer.

  The time for finding your voice has come.

  Let’s clear the way.

  I love Jen and have experienced first hand her gentle, powerful work of freeing people’s voices. You can’t go wrong with this course.

• What to remember when waking This is an audio series by poet/philosopher David Whyte. I could listen to this series over and over again and still discover new nuggets to help me navigate life’s turns. Sounds True summarizes it this way:
  [What to remember when waking] offers wisdom for building the essential disciplines that will see us through the difficulties of our human journey—skills of trust, vulnerability, momentum, and courage in the face of the unknown.

  A trust-tending series through and through.

• Sounds True Sounds True is a wonderful online resource for all things awakening. From the Sounds True site itself:
  Sounds True is an independent multimedia publishing company that embraces the world’s major spiritual traditions, as well as the arts and humanities, embodied by the leading authors, teachers, and visionary artists of our time. Our approach to publishing is not dependent on a single format or technology—rather, we strive with every title to preserve the essential “living wisdom” of the author, artist, or spiritual teacher. It is our goal to create products that not only provide information to a reader or listener, but that also embody the essential quality of a wisdom transmission between a teacher and a student.

  I love the free podcast interviews that Tami Simons does with leading spiritual teachers and writers, and find that they push me gently out of my own places of fear and stuckness.

  LOTS of help and trust-nourishment at this entire site!

• Rising Tide This is a project with two purposes: to seed trust and hope, and to raise funds for the launch of greenjump.org, a virtual connecting place for all things sustainable. My dear friend, Karah, and her partner, Lorrena (who I hope to meet some day!), are behind both things, and are giving their lives to helping us all see the good things happening locally, and across our globe.

  If you’re stuck in the pessimism that mainstream news can generate, or experiencing even low-level anxiety about the state of our world, this video is so worth a watch (5 minutes, and free)! And if you like what you see, do consider giving 2 or more dollars to access the hope-filled research behind the video’s content!

Balancing helping and being/receiving:

• The Savor and Serve Experiment. Jennifer Louden has devoted this year to an experiment she’s termed Savor and Serve. In her words,
  It’s a memoir of one year in which I explore the sweet spot where my desire to savor life meets my desire to serve the world…In which I wonder is it possible that self-love+world-love creates wholeness for all?

  I’ve been moved and impressed by how honest Jen has worked to be with herself and her readers about what she’s feeling and thinking as she moves through this year. And though I haven’t joined myself, the Savor and Serve Cafe looks like a wonderful community. For a monthly membership fee, you have access to interviews, discussion forums, videos, art and journalling explorations, and more, all related to savoring life and serving the world.

• Marianne Elliott: Zen Peacekeeper. Change-maker. Marianne Elliott is a recovering save-the-world junkie who writes and thinks with great depth and eloquence about the ins and outs of local and international aid, as well as the path and power of self-kindness. She has a growing repertoire of online yoga courses that embody this value of self-kindness. Her life and work in Afghanistan are the basis of her forthcoming book, Zen Under Fire: Learning to sit still in Afghanistan.

Overt Trust-Tending Articles on Help

• Here is the list of articles from this month at Trust Tending.

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Please feel free to share more help-related links in the comments below!

And to view or peruse past or future themes at this site (each month here is devoted to tending trust around a different theme), click here.

Much warmth to you all!
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