Exactly One Year Later and the Savoring Stayed.
About three weeks shy of Dec 30th last year, I started this newsletter as a conversation I was having with myself out loud. It started on the heels of being upended by what felt back then like a giant rejection of me, and of my work, by an organization I felt was just the one to help me take my work to the next necessary phase. It shook me, and the law of me is that when I art shooketh, I gotta write.
I write to show up for myself and to learn from the parts of me that I can’t hear in my thoughts, but can often discover through my writing. So December 7th, 14th, and 26th of last year, I used this space on Substack to write my way deeper into, and then out of, my eff-it-all-then funk.
When I started, I showed myself, but from a place of my past and my future. At the time I saw myself necessarily as part archivist, part futurist.
Akilah "River Safiah" Richards
Back then, my present Self felt rocky AF, and so I needed to go backward and forward, around, up and down, to stabilize and harmonize. Kind of like standing on a ledge, and tapping into the smaller muscle groups in my legs and feet to keep me from falling over.
It worked. I stabilized my thoughts and harmonized my emotional spectrum by calling on my spiritual strengtheners. I made things with my hands. I facilitated discussions with topics I needed. I made myself more available to people who called for me. I got further into spiritual studies through interfaith/interspiritual seminary studenthood. I used my archiving and future-seeing to get more present with my Now.
By the time that month, that year, drew close to its end, I was reaching another beginning. By this exact date last year, I unlocked the part of my spirit where the art of savoring lived and thrived.
Akilah "River Safiah" Richards
On that new-to-me path, like all paths I’ve walked, I encountered plenty potholes, bumps, rocky areas, and slippery parts. One of the biggest potholes, the one that nearly broke my damn foot, was an unexpected major expense related to my seminary studies. I thought I’d have to leave seminary altogether, pero no amigxs, not at all. Instead, I shifted my studies to a focus on death, dying, and grief-tending, a path called Integrative Thanatology.
Prior to that, I was on the Ordained Minister path, and felt defeated and frightened by the idea that I would have to leave something that I felt so called to. But this message, this tunnel that was cleverly disguised as a financing issues, moved me over into a different course of study. And oh my goodness, as a result of that, and the unravelings and coming-togethers of 2023, Savorist Me is now out loud in a deeper, more vast way.
I now find myself having done the archivist and futurist work to a point where I can slow it down. At this pace, I can use what I’ve gathered to slow-walk the words of the book (Black Bear | Wild Weed) that holds the stories of my relics, my origins, and do it less, ‘cause I need it less.
It’s such a cool experience3 because the relics and artifacts I’ve gathered need nothing from me. Some have been buried. Some have been stored away safely to be utilized only when needed. All of the education from that process will live in Black Bear | Wild Weed right here in this newsletter, all on my time, hella slowly.
The invoking of my savor complex this time last year really served me. So much so that I moved into a ministry of reminding myself, and you, about the space in between rest and grind, which is the savoring space.
It's the space that is meant to facilitate the integration of what we learn through grinding and resting because they both have education, and one (Grind) can be really toxic and vital at some phases of our lives. The other (Rest) is always vital, and we are so very unfamiliar with how to do it!
I’m grateful for people like Octavia Raheem and Tricia Hersey whose ministries remind me all the time of the value of rest skills. I don't need reminders about the value of grind because that's embedded in my body living in the West, and embedded in my body as a descendant of Black folks who were terrorized and not allowed to know rest or peace.
One year later, to the day, and I can confidently say that my rest skills and my Savorisms got me present and available for a more spacious life. I have spent past year embedded in two residencies, one with a strategist advisory firm whose founder and core team have an incredible capacity to disrupt colonizer-minded ways of approaching business and management. The other with my fellow Rooted Global Village Rooted, for short) members, a space where I’ve been fed, and was so happy to make offerings there.
Through those residencies, and with those delightful and dedicated people, I was able to really play with some of the forms of organic matter that I've gathered along the path. And because I’m moving slower, savoring the experiences, I have the space and wisdom I needed to do the pulverizing, blending, stirring, drying the out, and all the other necessary things to turn matter into medicines.
Some of the medicine-making I had to do alone. Other times, I was joined by other people who were already making their own potent medicines. They and I saw that we had complementary pieces and so here I am now, walking with my own medicine, and collaborating with others to sip with, to offer, and to chronicle our experiences, both alone and together.
Two weeks ago, during one of my offerings inside the Rooted space, a fellow villager, a woman (an amazing one who does Somatic Experiencing and Authentic Movement work) asked me where my church was, ‘cause she would attend. That question nudged me toward a truth I was ignoring—I do have chu’ch, a Savor Sanctuary if you will. It has been open for almost seven years now, and the doors are wide open!
My version of church is over here with the folks I lovingly call my Make-it-happen Family. This is where I’ve been consistently pouring into the people who want to be consistently present and authentic in their own lives and circles, and want to walk with me as I'm learning how to be more present and authentic in mine.
I will continue to work on my book here on Substack, but even slower, because I know that I don't want to be divided to the point of spread thin. While I am a multi-dimensional being, consistency is increasingly important to me and where I am noticing and witnessing mostly effortless consistency is with my Make-it-happen family. It’s a space that started as a mere Patreon in 2016 to help fund the podcast that I birthed that year, and let die earlier this year after seven years of gathering, unraveling, communing, connecting.
I'm also using my church to explore and express ways we can do things without such a heavy reliance on words. Questioning the things rely on our capacity to be eloquent about expressing it or explaining it, so that we can notice opportunities to carve out or dig up different tools and ways of being in healthy relationship with ourselves. And with each other. And with the rest of nature.
Now, I’m expanding this newsletter to include summaries and insights from what I'm learning in the Savor Sanctuary. If you are finding connection and resonance with my work and ways, know that the Savor Sanctuary is the closest thing to my church, and I invite you to come through, grab a hammock, a seat, space on the floor, a spot in the grass, a cushy comfortable chair made by a skilled carpenter…whatever floats your body's boat, and come through for weekly and monthly mojo that shows up as I see it, as I feel it, as I live into it.
What do you commit to savoring? Whatever it is, I’m telling you now, that slowing down to a savorist’s pace is gon’ rock your entire universe. Trust.
