Welcome to Soul Growth Radio’s sophomore spin! Our theme this quarter is “Awake: Life and Limb.”
The spring my skin caught fire in a rash of red scales, my life as I knew it was over. Covered by burning, itching patches, it felt like my body was incinerating me while I was still in it. The story continues, but this is where it all began: a desperate search for health that barreled right into a spiritual awakening. I like to call it, and other experiences like it, the angels’ bait and switch. You start in on one determined path, and you end up in a whole different place than you planned.
Thank you Rolling Stones. (You can’t always get what you want. You get what you need.)
Soul Growth Radio’s themes come in meditation. When this theme arrived, “Awake: Life and Limb,” it called to mind the physical journeys we take to find spiritual understandings. It called to mind human bodies and the Earth as a living being. It brought back conversations I’d had with the marvelous Julie Daley, who talked about her distinct experiences of sensing Earth’s body, and the joyful soul riot it compelled in her. And it coincided with meeting artist, Suzette Clough, whose Visual Medicine™ practice feels like Earth and soul working together in paint.
There’s something at stake in “Awake: Life and Limb.” Its connotations are visceral, conscious, urgent, aware. Trusting the meditative process of the theme means getting to hear and read contributors’ interpretations on that theme. And I’m beyond thrilled for the voices we’ve got stoking these conversations, right in time for Earth Day–in celebration of the earth body, Memorial Day–when we observe here in the U.S. the soldiers whose physical journeys took their lives, and summer solstice–an equality of light and dark, and a human-Earth dance with bounty and harvest.
Along with Julie Daley and Suzette Clough in our midst this issue, we’ve got Ariane Nicole’s soul telling art and stories, surprise news from Angela Maxwell in her latest “She Walks the Earth” outpost, Vietnam, and we’re excited to welcome our new columnist, Myla Denise, appearing later in April. And so much more glorious goodness to follow.
Join us and enjoy. And when you’re inspired, send us your thoughts, send us your art, writing and ideas. Let us hear YOUR journeys on “Awake: Life and Limb.”
And, please share what you enjoy on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, in the continuing creation that is Soul Growth Radio.
In spirit and story
Pema Rocker
