Dear Comrades: My family and I travel hacked our way to Spain for a week. We had enough points to buy plane tickets and our close friends shared their points with us for the hotels. We are engaged in a sharing economy with one another, instead of an economy of competition. It’s been a lovely week of relaxation, good food, some work, and mostly resting and breathing. I didn’t want to miss our weekly point of connection, however.

Welcome to the first edition of Contemplative Threads for paid subscribers! In these posts, which drop on Mondays during 2023, you’ll be invited to contemplate on an image; engage in a somatic exercise; and, read a few sentences. Again, I’m introducing sound to the posts! These posts won’t be long, but rather they will be an invitation for you to follow the threads throughout the week!

These posts are for paying subscribers, so I hope you’ll upgrade your subscription. I’ve lowered the price to $5/monthly or $50/year. You can still be a cultivating member, so that I can gift subscriptions to others who otherwise can’t afford the cost. Let’s fight poverty; not the poor! As a working poor person, I am in solidarity with the underside of history! Let’s join together and be the healing of the wounds!

For today’s contemplative threads for the community, I want to invite everyone to practice presence. Being here in Spain, I am sinking deeper into my roots and suturing my roots. Every time I have the chance to speak Spanish and explore my ancestry, I do! In fact, being here in Spain helps me see and realize that I am part of the Latine diaspora. My roots are rhizomatic. Where do your roots come from? Are you leaning into their rhizome?! What if we did that together?!

In Spanish, there are 2 words for the verb: to be. Ser and Estar. I’ve been practicing estando while here. Estando is an active presence of being here, in this place; right now. As my teacher reminds me, we should plant our trees and our gardens and visit other trees and other gardens. So, today, I want to ask you: where is your place in the world where you find your roots and your rootedness? Where are your gardens where you smell the flowers? Where are your roots and where are your roots taking you?

Meditate on this for a moment; root into yourself and your own rootedness. Can you trace your roots and the gardens you’ve planted? That’s what I’m here doing in Spain. We don’t have to travel far to experience this; we just have to be open to possibilities of belonging and freedom.

May WE be the healing of the wounds!

Onward, —Dr. Roberto Che Espinoza.

P.S. Don’t forget about the retreat I’m hosting with some of my amazing comrades!