Friday Care Package
Days of Eastertide
Dear Substack Community: We have arrived at Friday, and I want to invite you into a shared practice of holding intention from Easter Sunday, 4/20 to Pentecost, which is June 8. It’s a time when the disciples weren’t sure if they were going to be able to tell the story of Jesus! I want us to remember that what has emerged as Christianity is far from what was practiced and we have inherited systems and technologies that undermine the message of Jesus. As I turn to the practice of coming home to myself and to each other and working to repair the world as I repair myself, it is important to tend to one’s interior life. Let us set intention to follow the ways of Jesus in these trying times. Can we reimagine care right now between Easter and Pentecost? I’ve turned to the Christian Liturgical Calendar to help orient me in a world burning where children are now representing themselves in court due to the ways our immigration system is designed. So, I’m doing this practice for me, and I also wonder if you might could use a practice to center yourself?
Y’all take care and ‘ll be back on Saturday for my Saturday Substack!
Paz, —RCE+
I invite you to breathe before you continue reading! Let us nurture presence as we begin to think about care and the politics of care.
An Invitation through Eastertide
As we journey through Eastertide—the long, luminous stretch between resurrection and Pentecost—we find ourselves in a season not of arrival, but of unfolding. The tomb is empty, yes, but the world is still in need of mending. Resurrection is not a one-time miracle—it is a daily practice of remembering, reweaving, re-rooting ourselves in what is most life-giving.
This is also the Jewish season of Counting the Omer, a sacred practice of marking forty-nine days between Passover and Shavuot. Each day is counted with intention, like beads on a string, reminding us that time is not to be consumed but to be tended. It is a ritual of attentiveness, an invitation to slow down, to trace transformation one breath, one body, one act of care at a time.
What if we used this season to practice politicized care—for ourselves and for one another? What if we allowed these days to teach us the rhythm of repair, not as restoration to what was, but as emergence into what could be? In a world unraveling from empire, we need practices that weave us back together—not into the old patterns, but into new, queer constellations of being-with.
Each day of the Omer could become a site of intention: a day to grieve, a day to breathe, a day to forgive, a day to rest, a day to reach out, a day to refuse, a day to dream. Care, in this frame, is not passive—it is revolutionary. It is a refusal to let harm be the last word. It is a daily, cosmic alignment with repair.
So I invite you: Count the days not as empty time, but as sacred space. Let this be your season of slow resurrection. Let it be a queer becoming. Let it be your offering to the world you are helping to mend.
🌿 Ritual: A Daily Touchstone of Repair
Each morning (or evening), light a small candle, place your hand on your heart, and speak aloud:
“I am mending. I am being mended. My care is repair.”
Then, take one intentional breath. Let it be deep. Let it reach into the places that feel fractured or tired. As you exhale, imagine that breath touching not only your body, but the collective body—of your community, of the earth, of those you love and those you struggle to love.
After the breath, place a small object—a stone, a seed, a shell, a thread—into a bowl or on an altar. Let it be your Omer: a marker of the day you’ve tended with intention. Over time, these pieces will become a visible reminder that repair, like resurrection, unfolds slowly.
📓 Journaling Prompt:
Each day, ask yourself:
What is one act of care I offered or received today? What is one fracture—within or beyond me—that I am willing to tend?
Let your answer be small. It could be: “I drank water slowly.” Or: “I forgave myself for not being productive.” Or: “I listened without interrupting.” Or even: “I grieved something I hadn’t named before.” These fragments are sacred. They are threads in the tapestry of a world being rewoven.
🔥🌎 Mantra for Repair in a Burning World
“In the heat of collapse, I carry water.
In the shadow of empire, I plant seeds.
In the ache of now, I choose to mend.”
This can be whispered when you feel overwhelmed, spoken aloud in ritual, or written in the margins of your journal as a way of re-centering.