MEA

In a hurricane flurry, I recently returned from a week-long MEA Baja workshop beautifully led by Lori Schwanbeck. The topic for the week was Leadership During Times of Certainty, which, unfortunately, now seems even more relevant than ever.

“It’s strange how deserts turn us into believers. I believe in walking in a landscape of mirages, because you learn humility. I believe in living in a land of little water because life is drawn together. And I believe in the gathering of bones as a testament to spirits that have moved on. If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self.” ― Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

With the holidays coming up, we've been thinking about the perfect gift. The kind that makes you go, "Wow, this is exactly what I wanted!" None of those awkward moments when you're smiling on the outside but secretly wondering, "What am I going to do with this?"

You know how cranky you get around the end of January, right? You know how pale you look and how tired you are of being indoors. The first quarter of the year is the most popular time to be in southern Baja: warm days and cool nights, migrating whales breaching offshore, tiny baby sea turtles hatching on the beach, and the desert, farmland, and tropical forests in the area are still green from the October rains.

Only ten months have passed since we left MEA and we meet again.

I was listening to an interview of Franciscan mystic Richard Rohr (https://bit.ly/493V9pi), where he was describing one of his favorite ideas, Carl Jung’s two halves of life:

This summer, Travel & Leisure magazine published an article (https://bit.ly/3FqZoNU) about the 24 most beautiful places in Mexico and our little farming and fishing village, Pescadero, was at the top of their list.

I feel like a little kid at Christmas time who has asked for a bunch of gifts and can see the shape of the presents under the tree—a Hot Wheels track, a GI Joe, and a basketball. I can hardly wait to rip open the wrapping paper and start playing. Of course, as a 63-year-old, my gifts nowadays are the friends and thought leaders we attract to MEA—the gifted facilitators we are fortunate enough to co-lead workshops with. And believe me when I tell you that next July is shaping up to be a time of many gifts.

For those of you who’ve experienced an MEA workshop, you know that we’re a midwife for midlife epiphanies, and magic often shows up in the middle of the classroom. I’ve suggested that part of what’s happening is “collective effervescence,” when our sense of ego separation dissolves, and a sense of communal joy arises based on our shared mission or ethos.

When I attended my first MEA informational Zoom, Kari Henley (now Kari Cardinale) introduced us to the “polishing the pearls of wisdom” gesture, and tongue-in-cheek called it “a little cultish.” Sometimes that notion comes back to me, especially when I try to explain MEA to others. How do you explain a program that has such a loyal following of people who say “that was the workshop I didn’t know I needed” or “I feel such a sense of deep belonging with the community”?