TRANSITIONS
Dear Friends with Lost Borders,

For a number of years I've been the voice behind many of the Lost Borders emails that you've received. But this is no longer so. On July 1, I retired from the administration, following my beloved, Joseph (Angelo) Lazenka, into the realm of "have-beens”.

Looking back, it's hard to believe that I served in the administration for eight full years, first as an assistant to Joseph, then as equal partners in crime (aka Co-Directors) and lately as sole director for this organization that continues to grow in many beautiful ways, despite our best attempts to keep things as simple as we possibly can.

On the inside, this has not been a sudden movement. The last two years have been an internal process of preparation for the School, during which we consciously created systems that would bring a new generation into the administrative center. The prayer of hiring and training younger local folks to tend the hearth fire of the School in the future, and allow us continue our programs and ceremonies was core to this inquiry. We were lucky that the call was answered in the form of two amazing young women: Kayla Douglass and Jo Botelho, who've grown to to hold the main load of admin tasks for the School's day-to-day business.

Into the Future - Collective Governance
While the intention of collective and intergenerational governance had been a dreaming for some time, it was the pandemic that created the opening to actually step into it. With programs cancelled in the earlier part of this year, there was room to focus on internal process.

You will hear more about the birth of a stewarding circle of guides, elders, advisory board, and admin from the new leadership in the next edition of the School's newsletter in October. Today, I simply want to offer my deep gratitude to the guides who've stepped into the center to hold the various pieces of the 10-headed beast that steering an organization in this crazy time is, and to Kayla and Jo, who’ve enabled me to move on and whom I trust implicitly to carry the administration forward.

For myself, I am grateful and excited to be entering a new phase of my life, and to serve in new ways through this being that is changing at age 55. For the chance to follow the call into a softer, more feminine and creative way of being, with more space and time to tend to this body, which had become increasingly sensitive to stress and chronic pain flares under the weight of the office this past year.
From Directing to Being Directed
Having barely dipped my toes into the spaciousness of this moment, much juicy invitation is emerging already. The freedom of listening and responding to life more organically and spontaneously is such a gift and the felt sense of a movement from 'directing' to 'being directed' by life is deeply resonating.
When opportunity arose to be able to support two younger guides in offering rite of passage work in their local communities in WA and UT this summer, I had space to say yes! Both of these projects are now sprouting into more local offerings in these communities - few things could make my heart happier.

As someone who walked with cancer, I am deeply grateful that I get to live into this part of life. Grateful for the privilege of being able to agonize over my changing face and wrinkling skin.  Grateful for the creative juices that are flowing in me more unboundedly these days, intent on replacing the linear strength of my memory with curves and spirals. For the direct, unmitigated experience of joy and moments of sudden delight, next to the pain that also walks with me often. For the wide open sky of this land and the wild streams I traverse on my daily walks.

Living and Dying
For all of us so called "developed" humans, this is a time to learn basic gratitude anew, as we grieve the loss of vast ecosystems and human communities and remember that life is uncertain and death has to be part of the conversation.

In this world of accelerated change, safe space is replaced with brave space, as we are becoming acutely aware, that nothing can be taken for granted: health, climate, the safety of home, the access to justice, and yes, even the very air we breathe.

With several states on fire, uncertainty weighs heavy on those of us living in areas of active fire or toxic smoke, finding ourselves at the whim of which way the wind blows. On the days that our grief presses in on us, it’s hard to imagine that even here, in the wasteland of this reckoning, the song of beauty and love is born anew. But it is true. Death can’t help but give way to birth.

Learning how to die, and learning how to truly live, has always been at the heart of the ceremony we offer here at the School. And so it shall continue.

For all that is yet to come. With great love and deep gratitude -

Petra Lentz-Snow
petra@lostborders.org
School of Lost Borders

"In the middle of grief, calamity, and devastation, make space for beauty.  Nourish, celebrate, remember and embody her. Hold space for beauty. Feed her.  Trust her. Let yourself be held by her, and in return offer her refuge in your heart even while the world is burning.”