Spells & Poems
Poems, Blessings, Incantations, and Invocations
Welcome to my compilation of the blessings, spells, poems, and invocations, incantations offered through Enchantable. Feel free to adapt and use with attribution. I love it when readers share with me how these blessings and wishes travel through the world!
Welcome Invocation
Welcome, welcome, dear reader!
Welcome enchanted yearnings.
Welcome dreams and wild things
And passion purpose burnings.
Welcome reimaginings
And welcome questions churning
May this be a space for us
To explore our deepest learning.
-From The Year of Enchantment
Invitations poem
I invite you, and you are welcome.
I invite you
To bring - as much as you want to - of your wisdom, life experience, questions, and complexities into this space.
I invite us, together,
To collaborate and co-create our space and time.
To slow down.
To sit with the mess and stay with the trouble1 of building a more loving, peaceful, just world.
To notice our interbeing and entanglement, both with what is beautiful and what is hard.
To engage in rigorous study, rigorous care, rigorous relationships2.
To be stretched and challenged, but not stressed unnecessarily.
To center care, well-being, and healing in our learning process.
To be as present as possible during our time together - a radical act in a distracted world.
To value ways of knowing beyond the written word, the intellectual, and the rational.
To learn from each other, the wisdom of our bodies, the space of the bamboo hut, the toucans, iguanas, trees, breeze - the beautiful land that is holding us and teaching us.
To embrace mystery and uncertainty.
To find the conversations that only the people in this room can have.3
To have fun together and play as much as possible!
Re-enchanting Education Spell
May we find enchantment wherever we are
In the clicks of our keyboard,
In the sound of birdsong outside our offices and classrooms.
May our enchantment be a radical act
Of reclaiming attention
Of dwelling in the mundane magic of being alive on this precious planet
Of remembering other ways of knowing
Of reaching beyond what we know
Towards wonder, curiosity, awe.
May we feel enchantment in our bodies
A gentle smile on the lips
Tingling, electric
May enchantment remind us of the deep wisdom communicated by our bodies in each moment.
May our enchantment be an act of liberation
Of institutional transformation
May it be a pathway towards composting stuck destructive energy
Towards life-affirming and life-generating ways of being, knowing, and living.
-From my About page, originally published in the Peace Chronicle
Rest blessing (a wish for rest)
May you find some space to rest this weekend.
May you find some rest in this moment, in this breath.
May you find and create conditions for yourself and those around you to dwell in rest.
May your body, mind, and heart experience rest today.
-From We need each other to rest
Rooting dreams
I root my dreams like vines on trees
growing in all directions.
I ground them
and give them stability, sustenance, longevity.
I deepen them into place
and into my communities.
-From Nesting Peace
Nesting peace
In this place, we are nesting peace
We are making a home for it, branch by branch,
Strand by strand.
We make use of the materials on hand
To grow what we can.
In this place, we are growing love
Beloved community
Love of learning and of life
Love for a peace for which we will fight.
In this place, we are planting seeds
Of hope and prosperity
For all beings
Of love, nonviolence, compassion, generosity
That they may grow abundantly.
In this place, we are nesting peace
Monumentally
Rooting it in stability
Casting mycelial webs we weave
Extending from sea to sea
That we may slowly and organically, emergently
Fractally
Root it so deep
That it becomes the foundation of all things.
-From Nesting Peace
An oath/vow to myself upon turning 44
I will be as true to myself as I possibly can be.
I will adorn myself to communicate fierceness, power, and magic.***
I will trust my intuition like the intelligent guide and compass that it is.
I will follow the glimmers of my life and attend to them.
I will make as much magic as I possibly can in this life.
I will love as deeply and expansively as I possibly can.
I will share as generously as I possibly can.
I will not waste any time shrinking, holding back, or being anything less than the fullest expression of myself.
I will stand in and harness my power for the greatest good.
I will continue living into questions and living into dreams as long as I get to keep living.
***shoutout to The Oracle of LA for this inspiration.
-From 44
A Mother’s Day Wish and Blessing
May we honor the mother energy in our lives.
May mothers everywhere feel valued, loved, and supported.
May we value, respect, and appreciate the seeding, growing, tending, caring, gestating, creative life force energy in our lives.
May we honor and value mothering in the ways we organize ourselves - in our systems, structures, institutions, communities.
May we put care and love at the center of everything.
May we nurture our nurturers.
May we value acts of nurturing and care.
Thank you to our mothers, givers of life.
-From Flavors of joy and reverberations of appreciation
Love blessing
(For Venus retrograde in Leo)
May we reclaim the expansiveness of our love
To create a world where it’s easier to love* (and live)
Which we need with the utmost urgency.
May we break love free from institutions that confine it
And recreate containers that free it and allow it to flow rather than hold it.
May we root our structures and ways of organizing ourselves in it
To allow it to permeate and be at the base of all of our collective efforts.
May we recreate a world with love and care at its foundation,
With conditions for all beings to thrive and flourish
And may infinite beauty, art, and well-being grow from it.
-From Portals
Back-to-school blessing
May this bell be a bell of mindfulness
And bring us back to our breath, our bodies, our hearts,
our intentions and aspirations.
our deepest wishes for better worlds
And our deepest hope for the transformative possibilities of education.
-From Back-to-school (mindfulnes) bell (hooks)
A prayer and wish for those entering academic spaces in the coming year
May we be nourished, protected, inspired, supported.
May we reach towards the radical, liberatory possibilities of our educational spaces in the new year.
May the start of the year be a chance to double down what we believe is important, to remember why we do what we do, and to re-inspire ourselves towards co-creating educational spaces that prefiguratively enact the worlds we wish to live in.
May we be open and ready to learn. May we dwell in uncertainty, not hold what we think we know so tightly, and be open to being wrong, to failing, to reaching beyond what we already think we know.
May we take the privilege of being in these spaces to heart, whether as teacher or learner (or both, always both).
May we create the most magic, joy, creativity and love we possibly can together.
May we create beyond what we currently hold to be possible.
May we surprise ourselves.
May we find joy, friendship, care, and belonging along the way.
May the back-to-school bell be a bell of mindfulness to bring us back to the present moment and return us to our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits, in our fullness and wholeness.
And may our small efforts reach every closer to, as Paulo Freire said, a world where it’s easier to love.
-From Back-to-school (mindfulnes) bell (hooks)
Full moon blessing
May the moon shed light on all the conditions for happiness and causes of celebration in our lives.
May it illuminate our gifts and help us shed anything we no longer need to carry.
May it remind us of the exquisite beauty of being alive in this precious planet.
May it remind us of our place in this vast, mysterious cosmic dance.
-From Lunar love note
Syllabus as Spell
This syllabus is a spell
For the time we will spend together
For our hopes and dreams
For how we will spend our energy
Where we will put our attention
Who we will listen to, and how.
This syllabus spell will guide us
But hopefully not confine us
And if it does,
May we break it open
And allow space
For the possibilities to emerge
And for our learning and unlearning to be free.
May what we create together
Far exceed what we can dream
As we cast this syllabus spell into the world.
-From How do you prep?
End-of-year reflection blessing
May our reflection be a site of learning and growth.
May our dreams be realized.
May the beauty of our hearts’ deepest longings contribute to a world grounded in collective care, liberation, justice, peace, beauty, and love,
With gratitude for the chance to see the turning of another year, and to live even more fully into our dreams, to become ever more fully ourselves.
-From Making December Magic! (Part 1)
A closing wish
May we be protected
May we be nourished and inspired through this space
May we dwell in and live in the questions together
And may this space generate more questions than it does answers.
May our unknowing and uncertainty be generative
Towards worlds that are more livable
Towards relationships grounded in caring, trust, and reciprocity
Towards thriving for all of life.
May we be courageous in the deepest sense
Heart-forward
May we turn towards what is difficult
And be willing to compost it into fecund soil
Where new life can grow.
May we be wild in our meanderings
Not seeking too much clarity, assurance or certainty.
Willing to be bewildered and surprised,
Willing to change our minds.
May we feel into our interbeing
The connections we are weaving
And may they strengthen with each exchange.
May the words that join us together enrich us
May they weave our relational web a little stronger
And through this web, may we spread
Joy, love, beauty, abundance,
and
enchantment.
- From The Year of Enchantment
Findings poem
Donna Haraway
“relational rigor” - Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective
adrienne maree brown