A Message from the Magnolias

… at least it was for me <3

Greetings Beloved,

How’s your heart today? I hope you are finding the softest places to land amidst what feels like the constancy of crisis and hard things around us. I pray you will be a soft place that you land and that you are not the only soft place that you land.

This week one of my favorite shows, Sweet Magnolias, returned for its fourth season on Netflix. (Finally!). I was talking with a friend about my excitement who said the show is too “perfect” and that they didn’t like it because they wanted something “real”. It was a brief conversation, but I continued to think about the comment. If you’ve seen the show, nobody in there has perfect lives but of course, like any show, there are parts of the plot that might seem out of reach and realities of human existence that could be unpacked more fully. And still... I think for the very reason she hates it, I love it. I don’t think community is out of reach. I don’t think the intimacy of sharing lives with the multiple iterations of family should be something that feels like fantasy. I don’t think that children being loved deeply, even as they go through things and evolve should feel like it’s beyond our scope of reality. Or knowing your neighbors for more than the cars they drive, and their lawn care rituals should feel like a different time.

Quite frankly, I am tired of being too busy to lean in and invest the way I want to in my community. There’s something about this show that reminds me and invites me to ask, “what’s important?” It reminds me to touch more than the intention, and lean into the practice of deep, abiding and loving community as the first fruit of my day, not the last scraps after all the other things.

Friend, I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. I don’t have solutions for all that’s going on. But what is crystal clear to me is that we don’t go about this alone. We have to invest in community. Not the performance of community that gives you crumbs and asks you to be pieces of yourself for some fake belonging NO. Loving Community that says you can be home here as your whole self. You can be held here as you grow into yourself. You can mess up. You can trip up. You can excel. You can evolve. And we want to witness, wonder and love you through it all. You deserve that. I deserve that. We need it.

The Magnolias (truly take a watch if you haven’t!) remind me that none of this just happens. It takes time, intention and a pace that doesn’t prioritize production over the resource that is breath, people and the living things that surround us.

This weekend I witnessed something in myself that I hope to hold to dearly and I hope you will keep me accountable … slowness and attentiveness to these very things.

I spent this weekend with two of my dear friends (and got some time with a third who lived where we went!) We didn’t plan a whole bunch and probably from other perspectives, we didn’t do a lot. And yet, it was everything I needed, and I think they may have as well. We needed space to listen. Space to think aloud through the things that don’t always feel particularly politically correct or sterilized for the socials. We needed grace to grieve without feeling the need to reauthor and share our joys without minimizing them because we recognize the vastness of what’s around them. It was this weekend I realized my “busy” and hustle and trying to keep up with life has distracted me from the very things I want my life to be about the most. Love. Community. Space. Fighting for what is just. A Big an Expansive God that shows up above, around and within. Ease. Naps. Deep belly laughter. Long dinners. Group trips that make it out of the group chat. Watching And witnesses the growth of the littles and not so little anymore in my life. Sitting with elders and hearing their stories and journeys of how they kept showing up to their own life. Care for my mind, body, and spirit.

The times we are in call for a response. Absolutely. Times before now have as well. AND in that response, I think there are other calls too. And the one to community in real and tangible ways as an act of personal and collective care feels very, very loud.

I hope you will find and take space to lean into community. You deserve it. You need it. We need you in it. Ith can be hard amidst all the needs and “to dos” to be, but I think… I really do… that the being cannot be the cost of the doing, especially in the seduction of production.

I love you and I am grateful to share and learn with you. I would love to hear what resonates for you and if you are watching Sweet Magnolias, tell me what you think! (Cuz episode 5!!! Ahh)

In the hope and commitment to community,

Chelsea Brooke