35. Love To Shake It Up

In this episode hosts Sangodare and Alexis define what it does and doesn’t look like to spend intentional time together. They distinguish vacations, staycations and jaunts and how they draw distinction and boundaries between these experiences and work and family trips. They recount a recent jaunt involving deep conversations, play, and a near–EV battery mishap and cite Gwendolyn Brooks on blooming in the whirlwind. They answer a listener question about play and how levity builds agility, flexibility, and rediscovery. 

• Jaunt Vacation Staycation
• Calendar Boundaries
• Anniversary Jaunt Reflections
• Announcements and Farewell

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, I'm Alexis Pauline Gums. And I'm Shango Dare Wallace. And this is September, a podcast for love ships.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

We're two lovebirds who decided to intentionally create a love ship and share the insights we gather with the world.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

For the past 17 years, we've been relating to our love ship as a sacred space for spiritual practice.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

This podcast is our space to reflect on the insights we've found and been given with you.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Whether romantic, platonic, or somewhere in between, okay, situationships, every bond has the potential to become an offering to a higher vibration for the world. One choice, one act of care, one repair at a time.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

So, if you're ready to think expansively about love, community, and spirit, you're in the right place. So glad you're here. Hello, Shango Dare, my travel mate who grabs all the bags from the baggage claim and is always ready to line dance with me at a random street festival.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Hello, Alexis, my travel agent, who so generously talks to customer service or sits in that customer service chat when I need to make a flight change.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

And to keep it in balance, I'm also the one who sometimes changes my whole mind about where I want to travel at the last minute.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

And I'm the one who has such side eye and high standards for us that it can be hard to make a timely travel decision.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

So once again, we are two people on a perpetual adventure. And we are exactly as lovable as you. Today we dedicate this episode to one of our favorite couples, Martina and Tawana, who are also on a perpetual adventure.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

I remember the first time that Martina and Tawana told us about their practice of traveling together and sharing beautiful experiences around the world.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Which makes us even more honored that you two came to some of our earliest mobile homecoming retreats.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Which I'm pretty sure were not up to your standards of luxury.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Or even breathability. Remember when Martina had an allergy attack? Yeah. In North Carolina. Oh my goodness. I'm still so sorry. Thank you for your grace with us. We have so much fun with you. We can't wait until the next time we get to play compatibility with you both. One of the best games ever. Most of all, we appreciate how you both show up to laugh and grow with us and to share such amazing stories. And we love the way you both express your creative and healing powers in community. You really teach us that community is what we make, and we make it by showing up.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

And we could listen to your love story a million times. Oh, yes. The drama, the romance, the suspense. It should be a movie.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Martina Antoina, we love you. Okay, listeners. Remember, you also get to dedicate your listening of this episode to someone you love and admire. Maybe someone who has something important in common with you, or who you're especially grateful for, or who's on your mind or heart in this moment. Okay. Dedication launched. Ready to get into the heart of it? Let's grow. And guess what? It's still September.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Every week we have a technology for you from our journey and our teachers with North Stars that can guide you as you navigate your own conga line dance of relationship as spiritual practice. And on today, we just dropped by to remind you to shake, shake, shake it up. So we decided to do this particular episode while we were actually using the technology we're about to share, which is the jaunt.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

That's the jaunt, that's the jam. We just went on one and we'll do it again. Actually, the technology is jaunt and vacation and staycation.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

And we have very specific definitions for all three of these things. A vacation is more than four nights in a place that we do not live. A staycation is four days or more with no meetings, events, or outside commitments. In the place we do live. And a jaunt is a small trip somewhere we don't live, kind of like a long date with at least one overnight stay or component.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

And we created these three things: vacation, staycation, jaunt, because we're recovering workaholics. And you know, some people probably would have just made it date night. But you know us, we do the most.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

So we got a massive dry erase calendar, and before all the gigs and retreats and ideas, we first, first blocked out the days of our jaunts, vacations, and staycations. First. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Priority is literal. What do we do first? Because with these purposeful lives we are living, the time fills up quick. And if we didn't prioritize stepping away from the work to connect and reconnect and celebrate with each other, when would we celebrate our three anniversaries and month-long birthdays? When indeed.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

And so because talking about work is a very, very slippery slope.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Slippery slope, Asipe Rocky.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

When you have a podcast about your relationship and collaborate on community, building events and are obsessed with each other's creativity, you know, we had to do it. We had to create very specific parameters, boundaries, and blessings.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Por ejemplo, a work trip never counts as a vacation. Never. A trip to spend time with family is wonderful, life-saving work, but also does not count as and cannot take the place of a love ship vacation. That's right. And though we may have wonderful ideas and still do our daily creative practices on vacation, a work retreat is not a vacation.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

We're honestly still learning how to do this. And sometimes it feels like our work cosmically permeates everything. Like, for example, we took a nice jaunt, basically a three-night date in just driving distance from where we live. And while we were there, the episode of the podcast that was out is the live episode where we talked about running out of gas. Well, cosmic. Well, anyway, this time on the way home from the jaunt, which was lovely, full of breakthroughs, good conversations, dancing. I accidentally misread the battery level of our electric car, and we dang near ran out of electricity in the middle of nowhere.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Well, not nowhere, but definitely an EV charging desert.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Yeah, we were just feeling so free and so full and so flexible. It's like, oh yeah, we'll stop somewhere and charge at some point.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Do we live in a movie? Is this the Truman Sho? Anyway, our definitions of jaunts, vacations, and staycations are not necessarily what would work best for the structure of your love ship or your life. That's right. Maybe you don't work together. Maybe you don't live in the same place. Maybe what fills the time is childcare, not community work. Maybe it's your E-lay, church, temple, or synagogue commitments that got you caught up. Could be. The point is that if the purpose of a love ship is intentional spiritual growth, we have to be intentional about connecting with each other in a way that allows us to step back, reconnect, and nourish our relationship on purpose, not just in reaction to our everyday.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

On this most recent jaunt, celebrating one of our several anniversaries, actually, two of our several anniversaries, the 10-year anniversary of our growth proposal. We should talk about that on a future episode. Yes. And the nine-year anniversary of our Durham collective commitment ceremony. Also a future episode. We got to have some important conversations on this jaunt. Not all of them easy, not all of them ones that we generally would have space for in the midst of a busy day or maybe even just an average day. Right. So certainly not at a conference or between facilitation, you know, something else that we might travel for. We wouldn't have the space for it.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

And also we got to play. We got to laugh a lot. We got to walk around a different city and notice what we noticed. There's also something about being the only people we know somewhere. And it feels like such a blessing to still be getting to know each other after 17 years. And I wonder, for you, beloved listeners, in any of your important relationships, how do you make time to connect and reflect in the midst of it all?

SPEAKER_00 9:12

It also felt helpful to get away to just get out of our house because our living room looks like a whirlwind. Because, you know, I'm in the midst of reorganizing my study and archiving sermons and composing music and and and and it's full of books. New books, old books, other people's books.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Rare books, black feminist books. Anyway, it does make a difference to ship the location. So our sacred Texas Week comes from the great poet Gwendolyn Brooks. We have all her books. And it's from her epic poem After Mecca. This is the urgency. Live and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind. That's how she starts, and then she comes back at the end. Live and conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

In the whirlwind. Blooming. Making intentional space for growth in the midst of it all. And this applies to our love ships and our lovebirds. This applies to our relationships to ourselves. Because lovebirds, if you demonstrate to the universe that you don't have time to pour into your relationship with you, why would you prioritize pouring into partnership?

SPEAKER_01 10:38

I mean, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, you know, practice demonstrate. Good point. Receipts, you know. So our first North Star is create sacred repeated space to connect both to yourself and as a love ship.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Our second North Star is prioritize connection, whether that means putting it in the calendar first or doing it at the beginning of the day, or hiring that babysitter in advance, etc.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Our third North Star is no excuses. Our relationships are what hold us in the whirlwind. Don't wait until everything stops. That may rarely or never happen. Make time to rest and reflect and connect anyway. Anyhow.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Do we have a listener question? We do.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Another great question from Yvette, who asked, What are our favorite forms of play that deepen and widen our love ship? Oh, that's a really good one. Because we we are. If play too much was a love ship. I feel like it's been different also at different in different seasons. Like there was a time we were playing cards a lot. Yeah. There's a time we both got uh Nintendo Switches and we were playing, we were playing that.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Um the time we used to wrestle.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Yeah. No, that didn't that didn't last so long. I feel like there was a little spell recently where I would, you know, since there's so much instruments in the living room now, I would play drums and you would dance. That felt really playful. Obviously, we have our daily uh dance practice, which feels playful sometimes. But yeah, what would you say? I think going to line dancing feels like playing, but I mean, honestly, we created a whole evolutionary game. All right. That what was that?

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Was that around February how close to um Valentine's Day that we like did a s seven chakras of activities that are about a deeper love. And we played it.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Yeah. I mean, it's actually making me think we could do some more playing. We really could do some more playing. I think because we are so playful with one another, that some of the more uh explicit gaming that we used to do, like we're we've not done so much in the in the recent recent times.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

That's true. Although sometimes, you know, because I say I I don't like to run unless someone's chasing me, sometimes they'll just chase me around.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

Yeah, which is exactly what I'm saying. Like just a playful approach to life. But what is it to make that playful space, you know, sort of carved out and sacred? Like I would love to like go play a couple of hands of I don't know, Jin Rummy or something like that right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Uh I mean, we did what we did do. Remember, we went to the gym and we played racquetball for the first time.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Yeah, that definitely felt like play.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Yeah. So how does it deepen and widen our relationship?

SPEAKER_00 14:02

I think the fact that there's not a lot of space between moments of levity in our relationship means it's so much easier to get to it. You know, a little, a little upset, a little aggravation, a little, but the levity is just still right there. So it's easy to reach. I think that's at least one um I think it's one way that it deepens and widens our love ship. Because I think just having access to ease and being present to the love more often, so often, so easily, definitely is a deep and wide makeup.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Yeah, I think there's something about being in a mode of play that has, you know, I don't know that much about neuroplasticity and brains, but I know that play helps people to be nimble, right? And so when I think about what you're what you're saying, the levity of, you know, we're we're excited to like say a joke or say something clever or imagine a sketch that we may not, you know, share with the world, but like what if this, you know, and I I think that that kind of what if, it's almost like this ready stance of nimbleness. And I appreciate it. Yeah, because I feel I feel like it, it's I I juxtapose it to like, what would it be to feel like rigid? And we're rigidly in these roles, and whatever I think is what I think. And it's like, I think we listen to each other with an agility. I think that maybe what we think we don't stay as attached to it because there's a there's play there, you know, in the other sense of play. Like there's there's give. And I think actually playing, whether it's the joking, whether it's the laughing, or whether it's actually, you know, through the trying a sport that we only have seen in movies about white middle management men, whatever, um, it gives us the space to be more flexible and be more in the flow.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Yeah. I would say another way it deepens and widens our love ship is we learn about each other and play, whether we're doing one of those question games, Esther Perel or somebody else, or, you know, uh taboo and it's like the the ref the random references that one reaches for. You know, just all all of the little learnings and deepenings of our personality. And even how we we are constantly changing and growing. And I think having easy access to play in explicit and more everyday uh ways helps us to keep knowing each other and rediscovering each other again and again.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Again and again. And yeah, it's it's a it's a method. Play is a method that we love, it's something we enjoy to do. We want to have some more love ship game nights as a way to also play in community. And yeah, thanks, Yvette. I love this question.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Yeah. All right. Do you got any announcements, Alexis?

SPEAKER_01 17:06

Yes. Um, we are excited to have details on the mobile homecoming.org slash loveship page about fourth Sunday revival service here in Durham. Mm-hmm. All love ships, love birds, and everybody else. Everybody is welcome. We are gonna talk about black feminist sacred texts. Shangudari's gonna preach. Alexa's gonna do the oracle. It's we're gonna sing together, it's gonna be fun. So you're always invited. And also look out for the June launch of our Chrysalis Life Purpose Roadmap. That's right. Allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Sean Goat.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Sean Goat.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

All right.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Well, until next time, farewell. Thank you so much for listening to the September podcast. If this conversation spoke to you, we'd love for you to share it with someone who might need it. And don't forget to leave us a question to cover on an episode and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps more people find the show. Until next week, stay in the ship as an offering for yourself, your community, and our collective spirit.