Practicing Return

New Orleans, Easter, and the slow practice of resurrection

New Orleans has a way of reminding me that being alive is not an abstract idea.

We came down here to celebrate my partner’s birthday. Friday night was Boyz II Men and Toni Braxton, a step back in time that simultaneously felt like an invitation to see both then and now with fresh eyes. This weekend is also the Easter parade, a whole city practicing resurrection (or at least using resurrection as a reason to celebrate) with brass and color and bodies in the street.

In the process, I am noticing how much of my life lately has been about returning.

Not returning as regression, or nostalgia, or trying to get back to some former self. Returning as realignment. Repentance, in the truest sense. Turning again toward love. Toward what is living. Toward the part of me that still believes new creation is not a doctrine, but a pattern.

This means resurrection is the pattern, not the exception.

Sometimes it looks like a dramatic breakthrough. More often, it looks like small, steady acts of choosing life in a world that keeps trying to grind us into performance. It looks like choosing presence over polish, tenderness over numbness, delight over dutifulness. It looks like letting the body be the sacred interface again.

Three places I feel that “returning” right now:

First, Illuman, an organization that exists to help men heal, connect, and find deeper purpose. I’ve been asked to begin a new rhythm of posting that is less about impressing, and more about telling the truth with light in it. Not bypass light. Not curated light. The kind that shows up when we stop making our wounds into disqualifiers and start treating them like altars. Just a quick monthly hit that I’ll also post on my YouTube channel.

Second, Life After Loss. The course is moving forward. I am building it slowly on purpose, because grief is not a machine problem, and I refuse to treat people’s pain like a funnel. My hope is to offer something that feels like companionship, ritual, and sanity in the long middle where time does not magically heal and yet life still keeps asking to be lived.

Third, my yard, which I’ve started calling Jubilee Homestead. 1.1 acres in Northwest Denver that I’m slowly reworking from lawn to life. A xeriscaped front yard. A small permaculture farm. A large community space. I am getting ready for the spring work, and it is teaching me again what the mystics always knew. Compost is theology. Soil is a gospel. There is a way the earth refuses hurry and still insists on possibility. You cannot bully a garden into wholeness, but you can tend it faithfully, and life will keep breaking through.

This is what I mean when I say we can stay human.

Not by trying harder to be “better.” Not by perfecting our coping strategies. We stay human by practicing return. By letting love be the operating system. By remembering that we are here to play, not perform, and that our longing is not a flaw. It is a compass.

If you want a simple question to carry on this Easter Sunday, here it is: What kind of life are you trying to embody right now?

---

And while I’d usually have a paywall here, on this abbreviated week I wanted to give everyone a one hour ritual for embodiment.

Set aside one hour sometime this week. No pressure to make it pretty. Just make it real.

1. Prepare the space (5 minutes)

Put your phone on do not disturb. Light a candle if you want. Make tea. Sit somewhere your body can exhale.

2. Name what is true (10 minutes)

Write without editing:

• What is dying in me right now?

• What is trying to be born?

• Where am I tired of performing?

3. Choose one “quality of life” to embody (10 minutes)

Pick one word or phrase you want to live from for the next two weeks. Examples:

• steadiness

• courage

• tenderness

• honesty

• play

• dignity

• devotion

• enoughness

4. Give it a body (15 minutes)

Ask: If this quality lived in my body, what would it change?

Be specific. How would you:

• breathe

• speak

• walk

• rest

• set boundaries

• love people

• love yourself

Write five sentences that start with: “If I embodied , I would…”

5. Make one small vow (10 minutes)

Choose one action you will take in the next 48 hours that matches your word. Keep it modest and doable. Examples:

• 20 minutes outside, no headphones

• one honest conversation

• one hour on the thing you have been avoiding

• one meal cooked slowly

• one act of repair

• one act of delight

6. Close (10 minutes)

Put a hand on your chest or belly. Say, out loud if you can:

“I do not have to earn my life. I can return to it.”