During the Seeding the Light Gathering, I had the privilege of hosting Pascual and Jose Tomas in our home.
They feel like family as this was their second visit to New Jersey. We’ve also spent a week together in Damanhur and the Temples of Humankind in Italy. I’ve sat in many ceremonies with Pascual in Peru’s Sacred Valley. His flute playing often carried me up mountain trails in the thin air and hot sun.
People often ask me what it is like to spend time with a Q’ero medicine man. The truth is, it is probably not what most people imagine.
Yes, there are powerful ceremonies. Beautiful prayers laid in despacho offerings with sincerity and devotion. Singing to the fire while burdens are released and energy centers are revitalized. There is the witnessing of power flowing through healings, blessing and rearranging lives at a foundational level. And a weaving of wisdom that is difficult to put into words but is felt rippling through every gathering.
And yet what strikes me most has nothing to do with ceremony. It is how Pascual engages ordinary life.
After a long day of healing sessions and ceremony, he hustled over for a group picture, smiling broadly, happy to be surrounded by people. Later that evening, Pascual stretched out on the couch to watch the World Cup as lively conversation bounced between English, Spanish, Quechua, and the universal language of cheers and groans.
Whenever we drove from one event to another, Pascual was interested in everything he saw. Buildings. Trees. People. Stores. Animals. His curiosity about life never appeared to diminish, and he welcomed our questions about life in Peru and his work as a medicine man.
Pascual approached every new experience with the same openness.
He enjoyed traditional Mexican and Italian dinners, American donuts at Dunkin’, ordering pizza, grilling burgers and corn on the cob, and sampling whatever was placed before him. We wandered the Grounds for Sculpture enjoying the art embedded within nature, snapping photos, and quietly witnessing a marriage proposal. We stopped at DSW for sneakers and enjoyed our Walmart adventure, where I insisted Pascual try on pants before buying them. We gathered thoughtful gifts to bring home to his family.
One afternoon someone arrived with a beautiful handwoven band for her hat. It didn’t quite fit.
Pascual examined it carefully. He decided it needed a few stitches. He asked me for a needle and thread and sat down to fix it himself.
And somehow that, too, felt like a teaching.
Our gathering occurred during a heat wave. The chapel lost its air conditioning. Outdoors, it was 95 degrees in the shade. We were hot, yet no one seemed to notice. Everyone was so fully participating in the moment.
During a wisdom sharing, Pascual handed the microphone to Jose Tomas for translation. I was listening closely when Pascual poked me in my side. He whispered “Meditation,” pointing to my friend listening with his eyes closed and to a woman who was falling asleep in the heat. We dissolved into laughter. Pascual often drops into meditation (or perhaps takes a quick nap). We tease him about this often and he delighted in seeing others doing the same.
Bursting into laughter, making jokes, or just smiling for the joy of it all occurs in every circumstance. Ceremonies which exude power, genuine devotion, and pure prayers also contain bursts of laughter, hugs, and broad smiles.
He welcomed every gift with genuine gratitude. And often offers gifts in reciprocity for the care he is receiving. There is nothing forced in these exchanges. Just a natural way of being in reciprocity.
What touched me just as much was watching the participants naturally begin to do the same. Throughout the week they offered thoughtful gifts, expressions of gratitude, and small acts of kindness to Pascual and Jose Tomas. At the end of our time together they shared how deeply moved they were. Rather than feeling they had come to New Jersey simply to work, they felt they had gathered in ceremony with family.
Jose Tomas told us stories about how well known Pascual is. Not because he seeks attention. Quite the opposite. He has never seemed interested in being important. He is interested in people.
Whether speaking with airport workers in Cusco, blessing a soccer field in Curaçao, offering a despacho in the high Andes, or staying in touch with monthly phone calls, people seem naturally drawn to him.
Given these stories, we started calling him “Hollywood.” Pascual laughs every time he hears it.
Many people inhabit a role. Shaman. Teacher. Healer. Pascual inhabits his life.
His reverence for the sacred is inseparable from his reverence for everyday living.
Language and cultural differences don’t seem to matter much. To every experience, Pascual arrived with openness, curiosity, humor, and respect. People felt it and they responded with love, laughter, tears, joy, and respect.
For all the power people experienced in ceremony, I suspect this may be one of Pascual’s greatest teachings. He is fully present to what is arising in each moment.
Many people travel great distances seeking wisdom about how to live well.
Sometimes wisdom arrives in your home town carrying a market of handcrafts to support the Q’ero community. Relaxing during a soccer match. Purchasing gifts for family. Asking for a needle and thread. Working tirelessly through a heat wave. Enjoying a Pepsi. Offering powerful prayers one moment and delighting in an ordinary joke the next.
For me, the greatest gift was watching someone demonstrate how joy, love, wisdom, and power are a natural part of ordinary life.
It reminded me that being a person of wisdom isn’t defined by ceremony or role. It is revealed in the way we greet each person, receive each gift, meet each challenge, and participate fully in the ordinary moments of our lives.
Peace be with you and with all. No exceptions.
Studies of students entering college for the first time revealed that simple acts of kindness made a difference. During weeks where students reported doing more ordinary acts of kindness, they also experienced more happiness, resilience, optimism, and flourishing. Perhaps even more important, they felt less loneliness and anxiety. Ordinary kindness. Nothing dramatic or overly taxing. You don’t have to head off to school to get into the ‘act’ this week.
Learn the one essential skill that allows you to face any challenge with confidence, sturdiness, and inner calm.
More than a technique. It’s a game changer.
During the Seeding the Light Gathering, I had the privilege of hosting Pascual and Jose Tomas in our home.
They feel like family as this was their second visit to New Jersey. We’ve also spent a week together in Damanhur and the Temples of Humankind in Italy. I’ve sat in many ceremonies with Pascual in Peru’s Sacred Valley. His flute playing often carried me up mountain trails in the thin air and hot sun.
The plane had begun its slow fall toward the earth when a sharp ache pierced my ears. Half-dozing, half-aware, I surfaced into the moment just as the toddler in front of me woke with a scream that broke her open. The sound wasn’t defiance or misbehavior. It was pain.
I felt her small body struggling to make sense of something she couldn’t name.
Her mother bent over her with the tenderness of someone trying very hard to be a good parent. But her soothing came dressed in urgency, in the quiet pressure to behave, to use words, to be okay, to not disturb those seated around her. Her voice shook with the effort of managing her child’s distress and her own rising shame.
Over the past several months, I have been immersed in conversation with women. In therapy sessions, Via Sophia circles, and at dinner tables. During walks, ceremonies, and quiet moments after gatherings have ended. I’ve been listening as stories unfold. Different women. Different lives, histories, and circumstances. Yet beneath the details, I keep hearing a remarkably similar story. Many women are tired.
Last week, I left the house a little earlier than usual.
Not because the day ahead was spacious. Quite the opposite. It was full. Appointments, responsibilities, errands to run, bags still to pack for my upcoming conference. One of those days where the hours already seem spoken for before they even begin.
And yet, before leaving, I found myself lingering in the garden.
The overgrown bushes had finally been removed, opening up an entire section of the bed I hadn’t really seen clearly in years. New flowers and shrubs had recently been planted, and I stood there for a few moments appreciating the fresh openness of it all. The morning light and the possibility of adding a few colorful blossoms. The beauty of something being tended and made new.
There comes a moment when something within you begins to shift.
Not because life is failing. Not because you have done something wrong. But because what once felt meaningful no longer feels like enough.
Many women arrive at this threshold quietly. Others experience it more viscerally, through exhaustion, change, loss, longing, or the growing realization that the life they have carefully built no longer fully reflects who they are becoming.
You may already feel this happening within you now.
A few months ago, when the world was cold and the snow came often, I left for work a little earlier than usual.
The roads had already been plowed, but I knew better than to assume they were clear. That kind of winter morning holds a particular deception. The pavement looks clean, almost dry, while a thin layer of ice waits invisibly beneath.
I was mostly alone on the road.
