Interlude of Images: Reflection & Reflector
+ Something New
Dear Friends and Family,
The images for this month’s Interlude stir in me reflections on soul. We can imagine the soul as reflection and reflector:1 reflection of the within of life and reflector of that within upon the world—like the moon reflecting the borrowed light of the sun,2 the moon akin to soul; like water, when it is still, reflecting the immediacy of the world surround. I touched on this in my talk at the Gebser Society Conference last week, calling into conversation questions about long-held notions of the body in health and disease.
For quite some time, I have felt a strong inner pull to explore these insights in the day-to-day lives of you and me. Today, I introduce CURA.
CURA seeks to demedicalize, reimagine, and renew the experience of health and age in meaningful conversation with you.
What if . . .
Health is not the absence of disease. Health is life in harmony with itself.
What if . . .
Age is not a number. Age is a way of being.
These possibilities change everything.
Cura is the Greek word for care. CURA seeks to demedicalize much of the human experience and depathologize health concerns that do not belong in that category so that we can heal our lives and become more fully human. CURA renews the impulse of personal health care toward awakening.
We do not suggest there is no place for medicine. We come to our bodies, our lives, our health and age, reimagined. And I share here another related project near and dear to me: CURAlive, a triple-fermented active botanical skin serum for all skin types and countless skin concerns, which I spent ten years researching and formulating as a result of a bout with skin cancer.
The human evolved alongside plants and microbes. We rely on them. Together, they dialogue with the body in ways we are yet to fully understand. And while I subscribe to rigorous science, I am as intrigued always by the element of mystery that cannot be answered by science.
CURAlive is birthed by devotion to both: what we do understand and what we cannot.
CURAlive brings soul and sophisticated simplicity to skin care, backed by rigorous science and care for your overall health.
CURAlive is a triple-fermented active botanical serum formulated by me to address underlying changes in the skin’s healthy functioning related to the inflammatory response, oxidative stress, and microbiome changes in the skin as we age.
What is CURAlive’s Philosophy?
Skin health is a window into health within. Healthy, radiant skin shines through a healthy life.
Since skin is the largest organ of the body and nearly as absorptive as the gut, it becomes a reservoir for what we put on it, which passes through to the whole body.
For these reasons:
Care for your health is care for your skin.
Care for your skin is care for your health.Today, all these endeavors come together here on Substack.
Absolutely nothing will change about Beyond the Comfort Zone posts except this will be the last time I’ll make announcements on a Sunday post.
Once or twice a month, I’ll post during the week on CURA. Anything pertaining to CURAlive will be in CURA posts. Future announcements will also be posted during the week. This will allow for Sundays to be devoted to reflections and images.
My hope is to expand the horizons of questions we’re asking here and with beauty and heart; to bring exquisite presence and care to the wholeness of our embodied life at this time on the planet; to explore together how to belong to this Earth, our home; and to behold anew how we relate with our life, one another, and even with plants and microbes that come like friends, nourishing and guiding us along the way.
Ever in gratitude and with love,
Renée
Interlude of Images: Reflection & Reflector
A few words on these images: A certain surrealism seems to shine through the light itself, especially in the images of the glaciers, which look as if I used a flash. I did not. In the same way, color is so saturated in places, it, too, evokes a surrealist quality. This surrealist essence seems to glisten from an inner aliveness everywhere, from the tips of leaves to the rocky foreground of a glacial range.
Soul. . .
Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin, trans. by Noel Barstad and Algis Mickunas (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1953).
Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, trans. by Robert Powell (New York: Jeremy P Tarcher/Putnam, 2002).
The philosophy and science of CURA are crucial at this time in history. Having worked in health care for decades, when I heard about this initiative I felt hope and relief. While much mystery remains, there have been big strides forward in science as different areas demonstrate the efficacy of what those walking the land have long known - health is life in harmony with itself.
I see this lack of congruity every day in the patients I work with because it has been lost in many areas of our culture, yet I am beginning to see change in the cultural landscape. Age is a way of being, YES!!
I am very excited, and thankful, you are bringing this work to the forefront Renee💕
To you lovely souls in Renee's community I encourage you to check out CURAlive. I am using it, and in a very short time have been amazed at the change in my skin! This is a tough thing to achieve because the water in my community is a terrible skin wrecker so I was very pleasantly surprised. More like amazed and excited! It is a wonderful product I will be using for a long time to come.
My favorite is the third picture. The reflection of the clouds made me think at first glance that the land was floating in the sky.