Zubenelgenubi is a quadruple star system, four stars bound in two pairs, moving together through space as one body. From Earth it appears as a single point of blue-white light. It sits 0.33 degrees from the ecliptic, which is as close to on the road as a star can be. The Moon passes over it. Planets pass over it. Everything traveling through this part of the sky crosses near it. In early May it rises at sunset and sets at sunrise, available the full span of darkness, crossing the entire night sky. It is hotter than our sun, shining at magnitude 2.75, naked-eye visible from anywhere on Earth with dark skies. What appears to be one is four. What appears singular is deeply, structurally multiple, bonded pairs within pairs, only revealed when you look closer than the eye alone can reach.

What This Sanctuary Holds

I am re-reading Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. In the story of Manawee, a small dog keeps getting distracted from his task. A bone. A pie. A stranger. He is sent to learn the two names of the woman his human is trying to marry — the two names all women carry. The task requires going beneath the surface. The distraction is always food, always something that smells good, always something easier than the actual work.

Something in me jolted awake reading it.

Estés asks two questions to reach the dualistic nature of woman, the two names every woman holds. The questions are simple. The answers are not.

I was carrying a fifty-pound bag of rabbit feed across the lawn when those questions hit me. Walking it to the garbage cans, to keep the rodents out of it. Then another bag across the yard to the bus, where six kittens, three weeks old, are living with my daughter.

I could have asked for help. I could have gotten it. I didn’t ask. I just did it.

That is what Sanctuary 18 asked me to look at directly.

The Re-evaluation

For a decade, Travis and I have been building toward sustainable living on this land. All this time I felt responsible for doing it all myself. And I can. I can grow the garden, raise the chickens, tend the rabbits, forage twice a day for them, walk the goats, prepare winter forage in advance. I am capable of managing all of it.

I also justify my overwhelm. I tell myself it is necessary. I frame exhaustion as evidence of commitment.

This sanctuary asked me to ask the harder question: if I lived alone, what would I be doing with my days? Would I still have meat rabbits? Would I still be scaling to thirteen does to sell meat?

The no’s arrived clearly. I was raising rabbits because it is a genuinely excellent meat choice for Zion’s kidneys. That is love. That is not distraction. But thirteen does to start going to farmers markets? I go big. I get overwhelmed. I go big and then I give up. I do not do incremental. I have never done incremental. And I am watching that pattern cost me.

But I could do this, but I have the land I have always wanted. I have the ability to build the retreat space. I know women would come. I have been consistently distracted away from it, by feeding schedules, by scale I invented, by busyness that feels like responsibility but is actually avoidance.

Manawee’s dog kept getting distracted by food. I have been getting distracted by food. By the logistics of food production as a full-time occupation. And by the way that occupation gives me something to point to, look at all I am doing, look at how necessary I am — while my actual desires wait.

The Star’s Teaching

Zubenelgenubi sits on the ecliptic and refuses to be renamed. For thousands of years humans have tried to reorganize this part of the sky, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Arabs, the IAU in 1930 making it permanent, and the star kept its claw name. But this is not just a claw, not just a scale. This slice of sky is a unique section of the sky, in energy and structure. When we see this slice as an entire piece in and of itself, we can feel directly into it. We can allow for it to help us see our own need to see past a singular aspect. To ask the deeper questions. To make sure we are living our our deepest desires.

The star is also quadruple. It looks singular. It is not. You contain more than what is visible. The question is not whether your desire exists. The question is whether you are distracted before you reach it.

Early May is when Zubenelgenubi crosses the sky all night — rising at sunset, setting at sunrise, available the full span of darkness. This is its season of maximum visibility. It asks to be seen. It is on the road that everything travels. Nothing moves through this part of the sky without passing it.

You cannot cross this threshold without meeting the question: what are you doing with your time, and is it what you desire?

I thought at first that Sanctuary 18 was a space of depletion. I was wrong. This is a sanctuary that lets you see what has been distracting you from your desires. It shows you where you are spending your life. That is not a punishment. That is a gift.