The Call of the Wild

Each night, over the past month, I drift off to sleep to the sound of this incredible chorus of our amphibian friends singing their throaty and lusty little hearts out through my opened window. These primordial spring rituals, which seem to arrive here on the west coast at this latitude/elevation in February/March, signal reassurance to some ancient part of my animal body and lull me into deeper states, journeying me into the dream world each night.

I love this time of year. The cool nights. The fresh mornings. And this year especially, with even just a few weeks break now from the relentless grinding gears of industry, the earth's natural systems, in small ways it seems to me, are rejoicing. But clearly, all is not life-as-usual for us humans this spring.

Of course I am deeply attuned to the fear, anger and grief that it seems has flooded the world. Fear, anger and grief in response to these changes and losses in habit, routine and the familiar, but also in response to the horrors that are unfolding and the unknown that may always have been lurking, but now is exposed like an open wound. This virus seems to be behaving in ways that are not yet understood, and nor are our human responses to it. This kind of fear, anger and grief might sometimes break us down into tears or break through us in sharp, reactive snaps. But it is also the kind that might catapult us into frenzied action at times and at others, into immobility...these polarized responses aiming to manage, digest and integrate the enormity of the change, loss and uncertainty upon us. To handle it. To make sense of it. To wrap our heads around it. To control it. To find our way...

Shock. Grieving.

This global crisis is highlighting the cracks, pushing in on the tender and vulnerable places, and in so many cases, ripping open the injustice, violence and trauma that had previously been thinly veiled. So many cracks. Just so many cracks.

As someone deeply in love with the human condition and deeply privileged to sit in the front row of so many people's lives, witnessing human growth and maturation in such an intimate way, I too, like so many others at this time, also feel the initiatory ground this global pandemic seems to be ripening, the growth it seems to be inviting at individual and collective levels, and the massive efforts underway as so many work to rise and meet these enormous challenges.

I can feel it inviting me in new ways, pulling at old threads. Unraveling me. I am working with the emotion this surfaces for me, in the ways I know how. My own wildness. I too don't know where we are headed. And I am reluctant to place my trust in anyone who believes they do.

But in some moments in these wild times and in between these wild swings, sometimes a sweet moment of pause.

A breath.

Somehow, a merciful act of resistance in the face of this suffocating illness...

A chorus of wild creatures serenading each other.

A space for new seeds of life.
Vision.
Creative fires lighting up one another around the earth.

Hungry for a more whole and healthy humanity, there are whispers of prophecy, new choice-points, transformation, and a fervor of resurgence in resistance against tired and worn-out rhetoric and approaches that polarize, separate and further prey and capitalize on marginalized voices, lives, and the health of all life on this planet. And of course, there are gracious and heart-rendering acts of grace, kindness, and compassion only the human heart can offer too.

We are being stretched. Further. And have so much still to learn.

You can find me here too. Moving slowly where I am able. Keeping the long view in mind where I can, far beyond my life too. Listening deeply to the earth's rhythms. Following her lead through my body, emotions, dreams, and imagination. Deeply grateful for the places wise, measured, mature voices are surfacing. Leadership. And the places life is supported by this, including mine. For now.

Deeply grateful for the wildness of frogs and their song.

My hands are in the dirt. My sleeves are rolled up. I am tending where, how, and when I am able.

Our Real Work - Wendell Berry

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.