Listen

An invitation to deepen

“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumour of sadness and change.”

― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

I woke early this morning, at 4am letting the sound of crickets outside my window move through me. They are incredibly loud but I call this silence. They are wild songs my body longs for.

It has been so dry. The earth is parched, so thirsty. In some places, water struggles to sink in. 

My mind is like this sometimes.

The swirl of too many thoughts can create a threshold where even the words and sentiments I’m so thirsty for — and finally hear —  cannot sink in.  

Today, I want silence to pierce me, to move me. I want to sit with nature’s wild songs and hold this beautiful, porous feeling so I can dive more deeply into my new book and ultimately, more deeply into myself. I am logging out of social media today. Not permanently, but at least until I can drop in more deeply. 

I intend to sit with nature and with my animal body, tending to discomfort when it arises. I know discomfort is a door, a door that is so tempting to avoid but if I remain distracted,flying past it, grasping, looking elsewhere, how will I digest and know the sum of my experiences?   

Nature has her own rhythm. We can water and nuture a growing plant, but we cannot force their flowers to bloom.

So today, I will sit in silence. I will write, reflect, meditate and listen. And when I notice the lure of my phone or another unnecessary distraction, I will get curious — What is pulling me away? — and I will write some more. I will listen to the crickets, I will go outside and sit with gorgeous fields of goldenrod. I will watch bumblebees collect their late summer pollen before all the flowers fade.