This morning, high up on a branch of
the old, winter bare oak,
a single large crow sat –
still and silent.
Meanwhile, unseen in a tangle of
creekside vines and bushes,
a carolina wren pierced me
again and again with his
loud insistent song.

The crow’s pose made a strong image, seeming full of portent and omen, starkly visible against the sky. Still, the repetitive notes of the hidden wren kept tugging at my attention. The wren was — to use the old but accurate cliché — singing his heart out, flinging his very being into the cold gusts of this February morning.

Isn't that what we are all called to do? 
-- to "sing our hearts out" in whatever way we can .

For the past month, I have been feeling dark, depressed, overwhelmed by many different things. The political situation in which we find ourselves here in the U.S. has created an intense anxiety that somehow magnifies even small and unrelated concerns. How can there be such deliberate cruelty and planned devastation?

I have not been writing, have not been having conversations with my beloved fibers. Waking tired and heavy every day, I have forgotten my morning routines of dancing and going outside to greet Old Oak and the 4 Directions.

When I came across this poem last week, I felt that the poet was whispering it directly into my ear:

darling, you feel heavy
because you are
too full of truth.
​
open your mouth more.
let the truth exist
somewhere other than
inside your body.

―Della Hicks-Wilson

I had not been releasing my truths into the world through word or dance or making or even through embodied gratitude to the larger, wilder world. I remembered the passage from the 2nd century Gospel of Thomas:

“If you bring forth what is within you, 
what you bring forth will save you. 
If you do not bring forth what is within you, 
what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

Shall I keep my heart clenched protectively like a fist around my fear, grief, and pain? Or shall I open my heart to let the songs fly out? Today I got up and danced. I went out into the beautifully icy air and spoke aloud my gratitude to all the beings that surround me — ever embracing me and offering me my place in this amazing world. My heart opened. I went into my studio to resume my work with the fibers. Now I am sitting here, letting my fingers play with words. I am letting myself come alive, remembering Carrie Newcomer’s instruction to “keep practicing resurrection.”

Several weeks ago I was surprised to find this poem by Mary Oliver — a poem different from her poems of astonishment and praise, a poem that speaks directly to us and to our over-culture.

Of The Empire ~ by Mary Oliver, Red Bird (2008)

"We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness."

Keeping our hearts open, even — or especially — in the face of destructive chaos, is essential. I must remember to open my heart’s door, to let my truths step over the threshold and join this wide, wild world — to keep singing my heart out.

And for us all, 
a blessing from John O'Donohue:

Beannacht / Blessing

"On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life."

                                  John O’Donohue