paying attention to an aching heart
nothing is ever lost...listen for stories returning on the breeze
dear sojourners,
the other day as i sat sipping my morning smoothy, a house Wren appeared on the railing outside my window and stayed still for two, three minutes. no flitting from rail to tree to shrubs. no preening. just a slight cock of their head as if saying, “are you paying attention?” it felt like Mary Oliver’s ghost had come to remind me stay present. and so i did. at first i wondered if they were injured or even in the process of dying until the wee bird’s head did a tiny tilt. “pay attention” Mary Oliver and wee bird said. other birds swooped and flitted to and fro from the tree behind, but Wren stayed. with my eyes i messaged, “there are Hawks around. be careful.” and still Wren stayed until finally, when ready, flew off. perhaps an ancestor visiting? likely a bird weary from Winter needing a rest. we make the meaning we need in the moment. in the moment, it felt like an ancestor. and felt like a message to pay attention.
when i pay attention, i notice what makes my heart ache…physically ache. it is a small tightening around my heart space. it might be a story or an image that squeezes my heart, often stirring tears. might be a memory. a dream. this paying attention, i’ve come to understand, is part of my connection to this entangled world. we (meaning all beings) are threaded together. our joys. our grief. our laughter. our sorrows. our songs. our bones. our desolations. our celebrations. our displacements. our migrations. our births. our deaths. our ancestors. a messy tapestry where no thread, no matter how frayed, is unnecessary, even as it dances away on the wind, for one day it will return as the wisp of story whispered on the breeze. nothing is ever lost forever in this world|universe. the spiral of life|death|rebirth expanding. contracting. pulsing.
lately i’m paying attention as my energy ebbs. my inner tide being drawn out to sea. being raised and immersed in the capitalist system of “doing,” when i have what i name “off weeks,” my old messages of “just keep pushing though” and “if you aren’t producing, then you aren’t worthy,” pop up. ugh. it takes a lot to counter-balance those and my other critical voices. that, in itself, is exhausting. does that resonate with you? what messages do your “inner critics” share with you?
my dreams. my dreams. my dreams. my dreams are also inviting me to pay attention. they feel entangled with the world’s soul. the anima mundi… (my understanding of this from
’s course “Courting the World Soul” available on her website) entangled with the energy swirling from above|below|beside|behind. and also perhaps telling me something about my own inner constellations…they don’t have to be separate. many of my dreams are violent (and i don’t watch the news or watch violent movies because those images do pierce my psyche.) in some i wander about lost. occasionally an ancestor appears. i am not the best at keeping a designated “dream journal,” but am noting these dreams in my daily journal. there is an undercurrent of bewilderment. of loss. of not being in control. what do you notice about your dreams?most days it doesn’t take much to stir my pot of tears (that heartache thing) but recently tears are splashing in unison with the pacific nw rainfall. the gentle holding of my story by my spiritual director today was helpful in uncovering some unrecognized Grief that my body had recognized and was communicating not just with the tears, but in a bone weariness. she invited me to be “exquisitely compassionate” to myself. confession: that is not always easy for me. does your body sometimes recognize Grief before you “intellectually” do?
what’s been stirring my “pot of tears”?
the recent popularity of Fast Car by Tracy Chapman…a song that still wraps around my heart and squeezes tears out years after i first heard it.
brutal images (even read, especially in poetic form) from Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, and other areas of the world experiencing war and disasters.
a podcast where someone shares their Grief story.
several personal journeys shared on Substack.
stir stir stir.
a short documentary by Kalyanee Mam, a Cambodian-American filmmaker, called Lost World broke my heart open. i found out about it after listening to the Emergence podcast titled Seeds of Reciprocity. honestly, that was going to be last week’s Substack post, but it fell into some liminal space between my foggy brain and the keyboard. i do recommend listening to the podcast as well as watching the documentary because it offers hope without offering answers.
anyway, here is the synopsis:
“As Singapore dredges sand out from beneath Cambodia’s mangrove forests, an ecosystem, a communal way of life, and one woman’s relationship to her beloved home are faced with the threat of erasure. This 15-minute short movie by the award-winning filmmaker Mam Kalyanee touches upon the beauty of this stunning part of coastal Cambodia, the destructive dredging it suffered from for close to a decade, and the greed and stupidity that lies behind it in the form of Singapore's relentless 'land expansion' program.”
witnessing the act of dredging is violent. the lack of respect for the local community and the Land mirrors what has occurred throughout my own country as we destroy ecosystems without bothering to deeply listen to the Land itself, let alone the people who know it best.
this story of Sand lead me down some rabbit holes. Singapore as a country is expanding on Sand brought in from other countries. millions of tons. dredged and shipped. though my research was not in depth, it did look like the region where the film was made in 2018 is no longer being dredged in part due to local activists, though damage has been done. so a lesson for me: don’t ever assume the “powerless” have no voice. and other regions of Cambodia and Vietnam are still being dredged with little regard to those who live along the waters’ edge (a recent investigative report called “the thirst for sand” offers some insight.)
Sand, believe it or not, is a finite resource. it is used prolifically in our ever expanding cities (think windows and concrete as examples). the type of Sand needed to “feed” our cities is becoming scarce and where there is scarcity, there will be a black market. the first episode of the podcast, Imagine a World Without, hosted by international bestselling author and journalist Omar El Akkad explores how this scarcity is affecting, again, communities with little say in how their landscapes are decimated. he shares a dramatic story when one woman said “not in my backyard” and the result of her persistence. (an aside: i have found the “without” series excellent. they run about 30 minutes and offer lots to ponder.)
Sand is personal to me. i wonder, if someone were dredging my beloved coastline how would i and my community react. who holds the power? my time at the coast, whether is it at my beloved north oregon coast, visiting other western coastlines, or the coastal areas of the uk and ireland, that liminal space where Ocean meets Land…the Sand strips, be they wide or narrow, are sacred to me. grains of Sand holding ancient stories. each shift of tide and gust of wind shifting the seascape. nothing is settled. storms violently alter the seascape. tides may wash a dead Whale upon the shore (this happened just a few of days ago at Sunset Beach in Oregon). this is Ocean’s way.
Earth’s way is to alter landscapes, sometime subtlety. sometimes abruptly through earthquakes, eruptions, hurricanes, tsunamis and more. it is uncomfortable when what is familiar becomes strange. i can accept these shifts even as i grieve what has been lost. but as i drive through clearcut forests or watch a claw crash into a river to claim what is not respected, honored, that ache in my heart grows from a deeper sorrow. witnessing the callousness our species (not all) has towards this Earth. i don’t want to become numb to it. i don’t want to become numb to it. i don’t want to become numb to it. to not become numb, but to remain open-hearted.
to remain open-hearted, even when it is a heart dripping with tears. even when answers are elusive. even when answers are not the answer. i appreciate a recent Facebook post by Bayo Akomolafe:
I have long felt, with the requisite sense of scandalous satisfaction such feelings come with, that there are at least two ways to respond to a question. The first is with an answer. A resolution. Answers are often neat and tidy. But their tidiness comes with a cost: a constitutional exclusion of the gift of confusion.
The other way is with bewilderment. A spiriting away from the logistics of the question. A crossing into sensorial mutiny. God refusing to satisfy Job's many existential questions about the nature of suffering.
Bewilderment is a line of flight, a desirous wandering away, a sensitization to other ethical possibilities beyond the immediately apprehensible paths forward. Bewilderment is awkward.
Bayo Akomolafe
(note: i added the bold and his post was longer.)
i don’t write this Substack to offer answers because i don’t have any. i would rather respond to what arises in my world with bewilderment. with curiosity. with tears. with an open heart. by paying attention.
the Wren has returned since our first encounter, having checked me out and found me, i hope, a reasonable human to engage with. my rented condo has a concrete patio that is fenced in, but on one end there is an 18” wide strip of soil that runs along one side. i hope it will be suitable for planting shade loving plants once the weather warms.
during a recent “faux spring” weekend, i pulled up creeping ivy and turned over the soil. the Wren seemed to approve, finding in the wee bit of earth, a trove of small bugs. when i notice Wren’s visits, i stop what i’m doing and watch from the window. my reminder to pay attention. to be present…to the world and to my heart. thank you Wren.
in gratitude,
anne
I needed this today. Thank you.
thank you for reading. please take tender care of your heart.