Imagine the last time you truly listened

Are you listening now?

My toes wiggle in the soft, dew-soaked grass, sending a brief shiver up my spine. To my right, songbirds chatter and gossip, safe in the tangled quince tree, and an occasional dragon fly hovers, an iridescent ruby contrasting the dark pond waters before me. A ladybird, drawn out on this warm sunny morning investigates the potential of a terracotta pot. Would this be a suitable winter home? And vibrant, ruddy apples, defiantly cling to an old apple tree, triumphantly holding on, despite this week’s windy weather.

A blackbird announces the morning as a light breeze rustles through an ancient, gnarled mulberry tree. Tiny silver birch leaves sparkle and shimmer, singing in the wind as if greeting the morning and the intense blue sky.

It’s an idyllic moment and I sit awhile, coffee perched on the arm of a chair that, having rested here so long, appears to be rooted in the earth. How wonderful to simply be with this moment!

Sometimes, September can be beautiful in England and today is one of those perfect mid-autumn days.

As I awoke this morning, the word alignment was strong in my head.

Yesterday, my newly imported, very old Spanish car failed its vehicle safety test. Despite my best efforts before leaving Europe, the headlights are not aligned correctly for driving on the left. For the umpteenth time in a few weeks, I was dealing with a chin-scratching, doom-saying mechanic and following our conversation, scouring websites for second hand car parts that had previously held no interest for me!

And then there’s my teeth! How does it happen that our teeth gradually, almost imperceptibly go out of alignment? However it happens, it’s happened to me and, meeting my new dentist for the first time, I explained that I want my bite back!

We lose our functionality when out of alignment.

So, this short sojourn in an old orchard helped me to realign myself with the rhythm of the new morning, the day to come, the season and rhythm of the year and with the greater cycles of the cosmos.

Having re-booted (literally and figuratively!) I walked to my dental appointment and as I waited to be seen, started scrolling through the long-held notes on my phone. I was looking for a poem. I knew it was hidden in there somewhere. And some other gems came to light too!

My attention was caught by Phil Cousineau, author of The Art of Pilgrimage and the mention of the evocative word threshold.

This note remained from a contemplation on the last group Camino I guided. The night before we climbed the hill towards the Cruz de Ferro, an iconic landmark and high point on the Camino Frances, where pilgrims often leave a burden they have been carrying, we gathered to contemplate thresholds and their meaning in our lives.

There’s a threshold moment with every journey, with every change – that moment when we move forward from choice or necessity, that moment of no-return.

Long hours lying flat on my bunk in a darkened cabin, resisting nausea as I recently traversed a turbulent Bay of Biscay was a belly-of-the-whale threshold moment for me. But they don’t have to be that extreme. Simply getting out of bed in the morning or choosing to turn left instead of right can be such a moment!

“A . . . task, “says Cousineau, “once you have crossed the threshold is to listen intently to everything around you. . ..” (Italics mine)

Scrolling on, my notes included an adaptation of a passage from Becoming a Hollow Bone, by Anne Wilson Schaef. I have brought these words for contemplation on the Camino as well and, whilst they hold true still, I need to shuffle them today.

When I listen to another person, I respect and honour them.

When I listen to the animals and all creatures, I respect and honour them.

When I listen to the swimming and the flying, I respect and honour them.

When I listen to the plants, trees and all of nature, I respect and honour them all.

When I listen to the unseen, I am respectful of the unseen also.

Listening is not only my responsibility, it is an honour and a gift to be able to listen to all that is around me.

When I listen to all that is around me, I am acknowledging its existence and have the opportunity to learn, heal and grow spiritually from it all.

And finally, I came to the poem that had prompted my search – Autumn, by Macrina Wiederkehr from Joyce Rupp’s book The Circle of Life: The Heart’s Journey Through The Seasons. The version I know is one adapted by Alexander John Shaia.

What better contemplation for the Celtic festival of Mabon, here in the northern hemisphere, than to enter the poetry of autumn. During this mid-autumn, mid-harvest celebration we’re invited to look back and expresses gratitude for the harvest. We’re invited to look forward and offer prayers for sufficiency and sustenance through the cold winter months to come.

In her work, Wiederkehr considers cool crisp autumn days, baskets overflowing with fruit, falling leaves and the fragility and beauty of aging.

But it was this stanza that called to me.

“We are listening to a call for transformation,

to a call for the death of the old ways.”

Much is being spoken these days, about the old ways of being, of hierarchies and power-over dynamics, of war and genocide and oppression. We all know they no longer serve us.

Much is being spoken about the need to care for our planet, our food sources ourselves as well as our neighbours.

Are we listening to the birth pangs of the earth and all who dwell here, as the old is passing and the new coming to be?

Returning to Cousineau’s Art of Pilgrimage, I’m reminded about how I love his work, in part because he frequently invites us to imagine.

“Imagine the last time you truly listened” he says.

Picture that time.

Where were you? With whom? What details do you remember about the setting?

Now you have an image – remember! Bring the image into your body.

What sensations did you notice? How did the ground or chair supporting you feel? What was the temperature? How was the quality of the light? What sounds accompanied the one you were listening to?

And how did you feel? Which emotions rose and fell?

Were you able to sit and hear, without becoming defensive or judgmental or making it all about you?

What qualities did you and the one to whom you were listening bring to the interaction?

Which of those qualities do you wish to polish?

Listening to some of the larger cycles, today’s new moon speaks of new beginnings. And the partial solar eclipse speaks strongly of endings. We may have been aware of the shadows eclipsing our usually sunny dispositions, and it would be hard to miss them being played out in the world.

But once the shadows come to our awareness, we can find the gifts hidden within. We can grow, change, mature, and re-align ourselves, we can restore our functionality and, like the sun, no longer eclipsed by shadow, radiate out our clearer, truer essence once more.

So, in this time of planetary change, at the beginning of a new cycle I’ll return to Cousineau’s questions relating to thresholds. I invite you to sit with them, ideally in nature and to be open to all that you hear.

“What are you listening for now?

What calls do you hear amid the cacophony of your life?

What are you praying for?”