opening acts & fairy terns

grace in connective creativity

(first video offers a brief disclaimer of the fact that I use the word “like” quite frequently … and gives the name of the Hawaiian fairy tern: Manu-o-Kū)

Good morning

I'm recording this later on Monday morning than I usually do and it's been such a beautiful practice to honor the way my energetic system has felt this morning:

the morning is so cloudy right now, but when I woke at 5:00 AM it was clear and bright, at least I believe it was

I remember walking with David and looking at the stars so vividly

It's wild that it seems like it was a long time ago.

These days, I feel like energy shifts so quickly and so magically that chronological time has not a lot of meaning

I guess when you pour vital life energy in the direction of kairos time - into full presence -whatever you are doing, then time can feel a little hard to hold on to… which is good, because time is hard to hold onto, it's not something that we can grasp in our hands

And notions of “time management” – manos = hands – those almost seem absurd to me now

One thing that's amazing is how my life does not require to-do lists in the way that it seemed to for so long

Now, I do have some lists that I keep at work to make sure I don't forget things, but when it comes to the majority of my life - like just the things that need to get done for my personal life - I used to make so many lists, but those lists felt oppressive to me after a period of time

And of late there's a lot more just breathing into what feels most inviting or important in the moment and then I find that the things get done

And certainly there are things that get pushed aside repeatedly and then I notice that happening and that becomes important information, so my noticing of that happening becomes like a tender “Oh sweetie, I notice you don't like to look often at your bank account, so let's spend some time with that. What does that mean? What do you want to learn here?”

[In case anyone is worried about my bank account, I do have a wonderful partner, David, my husband, who’s much better at looking at that than I am and we share a lot of resources;  all of our resources at this time … well, all of our monetary resources, so I'm safe, it's good]

And for me, being someone who has a history of perfectionism, to-do lists and even like sometimes recurring events in my calendar, sometimes those have felt like a little hard on me:

a little coming from a place of must and should and ideal as opposed to from an energy of like, “ohh, hmm, yeah, interesting, yes please”

And I think a lot of the growth of the past year of my life has been around like coming into a place of trust and also like testing:

To what extent can I have faith that the Universe/God/Goddess/Source/Capital-S Spirit… to what extent can I trust that (Anne Lamott says the Great Universal Spirit, GUS) …

to what extent can I trust that GUS has my back? and that my connection is true enough that important things are going to happen even if I forget about them or even if I'm not checking things off the list in a way that looks conscientious and that gives me a sense of like, “Yeah I can pat myself on the back, I'm doing it right”

and what I've found is that I can actually trust that if I'm forgetting something important someone will send me an e-mail or give me a nudge

and there's been a beautiful humbling in that, too, on occasion apologizing and being like, “I'm so sorry if this has been difficult for you, and also it's been part of my healing of perfectionism, so thank you for your graciousness and your patience with me”

That's felt like kind of miraculous to be able to do that for myself, and maybe it's a gift to others as well.

There's been so much moving in my precious little heart and body and in important relationships in my life, that this morning coming off of yesterday …

so Sundays are usually my Sabbath, which I think many of you know and I don't use my devices on Sundays, by and large, unless I need them for like a map to meet up with a friend for coffee

I have some pretty like sturdy containment around what I do on Sundays, and it's an important piece of attending to the energetic being that I am, for me to have a day away from devices and a day where people in my life know that they don't have easy access to me;

I'll typically do like one thing that is socially engaging and good for me, and that's what happens in that day … a lot of art making, SoulCollage®, walking, spending time close to the earth, taking a long bath; it's like a retreat day that I build into my week and I feel so grateful that I'm able to do it, knowing that not everyone has capacity to do it

And yesterday was not that kind of day. So this morning, waking up a little less of the immediate access of energy surging up with clarity around, This is the thing you're going to talk about on the Muse this morning…

That has felt fine too, having not that much clarity

Part of what I want to talk about is how grateful and amazed I am in the aftermath of the Jeannie Geiger Walk Against Domestic Violence

Yesterday was the first day that three survivors shared poetry; each of them is a member of our Creative Expression Group that meets weekly

and getting to stand up on the stage and be the person introducing these precious humans and kind of like, opening the door to say, like “Yes!”

I literally held the microphone to them because we didn't have a microphone stand. Getting to be the person who held it up to them was so humbling and magical and joyful. I've been on a lot of stages in my life, and I feel like much of my work on this planet, in this life is being an opening act for people

As a teacher, there have been so many important voices and souls that I have like,

seen them and welcomed them and sometimes cajoled them into like using their voice, whether in theater or in choirs or in coffee houses and open mics and assemblies

I've gotten to introduce so many important voices into the world and I don't even… I don't do a lot of social media, so I don't even keep track where they all are now, and it doesn't matter, but it does.

It has mattered immensely that I've been able to use my voice to open doors for other voices; that I've invited one person after another to come more fully into their expression

Anyway, obviously there's a lot of feelingness about this and it connects to the walk yesterday, and the incredible writing and fierce, loving, courageous, healing energy that each of those humans voiced, and then we also had a little circle of other members of the group behind them … and we had art by one of the survivors; Well, by many, but one in particular

Ohh, what utter beauty and what incredible privilege to get to be part of ushering it into the world

And the walk began, and I had a lot of different people who were like technically on “my team” for the walk, which was so lovely, and like because I needed to move a bunch of things back into my car after the opening remarks, everyone who was technically on “my team”  was like, already walking, except David, my precious David, and our little dog Birdie, so the three of us walked together the walk itself and that was perfect too

There was this sense of like, [gesture of grounding] there had been so much energy leading up and in that opening, then to do the walk and get to have the settled, gentle, comfortable ease of time with David: we walk slowly because Birdie walks slowly; we got to touch base with some other beautiful souls, and mostly we had like a lot of spacious, gentle talk for ourselves

And then when we got back, when we finished the walk and were back at the Newburyport waterfront, I was delighted that several friends had stayed, and we took a few pictures and had a few more conversations, and

Ohh that sense of having so many beings in my life who are attuned to themselves and attuned to me, because plenty of people had left, too, and that was perfect too

I think everyone did the thing that was most nourishing to them in that moment and day, and everything was as it wanted to be and it was so sweet

And still somehow I'm coming back to the fairy tern. The fairy tern is a bird that I found a picture of, and yesterday I sang a song spontaneously - was not planning to record a true cover yesterday morning before the walk - but this tern, the fairy tern

and I found out its Hawaiian name, which I will say at the end of this recording

The fairy tern: because this article in National Geographic was from 1978, I was a little fearful when I recorded yesterday that the fairy tern would be gone now, like extinct or something. It's still around, and I read about it online and it's in different parts of the world: Australia and New Zealand is one place, but this specific kind, the Hawaiian kind, I was delighted to read and learn more about:

One thing that's amazing is that it only lives in the city in Honolulu or Oahu, specific parts, but it thrives in the city, which is so strange for a lot of birds, because it doesn't build a nest. A female fairy tern will lay its egg any old place, which is wild, it doesn't go through the work of building a nest. And, but like in the city, because there's so many people around, the people kind of scare off some of the natural predators that would steal that egg … if it lays it like up on a window sill or something, like people are around enough that a rat is not going to get up there and find it …

So I'm going to link an article for those of you who are interested in birds, because the things I learned about the fairy tern really delighted me; I think there was a part of me that resonates with the fairy tern and I don't even fully understand why yet, but I do think there's a sense of like,

“That's a weird little bird, that's a weird bird that doesn't build a nest but just lays its eggs indiscriminately wherever it's convenient” … and there's something that feels kind of spiritual about that to me

and I guess for me it's like, egg representing creativity, just to like wantonly deposit my own creative energy in whatever spaces feel most receptive at the moment … I think I resonate with the fairy tern energy, its particularities

and thinking about it makes me wonder about you, my muses, and if there's any particular bird that you resonate with and if so what that bird is and why

Feel free to message me with an answer to that question. Sending much love and gratitude to each of you, blessings on this week.