Singing Gravity~ Wendy Robertson Fyfe

Tree Notes in Earth Stave, East Lothian, Scotland

Here we are circling around again towards the third Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus on Wednesday,1 April, 2020. This year it seems like life/death is quickening on this miracle blue–green pearl planet called Earth swirling within the Multiverses, perhaps being held by songs that we do not have the ears to hear, or have forgotten to listen for. Given where we are in this world right now: the social and ecological injustices; growth mass extinctions, fires, flooding, coronavirus, increased refugee movement, melting ice, carbon crisis, growing fascist movement as one response…why on Earth would we want to sing! As Amanda Fiorino noted last year we need to wail! As John Lynch noted, what calls might we offer and what responses might we be surprised to hear.

What if forgetting singing as one way of humans participating in our animate, Intelligent, Earth of wild Imagination, and entering into a communal song of Earth Community, Earth and Cosmos, has contributed to our being in this current crisis/opportunity, or as l believe, current shift of consciousness? Of course the dying of the rational, ‘growth’ industrial, extraction, objectifying, Earth killing culture is best seeing the end of. But then/now what? New ways are emerging such as Sustainability, Transitions Towns, Extinction Rebellion creating steps along the way. And, l wonder, in what ways might we humans become part of the next layer of Earth’s geology that goes beyond human-centric ways…becoming food, fossil, dust, air, offering service as shift of consciousness into what we don’t, and can’t, yet know? What if we also move more into and in participation with Mystery, through metaphor, symbol, dream, imagination, psyche and nature, song, soul.

What if this Earth and Earth Community is held by song; perhaps song of love, song of Eros, a different kind of gravity that holds us all where we can only fall in and down to some mysterious deeper place? What if singing is another way of joining in, entering a bigger orchestra, a tremulous and magnificant opera, with and way beyond more-than-human beings in a vast and deep impossible dreaming. What if we follow our unique voice, our reed of Earth, in the only way each of us can sing the needed note that, like holographic reciprocity, can sing the death of a culture, awaken and enliven life that is longing to be born. What if?

What if we sing this year, sing with Earth Community and Earth, as if it may make all the difference~

This year will see more fabulous guest blogs from Official Wild Orchestra Folk in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Please contact me should you have words and songs to offer a blog or postings from wherever you are on Earth. There have been visitors to the website from nearly 50 lands such as New Zealand, Australia, Japan, China, Oman, India, Serbia, Scotland, Tunisia, Togo, Nigeria, Paraguay, Mexico, Costa Rica, USA, Canada to mention a few. Earth’s diversity of human voices are welcome. There are leaflets on the Home page to download and print to share information amongst your people. Please make contact if you are interested in translating to different languages.

Once again there will be daily offerings on the Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus 2020 Facebook Page with group space to make your own offerings, contributions, songs and conversations. A growing selection of resources is available on the website www.earthsongwave.com. There are a number of ‘Official Wild Orchestra Folk’ to contact around the world for information, interview and ideas on the website.

Let’s tune-in with the wild ones, sing on and sing out with our celebrations, praises, prayers, grief, love offerings and more for this one wild, precious and holy Earth~ Let’s sing with the known and unknown bubbling and forming in, under, around and over us. May it be so~

Wild Earthsong blessings~

Wendy

Approaching Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus 2019~ Wendy Robertson Fyfe

(…)To remember the other world in this world is to live in your true inheritance. (…) David Whyte

Imagine an Ancient Yew approaching 1,000 yearish old. In fact, here is an image of such a one taken a few weeks ago in East Lothian, Scotland. Imagine, if you will, the songs this Yew will have sung and heard since the Middle (currently) Ages. Just imagine; Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great and even more Greats, Grandmother tree; seeded in soil older than She. She, whose branches touching the ground grows new trees planting a tree circle around her. Imagine, if you will, the community songs of this one and yet many trees. Imagine, if you will, that we humans come from such a lineage though we do not always see the roots or the ends of the branches where the new tree emerges, or maybe see the new trees but have lost track of the main core; the main core where new trunks also rise from within. Indeed, our human lineage is often referred to as a family tree, is it not. What if this very now rare tree, tree of one and many, also sings today to remind us of our true inheritance rising from eons reaching out to us in longing; through longing branches for future life; life with healthy soil and air, with healthy song waves.

This tree has long-term vision, for sure. What of our long-term vision in creating healthy Earth Community for all considering the next 1,000 or so years forth? What are the Ancestral songs from the deep Earth who need to be remembered and sung again, and again ~ especially from those of us 'Westerners' in this Modern Industrial Growth Society. Maybe when you are rising on this Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus morning (or any morning), maybe like a root at the edge of this Ancestral tree or from your human Ancestral tree or/and another bole from their centre, l invite you to remember them in you too, wonder about and with them, sing for and to them; bring them in to the centre once again so that they are honoured as the ones who brought us here and who are longing to send roots into and for the future ones for the human and more-than-human world. What animate notes might you find singing and letting loose through your animate body out into an animate Earth hungry for your songs; like casting a spell or a prayer into the world. Imagine the Earth and Earth Community depending on such songs ... they are ... remember, like the Great Yew Tree that:

(…)You are not a troubled guest on this earth, you are not an accident amidst other accidents you were invited from another and greater night than the one from which you have just emerged. (…)

David Whyte. What to Remember When Waking

Earthsongwave: Call and Response in the Symphony-Of-Life. John Lynch

Everything speaks, and the symphony-of-life builds upon the unique participation of each being—such as a chorus of coyotes at dawn, the metallic clicking of insect wings in the summer afternoon, the trickling of a desert spring inside a still canyon, or the rustling of aspen leaves in the mountain breeze. Each thing—that which is an animate expression of the Earth—announces its place in the world simply by the way it is, how it innately calls and responds to the world around it, both in form and behavior. One way to celebrate life is to praise the beauty of all the voices and to honor the variety of ways in which the world expresses itself.

Obviously, many beings speak through vocalizing; yet, this is but one mode of having a voice. Language is not relegated to sound. Not by a long shot. There are other forms of language in the wild world, a myriad of expressions including pheromones, color, texture, body posture or movement, art, imagination, dreams, ceremony, and ritual. Not to mention the conditions and timing relative to when and where these expressions come alive, which is also a unique insight into how a thing enters into communication and relationship with the place it is in. This applies to everything in the world, from rivers and rocks to racoons and rhododendrons. Everything has an expression, a kind of language; and because of that, the world is always communicating.

In all corners of the Earth, and perhaps even the cosmos, there are beings constantly conveying information about how they are in relationship with the others around them. There is a constant broadcast of information within an ecosystem, ready to be experienced by those who are open and willing to listen. For human beings, the experience requires the kind of listening that can only be done through the ears of our hearts and as interpreted by our wild imagination. That depth of listening may sound impossible for people these days; however, we were designed to detect such conversations, and the capacity to do so still lives inside our bodies.

Some say our ability to witness the symphony-of-life, in the way only humans can, is an aspect of our collective voice that announces our role within the Earth community—to mirror life’s interconnecting spirit back to the Earth. On the morning of April 1st, before you join the Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus, take some time to listen deeply to the song of the place you are in, for we are all eligible polyglots in the various dialects of soul.

Vocalizing back to the world in response to what it offers is one viable way of communing with the world and is most familiar to us. However, do not overlook nonverbal ways in which you can receive and respond to the influence of a place or being. The world speaks perfectly the languages of dance, poetry, emotional outpour, visual art, rhythm, or ritual. Often times, these expressions work as well or better than speaking with words alone. When we unabashedly hold ourselves up against the raw nature of the world and speak across a culturally imposed species boundary in creative and spontaneous ways, a deeper and more soulful aspect of our authentic inner nature can spill forth to join that of the world’s.

In this space, our expressions have double meanings; something offered can have inner and outer implication. Metaphors, symbols, and images become reality. And under the inspection of our capacity for self-reflexive witnessing, we can notice our true nature coming through in the conversation. And before we know it, we can catch ourselves participating in the great conversation as seamlessly as all the non-humans do. We may be surprised at what we overhear ourselves expressing, and we may be even more confounded at the responses we receive from the world. While participating in the never-ending call and response of all the world’s beings, we can be sure that whatever emerges from our astonished selves will be heard by the more-than-human world as we take the first steps towards returning our note to the symphony-of-life.

By John Lynch of Arizona

Thank you John for your offering for Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus 2019. John is a Guide at Animas Valley Institute, Lecturer at North Arizona University and Deep Personal Development Facilitator. He is also a contact for Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus in New Mexico.