Day 25: The SEVEN Around Us
- Jay Berghuis
- Sep 19, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 20, 2024
Are you aware that a flock of starlings navigate as a group by paying attention to the seven birds around them?
When that group changes, they stay focused, wingtip to wingtip with their new connections.
Wonder with me: What might it be like if we humans paid attention to staying in rhythm, in attunement with the seven closest beings around us?
I woke this morning, determined to greet the dawn outside, so I had to ask for help to be bumped over the lintel to the patio. (phew – I’m so aware of the need for ADA-compliant space – yet what could I expect in this sturdy renovated historic lodge!) I see many are already silently moving in the dusky shadows in their Praise Walks around the land.
Here’s the wild gift of my morning meditation – my praise sit! Two moose hanging out snacking in the willows while the sun rises over the horizon. Since my birth in Africa, the wild has always been a beloved teacher, my soul aware that my ‘community of seven’ is mostly more-than-human and often invisible. Weeping in gratitude, I roll to breakfast, to guide our murmuration of women into hours of solitary wandering, seeking to listen inside and out to the many voices of Nature and Spirit. We ended the day listening in triads, mini-clearness circles, where each person had half-an-hour to speak from their deepest longings and questions.
Like starlings in flight, I witnessed a dance of tears and fears, of joy and pain – all the hidden wholeness that underlies our lives that soften goes unspoken and unwitnessed.
“Starlings reflect a way of being in systems leadership. Each bird in a murmuration is a participant and leader within a complex and ever-evolving system. Each has the power to shape the direction and shape of the whole system, each has the power to create entirely new constellations. I like to think that each of us has the capacity to be like starlings.”
Community
Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark
Somewhere there are people
to whom we can speak with passion
without having the words catch in our throats.
Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us,
eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us
whenever we come into our own power.
Community means strength that joins our strength
to do the work that needs to be done.
Arms to hold us when we falter.
A circle of healing.
A circle of friends.
Someplace where we can
be free.
Who are those ones flying closest to you: Human and more-than-human?
What are they teaching you about change, about listening to Spirit, to Earth, to the Beauty of this world in the midst of so many cataclysmic happenings?
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