Learning to see with new eyes
What if the Earth wants something from you this year?
It’s freezing here.
Arctic vibes this week make me feel very alive.
Cold yes, but alive, and madly grateful for winter.
The stillness, light of day, dark of night and frozen solid ground.
Talking of ground, I went to visit my Dad’s grave this morning, we buried him a year ago this weekend.
He’s becoming an Oak tree.
The economics of living in 2024 have been anxious in my belly this month, often in the morning when it gets light.
Trying to work out how to sustain family and fund missions this year.
Always a difficult juggle.
Often what January serves up for me.
I baked sourdough bread this morning for the first time in months.
I had been baking it very regularly for about 10 years.
Bread became a barometer for my busyness.
No sourdough this week ? - too much busyness. Slow down.
I had to make a new starter this month.
My starter of 10 years sadly passed away.
I kept feeding it for this last month, trying to bring it back to life.
But nothing.
That starter was hardcore, you could leave it in the fridge for 6 weeks and it would come racing back to life with one feed.
Mix flour, water with invisible wild yeasts and boom - a whole microcosm of life.
I think mould crept in the back door and finished it off.
Last year was turbulent in our house.
The wheels fell off my bread making routine for several months.
The starter died.
Everything dies at some point.
Especially if you don’t attend to it.
There’s some endings going on for me right now.
As this year begins.
One very alive one is about ending the responsibility I feel to try and speak to all the pain and suffering going on that I witness in the world.
I can’t do it anymore.
At least for now.
It’s not that I don’t care, I feel the suffering deeply, I’m just not sure I have an opinion or a point of view anymore that I can speak to.
Hard to describe what I mean - it’s a physical embodied feeling.
A fatigue, words have stopped coming.
They’re exhausted. Punctured.
No bubble, no zing, no life.
I was on a zoom session last week with my Kincentric Leadership Co-learners.
We were listening to brother Bayo Akomolafe who joined us for an hour.
Someone asked him about Gaza and how should we be in our witnessing.
He spoke of many things, with great humility and compassion for all who are suffering, while calling into question the ‘urgency of whiteness’ of ‘pathologizing indifference’ and our ‘capacity to be in response with the world’, he talked of ‘loss as a messenger of belonging’ and ‘grief as an elder’.
As ever when I listen to Bayo I don’t know exactly what he was gesturing towards but there was something in his words that connected with these feelings in my body.
I was visited by a fox this week, I mean thoroughly visited, for several minutes the fox strolled around my garden, criss crossing, backwards and forwards, jumping up to my studio window.
I felt Fox vibes for the rest of the day, still around now.
I have been reading notes in my notebook from my week at Plum Village last October.
I settled on a page about the many ways of knowing and seeing the world, and one of the monastics noted that ‘capitalism and colonialism has tried to extinguish these ways.’
But they exist.
I’m definitely orienting deeper into these ways as this year begins.
For example instead of setting goals, things that I want from the year.
What if the world wants something from me ?
I’ve been picking up signals and clues this last year.
Seeing things with new eyes,
Knowing things in old ways,
Not knowing things in new ways.
It’s these I’m being drawn towards as this year begins.
What if the Earth wants something from you this year?
We’re setting off on another Community Solo next Thursday evening - 26th January for the next 5 weeks - there’s still some places available in the crew.
If you’re seeking a container and a community to support your orientation as this year begins, a chance to connect intentionally with Earth’s intelligence while honouring this deeper darker slower time, please come and join us.
I made a video about it last week, see below.
Beautiful words, Dan. Thank you for sharing 🙏