The infinite potentials at the base of the heartbeat

I'm taking a pause

I sing to my body; I sing to the earth. I sing to the flowers unfolding streams of colour through the great green bed of my garden, to the wild waters that dwell beneath the dark soil. And when my song ends, here in the quiet hush, a new voice rises.

A smile touches my mouth, surprised. Out in the garden, the chicken is beginning to sing.

*

Picture this; my sanctuary. A few square metres of bubbling plants and green lawn under the dappled light of one, enormous field maple. And the patch of scrappy ground I refer to as, Chicken Wasteland.

Here lives a lone ancient bantam hen who has long outlived her fellows. It's an inconvenience to the general aesthetic of the garden, but frankly I don't much care because her bright, curious body awakens the fierce fire of my own joy.

Sometimes she jumps up on top of her coop and flies down the garden, pecking at the back door for my attention. What picture-perfect image is worth that?

This year, she’s seemed pretty tired, old bird that she is. I’d quite given up on receiving any more eggs. Day after quiet day has passed, as we rest in companionable silence. I, only thirty-eight but ten years deep in illness, feel myself quite as retired as she.

Yet the more I stir myself out of what I think must be, the more awake I become to the infinite potentials resting at the base of each heartbeat, the more life begins to surprise me.

*

This morning, I go looking for old joys. I emerge into the light with my cup of tea and go to drink in the scent of the first rose blooms. They have made me immodestly happy before and I am in need of the serotonin burst. I cannot find it; and joy can never be forced. I dwell a moment in the swelling undercurrent of despair. Searching for a feeling.

A wiser voice whispers, don't go looking for old joys. You won't find it in the same place which woke it before. Joy is born in this moment.

So I go inside and I light the candle on my altar and go to take a seat for my meditation. And quite suddenly, I find myself wanting to sing.

I turn on Ayla Nereo’s Eastern Sun and let my voice bring me alive to this world. I sing to my body and to the earth, to the sunlight and the rose blooms, to the water wending its way through all of us.

I sing for my gratitude and for my grief. I sing a hope that is born of now and not of an imagined future.

As the song closes, the chicken raises her voice. We have broken our silence. And I know what I will find, when I walk up the garden to see what’s in the nesting box.

New joys.

*

I think that I want to write about joy, the kind that we find streaming through the middle of despair, and about the noticing of joys as a pathway to sustained hope. I know that I want Falling Free to change. Not to cling on to what has been, but to open to what might be.

And so I am taking a conscious pause. To rest in the infinite potentials at the base of the heartbeat. To allow stillness to open the path forward.

I'll be gone, probably for a few months. Stay subscribed and you'll hear from me again. I think I'll have something new to say.

If you're a paid subscriber, I'll pause your payments until I begin again.

If you want to keep in touch in the meantime, I'd love to hear from you. You can contact me directly at mirandaruthgillloves@gmail.com.

To new joys, the sustained hope of the present moment and the sacredness of the pause,

Miranda x