“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”
Rumi
How the Conversation with Life is like playing Charades:
A few days ago, in the middle of winter here in Australia, I realised that it would be high summer in England, the place of my birth and of my ancestors.
I LOVE the English countryside in summer. The quality of the light and the willow trees, their long tails caressing the river. The long evenings. The old buildings.
I connected with wanting to see some pictures of England.
“You must ask for what you really want.”
A few hours later, on Instagram, I saw someone share a whole set of images of the Cotswolds.
I drank them in. In my body I could feel the body sense of being there, watching the trees blowing in the breeze and the soft grass under my feet.
“You must ask for what you really want.”
Moments later, “Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music drifted over from next door. It finishes with the words, “Bless my homeland forever.” (My homeland being England).
“You must ask for what you really want.”
But of course, Edelweiss wasn’t just a song about the melancholy of one’s homeland; it was also about political dissent to extreme authoritarianism.
Right now as I write, I receive the prompt to go and look up the song Edelweiss.
“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.”
I find this:
“Rodgers and Hammerstein created “Edelweiss” with the intention that it would do double duty: It was to be a song of acquiescence—to family, to love, to the small satisfactions of stability—and also of resistance. It was both a symbol and an instrument of the Von Trapps’ fleeing of the Nazis—an embodiment of their belief that the “homeland” was something that could, like a flower that blooms in winter, survive the harshness of fascist rule. The original song, Playbill notes, “represented the indomitable spirit of the Austrians under Nazi control.” …. “Edelweiss,” here, is a lullaby that is soothing precisely because it insists, against all odds, on staying awake.” Megan Garber.
“Don’t go back to sleep.”
I’d already decided to start this post with Rumi’s poem. Like a lullaby that insists on us staying awake!
Speaking up more about authoritarianism has been a key part of this morning’s Conversation with Mary.
As my Field Project mentor Philip Golabuk used to say, “you couldn’t make this stuff up.”
This morning’s conversations with Mary included my call to share more of my thoughts around the domination culture. The song, “Dissidents” kept coming to me.
“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.”
I’d looked up the meaning of the word, “dissident” and it said; “a person who opposes official policy, especially that of an authoritarian state.”
My experience of Life is a tapestry of threads; a weaving of a web.
Yesterday, I was talking to Mary on Voxer whilst following Belle the bunny around the garden. Belle had ‘escaped’ from her enclosure and I was loving seeing her being free, whilst I was also making sure she was safe by staying close with her.
Being free from the inner confines of the internalised domination culture, expressing our deepest beliefs, and being safe was part of the conversation we were having.
I talked about Steve Jobs and said that I choose Apple because of beauty, and at that moment I realised I was literally following Belle.
Belle means beauty. I follow beauty in my life. Beauty is my guide.
“People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.”
We are not disconnected objects in a soulless universe.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, as Mr. Shakespeare said.
Everything we experience has soul. Nothing and no-one is left out.
“You must as for what you really want.”
My oven door suddenly shattered the other day. It wasn’t dangerous, but I was shocked.
The oven hadn’t worked properly for many years, and I’d been willing to put up with that, just as I’ve been willing to put up with other things that I didn’t want.
I don’t want to buy another oven, but I do want a way to cook root vegetables in the winter and birthday cakes.
“You must as for what you really want.”
I felt called to ask on Facebook if there are new alternatives to ovens, I received recommendations for air fry ovens.
As I researched these, I remembered something.
When we built this home 21 years ago, just before buying this very oven, I’d had a vision of some kind of portable oven on wheels. I wanted flexibility. I didn’t ever really want that big oven in the first place, but I didn’t find what I really wanted and I was willing to settle for less.
Now, I see what I really want, and I see that an airfryer does all that. It says yes to so many things that I want. It’s small. I can get rid of the big oven and have more space. It doesn’t create the electro smog out the back that my oven clearly did when I tested it with one of those electro machine thingies. It’s way less money. It’s easier to clean. I can put it away in the summer when I don’t cook much.
“You must as for what you really want.”
A longing to see a picture of England, a conversation whilst following a bunny, a journey with an oven; in a soulless world of objects, these aren’t meaningful.
But when we deeply experience matter as mattering; when we listen to what we really want and hear Life responding; life is a very different experience.
Life can only speak to us through life.
“People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.”
Sometimes we can hear Life more clearly, like in song words or the signpost that jumps up in front of us.
Often, Life responds and responds and responds and we don’t listen.
I’m reminded of that story about the man in a flood, calling for God to help him. Help is offered in the form of people in a rowing boat, a motorboat and a helicopter, and each time the man turns them away, telling them he is waiting for God. He drowns and goes to heaven and asks God why He didn’t help, and God says, “I send you a rowing boat, a motorboat and a helicopter and you turned my help away.”
I also think of the footsteps on the sand story, where the man reflects back on his life with God and sees that in the most painful times, there was only one set of footprints. He asks why he had been left at those times, and God replies, “When you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”
Growing up in a colonised world, we can easily believe that we are disconnected, on our own, without support and belonging.
But we are deeply connected with all beings and all things.
Life is constantly responding to us, yet so often we don’t hear the responses, because we don’t believe they are there, or we don’t know how to hear them. We’ve been colonised into believing that taking these things seriously means that we are ‘woo woo’ or ‘crazy’ and were often shamed into ignoring the profound belonging and meaning that comes with attending to the Conversation.
To hear the messages, we often need to slow down, to attend to the Conversation.
I think of it as a bit like the game, Charades.
Life knows what the movie is, and is giving us clues.
You know when you play Charades and someone gets it, straight away, and you almost can’t believe that they did?
How did they get, “Sherlock Holmes” when you just stood there holding a pretend pipe?
Sometimes we get the messages like that.
Other times, we just don’t get what the movie is, and Life keeps on going offering us clue after clue, with how many words the movie has, the two syllables and the sounds like, and the plural.
Sometimes, like in Charades, Life gets louder and more demonstrative, to help us hear.
Half an hour before the oven door shattered, the handle fell off. “Oh well,” I thought, “I’ll just fix it once the food has been cooked.” I didn’t get the message, so Life needed to speak more loudly.
“Don’t go back to sleep.”
Often, the journey of playing Charades with Life is the meaning-making.
I could have easily just ordered a new oven, or left the old broken one there.
In the conversation with Mary, in the asking on Facebook, in the remembering of 21 years ago, what I really wanted all along became clear.
I’m so grateful to have spent hundreds of hours in conversation with Mary.
In conversation with each other, the Conversation with Life has become even clearer.
And that’s what we’re inviting in The Room.
We would love to converse with you and to support you in enjoying playing the game of Charades with Life even more!
The door to The Room will be wide and open soon.
So much love. Xoxox