Sometimes…

I am the sea

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Hello. This post is about Death & Birds.

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Last week, the Roses conspired to all bloom in unison, like a choir. The Mayflies, ever true to their name, are bobbing up and down like orchestral music—until a Sparrow swoops, snapping a note from the air to deliver it, still humming, to her brood. The Birds are frantic with young-tending, territorial disputes and melodic declarations of their aliveness. I, as ever, am in the grip of dissonance, marvelling at the crescendo of late-Spring from inside a body unconvinced by the idea of holding itself together. My contradictions clash, like Magpies and Crows, midair. Sometimes I am a boulder—grounded and steady—while the sea, wild and raging, thrashes, frenzied, around me. Sometimes, I am the sea. The concept of being a coherent individual with a consistent set of thoughts and behaviours feels as foreign to me as the concept of being a Stick Insect.

A little while back, I found myself staring intently at a young Bird at the rescue centre. A vague, nagging sensation in my stomach insisted: something’s not right. There was no logic to it, he looked perfect: great feather condition, good weight, eager as he sat propelling his beak open at speed whenever a hand neared. But…something was off, and my body wouldn’t let it go. Having countless other mouths demanding to be filled, I carried on, but kept returning to this little sphere of hunger, each time feeling the internal insistence that something was amiss. When we do not share a language with the beings we love most in the world, they themselves become a language we must learn. What cannot be spoken must be sensed; listened for through eyes, skin and the vast catalogue our bodies keep of the many thousands of tiny observations that love sees us make. Upon third return, I watched, and waited, and finally, like a Bird of prey casually landing on an Oak branch, the answer arrived: you should be perching—at your age, little Bird, you should be perching, not sitting. I gently turned him over and saw that he had, at some point, stepped in wet food which had dried hard, and left his foot unable to clasp. Following the quickest of soaks and a gentle clean, I placed him back in his nest, the side of which he immediately perched on, and from where he proudly looked his age. My shoulders dropped a full inch, and the chorus of commandments refilled my ears.

Poets, mystics, children and sages have, for centuries, pointed towards our attention as being inseparable from our love. They noticed how, in the presence of what we cherish, we gather ourselves in—how the fractured, weather-like self draws together and briefly becomes whole, before it’s offered out, towards our devotion. I doubt that any of them thought that, one day, it would require defending. That our species would come to tolerate a culture in which attention is mined for profit. After all, the attention economy is the love economy. What is being fractured is not only our focus, but our capacity to love as generously as we are made to. When our attention is sovereign, when it is ours to direct, there is a natural overflow. Our love and care extends beyond the immediate to find trees, Birds, strangers, and a living, breathing Earth to which we each belong. When our attention is fought over and fractured, what remains is so meagre that we can only afford to offer it to a chosen few; and thus, the circle of care contracts, ever smaller.

Sometimes, a whole, perfect, work-of-art nest, full of babies yet to open their eyes will come into the rescue centre, because someone decided that May was an acceptable time to cut down a tree without first checking for nesting Birds. I think of the parents, of what went into the production of this reliquary and its sacred contents, and I am beset by a rage with which I know not what to do. So I continue, calmly, about my day, while I fantasise about finding the weekend arborist and taking an axe to his home. Both the felling of the tree and my own intolerance, symptoms of a lack of overflow.

Predatory capitalism mines our attention so it can sell us things we don’t need, so it can tell us that nothing is precious but that everything is urgent, and that the ache we collectively feel can be soothed by some new, shiny thing. It needs us looking towards its wares and away from the global damage it inflicts, but, when Death walks in the room, it stutters. It looks for the exit and starts inching towards it, because it knows that in the face of mortality, that which is truly precious begins to glow. In the face of mortality, what matters can be retrieved and returned to its rightful place on the altar.

When I call to mind how transitory this life is, how little of it guaranteed, the intensity of the onslaught starts to quiet. Priorities reorganise in accordance with love, and I stop bracing against the insistence of urgency. Compassion returns, and expands, ever wider. Sometimes, I am a boulder—fixed and rigid—while the sea, soft and settled, stretches, endlessly around me.

Sometimes, I am the sea.

Yours in aimless flight…

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Friends, The Deep End - my six-module course through the landscape of mortality - is being offered this summer as a live facilitated group, led by Dr. Maria Christodoulou. Maria is a physician, integrative coach, and embodied facilitator with thirty-five years of practice behind her. This is someone who genuinely knows how to hold the kind of conversation this material calls for. I trust her absolutely, and I’m really excited that she is offering the course in a group container.

There are eight sessions, in total, starting 24th June. Participants will work through each module in their own time, and then gather with the group online—twice a month, two hours each time—to reflect, dialogue and share what has arisen. Early Bird pricing ends June 7th.

LEARN MORE AND SIGN UP HERE