receive the sound of stars

Last night I got to walk amongst the stars and snow.  I found a kind of quiet I was really needing. I reflect on the silence of being very much in the middle of winter. Coyotes howled in the distance and you could hear a few twilight birds. I had been invited to a sweat lodge. Yesterday was my fifth time going for almost a year now. We stood over the fire as the rocks heated up. Entranced, I felt the power for fire to warm or burn. The first time I did a lodge, I wanted to immediately get out. It was hotter and darker than anything I had ever endured.  It took everything I had to stay. We sang, we sat next to each other, we offered prayers and somehow I made it through. The first time, I stumbled, no crawled out into the misty night after the experience. I watched as the rest of the people moved out into the darkness like ghosts.  We stared up at the sky and laid upon the earth as we collected what was left of ourselves. The quiet after is so beautiful, it is if you are hearing for the first time.  I wrote this poem after my initiatory experience:

fell into earth
into bone
& let my breath
heave against
all that dwells
and crawls
lifting
my eyes
i received
the sound
of stars

Meanwhile, buzz goes the world and it’s hard not to think its jittery pulse isn’t what is winning.  We seem to be craving stories and clamoring for the meaning of life.  What whizzes by are superficial scraps of bits of things that look like stories, but no depth really.   Still we hunger for a good one. Over the last weeks of our time together there is something I am noticing about, when we say, "once upon a time" or tell a story. There is a quality in the air, a reverence like we stepped on sacred ground. Story ground, that is, and it is as if all hearts stop and huddle in. It is as if the ancient part of us knows, this is the time to listen. Stories have a potency that creates togetherness and truth without even trying. I have never seen anything work so well. Are you huddling in? I wonder.

Last night I stood barfoot upon the snow, warm skin steaming as it hit the cold air. I looked up into the sky and I received the sound of stars. When I looked down at my feet, bare and cold, there were star crystals in the snow reflecting back up into the night. 

wander in all, let's tell stories,