It feels like I’m tiny and in the middle of a circus in full swing. And I don’t like it. Clowns running everything, animals mistreated and fools mocked. The screens are taking my attention, and time runs like water through my fingers. The overwhelm of existence is creating a trauma response that plays out like this in my internal dialogue:
“I should run to the hills, no I should fight and post something… but its too much when I look closely and feel the freeze creep around my heart, so I’m going to flop and snuggle down under a Netflix blanket…. so engaging with shame I fawn and repost whatever looks like the “right side of history” that the algorithm is offering today”….
Spirit stir me. Wisdom lead me.
I’ve done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again. – Georgia O’keeffe.
Jon and I were taking a leisurely and meandering journey up to the east coast. Staying roadside along the way. Heading towards time with the sea and sky, with old and dear friends, and uninterrupted days with our gathered and grown up kids. Since we traded our family home for wheels we have to rent a property to gather them in. Five days of smelling the grown-up heads of my babies, remembering and enjoying the today version of them.
We decided to stop of at a RSPB place near Hull. The little carpark hosted a toilet block, and the sign on the wall caught my eye.
Please be aware: European Hornet using this building. Then specifying in brackets : (not aggressive if left alone.)
The hornets nest hugged the frame of the door into the toilet block. They danced around it, making their giant presence felt, their buzzing a pneumatic and melodic drill. I have to confess, I am a crazy wasp dancer. They freak. Me. Out. And these were wasps on steroids. I wasn’t sure how I felt about sharing space with them, but how I felt was inconsequential. The space was to be shared.
A few hours later, and further north, we passed another sign:
Land of Nod. In the Genesis story of the brothers Cain and Abel, Cain grows increasingly jealous of his brother, and even though he is warned that sin is crouching at the door, he eventually kills Abel and as a consequence is exiled to Nod. Roughly translated from the Hebrew Nod means land of restless wandering. And heard in the English it sounds like he was sleep-walking.
It’s been a summer of signs and warnings. Memories jogged, old stories revisited and SHEMA signposts I’ve walked past fully asleep, exiled from myself. I take a photo of the signpost to Nod as we drive by, thinking of the hornets and wondering whether threats are being downplayed, or that it’s true we can actually coexist peacefully. I feel ill-equipped to discern truth.
The last gold of summer was swallowed greedily by Autumn this year. Regurgitated just as swiftly as piles of leaves dancing under Storm Amy. I’m still ruminating: How do we see sin crouching at the door in our peripheral vision and blow it a kiss, grateful for the reminder? How do we clock the giant hornets nest on the doorframe, and pass underneath it with a simple “hello neighbour?” I’m waking up, slowly, coming back to myself after a summer of distraction. Intentionally engaging with my imagination and asking the Spirit to stir up life in my belly for the days ahead.
Last week I was walking through the city centre, dragging a home-made trolley of singing bowls, on the way to do a SoundBath. A peri-glow sheen across my forehead because the hills are hilly in these parts, and I’m carrying our new puppy in a sling. I was dog (as in because of the dog) tired and questioning my life choices. Asking myself whether breathwork, meditation, Soundbaths, were really my best offering to a world on fire, to a circus in full swing.
Then I caught a glimpse of my reflection in an empty shop window as I passed, and laughed out loud. I looked like a crazy lady. All the chaos that I had allowed to exile me from myself, and dispatch me to Nod…. that’s not the circus. I am the circus. I’m awake again, again.
There is a transformation, a renewing of our minds that Paul writes about in his letter to the church in Rome. (Romans 12:2) It reminds me that I don’t have to be subservient to whatever pattern or principality is asserting its authority today, whatever hornets nest I pass under, or whatever is crouching at my door. But transformational requires engagement. Engagement of my heart, my senses, my imagination, my hands. It requires active choice.
So, once again, I turn off and tune in. And there They (the 3God) are, waiting. And there I am, waiting. And suddenly I’m hearing Cat Stevens:
Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning, born of the one light Eden saw play.
It’s all I can do and the best thing I can do. Picking up whatever tools fit in my hands I pray, I cry, I write, I bake, I mend, I nurse, I text and I am formed and reformed in love by the 3. I carry them with love and a blessing into whatever I do with my days. This is true. And this is enough. And I remember that the buzzing fades into the background just a little when there’s a louder and more captivating song that’s being sung.
I still get to pick the playlist.
PS: The Mirror translation is a paraphrase, and it’s lovely in the way it illuminates the text sometimes, drawing attention to meaning that might otherwise get lost in translation. So here is Romans 12:12
“Do not allow current religious tradition to mould you into its pattern of reasoning. Like an inspired artists, give attention to the detail of God’s desire to find expression in you. Become acquainted with perfection. To accommodate yourself to the delight and good pleasure of Him will transform your thoughts fresh from within.”
I’m not sure “current religious tradition” does justice to the Greek word aion, as this means more a period of time under specific influence, but I am asking for a fresh revelation of God’s desire that will find it’s expression in me, through my day to day life. Maybe you will ask that of the Spirit too. Maybe you’d like to share what you hear. Cx