My heart expanded, again. Thank you, thank you! Thank you!
I attended a 5 day Singing Ember Camp this month at the Center for Belonging in Decorah, Iowa with Liz Rog and her amazing family hosting about 80 people. This came for me on the heals of an extended healing journey at Hippocrates Medical Institute in Florida, tending to all kinds of dis-ease in my mind, body & heart.
It takes time, intention and loads of courage to allow one's heart to brake open, again and again. Personal expansion, opening into a bigger more inclusive culture within and without, is a process of simultaneously learning and unlearning. It often isn't easy, but it is necessary if I want to grow and open to a richer more grounded human experience. It is messy, confusing and embarrassing, as I have spent the majority of my years on this planet in trauma responses and victimhood... still I have faith my ego will eventually fall off as I embody a truer version of mySelf and become freer.
As I stepped across the bridge into the Center for Belong and onto the path leading to our gathering place, the land glowed with anticipation. The green knows love in this place and reciprocates with an energetic wrap around that made my heart leap forward to greet. Liz and her family are masters at creating safe nourishing communal space where real connection is the medicinal salve and song is the honey that masticates imagined separation and binds us together.
I was in charge of coffee, which I took very seriously. I want to belong here with these people who sing and laugh, play and cry together, these people who share at a deeper level than I have gone before. I want to live in this circle forever, to be embraced by the green while being embraced by other humans who are sharing there gifts openly. Humans of all ages stopping on the trail together to notice a bug, a snake, a beautiful flower or the wide eyed excitement of a child. I want to belong and I hear the voice of diminishment within. I am afraid I am not good enough. Not polished enough among these shiny souls who know so much about the Earth and how to be together in peace. Ah fear, she sings her song too.
I tended the coffee, sat on the edges of the circle, sometimes dipped into the middle row. I played the group game, because Liz encouraged me as I stood on the sidelines, "Go ahead Kva, there's a part for everyone to play." So I became a little bird gathering seeds and running for my life from the terrifying Coopers Hawk. I stretched, connected when an open soul invited me in. Thank you Open Souls! I danced on the grass barefoot for at least one dance. I sat on the swing with a new friend, or stopped to talk along the path, sat in silence, listened, shared, sang. I did my best.
On my way to bed on Saturday night, a Dear New Friend asked, "Kva, I see tending the coffee for everyone, leaving the morning circles to go up to the kitchen, and I see you standing alone while others are clumped in 3's and 4's." She said it like an observation, but it felt like a question. I couldn't answer. I knew it was true and somehow deep inside myself I knew I was holding mySelf on the outside of the circle with stories of why I didn't belong. So many stories.
On Sunday, the fifth day, I woke up crying at 5:30am from a nightmare in which I was frantically running with a little fish in my hands trying to find water to put it in as it gasped with its whole body for breath, dying. I laid in bed trying to stop the tears, decided to just let them flow and got up to tend to the morning coffee. Danu, a delightful open heart at the gathering came into the cabin to prepare breakfast, he looked at me, opened his arms and I fell in for a bit. Then off to the 6:30am Ancestor Tending circle and my own community offering that morning of leading a couple morning songs. I felt raw, wanting to show up and retreat at the same time. The Ancestor gathering was beautiful and went on into my circle time. The energy was not supporting morning song and so I let my offering fall onto the ground. Back to fill the coffee.
I dropped the two big coffee thermoses in the kitchen and went to my bed upstairs. Laying in bed I told mySelf, "This is not the choice I want to make." I got up and walked down to breakfast. Stepping onto the bridge tears streamed down my cheeks and the first people I saw were both new friends. I plunked myself between them and wept. They held me with such care and gentleness. (I am crying as I am writing.) We sat together for a long time, perhaps most of breakfast. I told them my stories and they loved me. At the end they asked me what I needed.
"I want to lead a song." Which opened another burst of tears and then laugher.
At breakfast Liz asked me if I could lead a song in Morning Circle.
The flood gates broke, the illusion of separation disipated, my heart expanded. I could see my stories were only stories. It was I who was holding myself apart. The rest of the day was glorious. I made a bee-line for a seat at the fire in the first circle. My body was so excited to sing the weeks' favorite songs again with these precious Souls in this precious place. My heart is joyful in this moment.
I think of the song Liz taught that has been singing me,
"I'm not a lone wolf,
and I never was.
Anything I've achieved,
I've achieved it because
I am standing on the shoulders
of an infinite many
seen and unseen.
I'm not a lone wolf,
and I never was.
Anything I've achieved,
I've achieved it because
I am riding on a tidal wave
of Universal Longing..."
This is the opposite energy of the fierce individual independence and the "pull yourself up by your boot straps" culture I was assimilated into. How do we stoke this fire of belonging?
I am thinking about our little song circle in Viroqua and the WisconSing events, our own village of song and belonging. The vision emerging for me in tending our group has changed, deepened. The potential for transformation is exciting and sobering. I observed Liz, Ida and others in the group tend the Ember Camp over the 5 days we were there. I could see them helping individuals weave themselves in, encouraging and per-missionary. I see how essential it is to create space for all participants to step in and make their gifts known as part of a tapestry we are collectively weaving. These are exciting times Dear Friends!
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