Heartlistening

Recognizing the unknown

Dear Starlight,

One of my pocket books of Morning Blessings

1/26/2025 7:30ish am

Enormous wafts of smoky cloud puffs rush towards me over the hazy mountains dusted in snow. Upside down U’s scratched white and brown. The river is torn up. Shattered ice resembling crystals pushed towards the heavens from the underworld. Dirty white sheets. A briny crust. The frigid air is balmy compared with the memory of yesterday’s freezing temperature. Four fluttering birds pass like a glimpse of glitter in the stillness of the frozen landscape. There is a bright light blue sky waiting behind the gray clouds. Waiting to be seen as always being there. The birds call to one another hidden from my site and a startling crack breaks open the still river.

Welcome to sit here

Never a binding forecast

Familiar wildness

This passage is from this mornings Blessings of the Morning Light, my daily practice of visiting the river, observing its rhythms, and invoking a blessing. What began as a routine visit to the river grew into a morning ritual, then a practice of notation, and eventually, a daily blessing. Recently, I started to feel drawn toward sharing an offering with my presence. I have been considering: What does this place want or need that I might offer it?

Some ideas have been bird food, but I've been reflecting on how well-meaning offers of help can unintentionally create harmful dependencies. I've watched river birds fish in the waves tossed by the freight boats. I marvel at how they have learned to be in relationship with the boat, but I consider the unknown dependency in that connection. The freight boat gives zero shits about the well-being of swooping gulls in its wake.

Sitting at the river's edge this morning, I listened to the birds calling to one another, realizing I couldn’t identify which bird made which sound. It struck me that wildness is simply an unknown relationship.

Perhaps if I listen closely, I will begin to know which bird is making which sound. Maybe one day, I will see which berry they appreciate, and what was wild and unknown will appear as kinship.

Recently, someone sent me a note expressing gratitude for how my presence made them feel authentically alive. I received this note as soul food.

As I sit here quietly, morning after morning, I am heartlistening. This morning, I wondered: Could my offering be to call back the beauty I see?

This week has been filled with synchronicity. One funny instance is that I attended a craft talk/workshop with poet Maggie Millner, the author of Couplets. The talk, titled "The Novel in Verse," was offered by the Conscious Writers Collective, which I had somehow found myself a part of due to the author Lydia Yuknavitch(it is still a mystery to me how I found out about it all! Side note: I am not currently a member of CWC but it appears as an amazing offering for writers looking for rigorous MFA style engagement and support and founder Maya Popa is an incredible instructor).

Maggie described a form of poetry called Haibun—and I immediately recognized my Blessings of the Morning Light ritual unknowingly fitting the Haibun format. She also gave a revision prompt that led me to look for an old piece of writing. I stumbled upon a children’s story I wrote ten years ago—which I’ve been searching for—and strangely, it was written in couplets, the very form Maggie had been discussing.

We don’t need to know we’re writing Haibun to write it. We don’t need to name a ritual to create one. What we need to know is how to hear our heart’s longing and follow its direction. One day, what is wild and unknown will be seen and welcomed. Our belonging.

How are you heartlistening this week? How are you seeing through the eye of your heart? How are you responding to your calling; your wild unknown?