Dear Friends ~ We started our seeds inside, lining the south-facing windowsills, the same week that a pandemic made itself known to the collective body of the world. Tomatoes, kale, peas, carrots, lettuce, sorrel, beets...each seed tucked into the soil like a sort of prayer for health and a future. In early January, when I made my ritual list of intentions for the new year, I mystified myself writing simply, "tend food". Not "plant" or "grow" or "preserve", as much as tend. My sister-in-law once told me that the actual planting of a garden is the "glamorous" part because it's noticeable and satisfying in the immediate. But growing food also requires long months of patient attention: weeding, watering, waiting, hoping, pruning, tying, waiting, hoping...tending.
In a few weeks' time sprouts emerged and we prepared the garden beds in anticipation. Nearly every day that I spent with a trowel and my hands turning the soil, I would unearth another empty snail shell. These talismans appeared so often that I began to collect them on my dresser, then gifted them to my kids and eventually I just turned them back into the ground. I studied the spirals, rubbed my thumb over the smooth contours and contemplated them as symbols calling us (especially in this uncertain era of social distance) to slow down and journey inward as a means of tending the soul; to "spiral in" during a fraught time when it would be all too possible to unravel. ~ Joy
I sit for a long time in the absolute silence.All at once, there is barely a perceptible noise, a soft rumble as of thunder.The sound dies without discovery of its nature or source.It returns, seeming to come from all directions at once.At last it emerges from its mystery, grows into a tremulous hum, and solidifies into chanting.The music has no tempo.There is no breathing audible in it.No one voice stands out; it is the fusion of all that produces the effect.Long held notes which at last modulate again and again in the calm rhythm of the heart.I am suspended in the sound.And charged. ... The chanting dies away as gently as it began.Once again there is the unanimous voice of silence.