a way through

the simplicity of listening to a rock

Nov 03, 2023

We are inside an earthly moment that is requiring-forcing-nudging-reminding us to shift how we witness, how we listen, how we hold, and how we know.

This moment isn’t supposed to be easy.

We knew it was here. We saw it coming. The old paradigms have been breaking for some time. We’ve been inside the breaking. Even before we could feel it.

Breaking of beliefs, vocabularies, stories. Breaking of news, categories of knowing, the ownership of truth. Systems of health, money, education, government exposed as they crumble.

The breaking down is beginning to break open.

Wide open.

We can see the bones.

What we see isn’t pleasant. If it were, not enough humans would see it.

And we need to see.

We need to stand and bear witness. Be with our tangles of contradiction. See the blood as our own.

See it all and feel it all

and let it go.

Our way forward is not of fear or fight or taking sides.

Our way through is the resonance of love, listening, devotion, awe.

I don’t want to share another lesson on energetics or be yet another voice reminding you that “them” is “us,” “there” is “here,” “as outside, so within,” our hearts are brains, and only now is real.

I trust you know the science of this. I trust all humans know the essence of this—in their cells, their skin, their ancient sky.

What’s mine to share is how to bridge what we know as daily practice. How to live into what seems far away in each step, each steady breath. How to see what’s big and say it small.

walls of the hidden archway in Fay Canyon

Everything and everywhere is especially porous right now. Each choice of what-where-how to do, say, watch, buy, eat, drink, think, feel, look, listen, let in, dream, want, hold on, and let go is a portal.

A portal of resonance. A defined (and continuous) opportunity to create as what we’re creating.

I continue to receive a clear message that everything is simpler than we think. To keep my eye (and heart) (and pencil) attuned to what’s most simple.

I’ve recently been in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona. I went to be with the land and listen. To write what I heard. To breathe it in, sit with it, let it unfold inside me.

For seven days, I woke with first light to hike up rocks, sit in caves, let hot dust seep into my skin. I talked with trees, wept with Oak Creek, hummed along paths, whispered to birds, and bowed in reverence with each step.

I held attention for my immediate surroundings as the whole of earth—all the birds and trees and sacred lands, all the whispers and weeping, the up-down-in-out-search-find-surrender-fall, and the rocks—oh, the rocks, all the rocks—everywhere, who see everything.

A rock told me to share this with you…

Find a rock, a small one, and hold it.

Close your eyes.

Let your holding of the rock be all there is,

and listen.

Listen to the rock.

Release what your mind constructs of listening.

This isn’t that kind of listening.

You have to surrender to find it.

Trust what the rock knows

of witness, wind, water,

darkness and light,

roots, sky, and the endlessness of breaking.

How this one rock

is all the rocks

on all the earth

of all the time.

This rock who has eyes,

who sees

beyond

what we know of seeing

beyond

what we know of knowing.

This rock in your hand

and you—falling.

Fall

into

the rock.

The rock holds you.

You are stars singing,

wings and rain,

echo, tunnel, nest

in the arm of a tree.

You are Grandmother Spider,

White Buffalo Mother,

Our Lady who weaves the stories.

You are the breath

and the breaking.

The rock says:

Let yourself break.

The ache you feel is the opening of your heart.

Stay in your heart.

Stay in the ache.

Hold me to remember.

We’re breaking back to sand.

This is the way through.

love+light, Melissa

Thank you for reading this essay of Noticing Matters. This is reader-supported work. If you appreciate what I have to share, consider becoming a paid subscriber, sharing this post with others, and/or gifting a subscription to a friend.

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If ever there was a time to read and re-read books by Byrd Baylor, so it is now.

May you read them again and again to children and to yourself, preferably ALOUD so your voice vibrates her words out into the sky.

I especially recommend Everybody Needs a Rock and The Other Way to Listen.

If you’re feeling anxiety and finding it hard to calm your nervous system at this time, (even doing all the things you already know to do to care for yourself), you might try playing healing frequencies in the background. I frequently (pun intended) have these on loop in my house.

Here is a calm + peace compilation I recently made for a friend and I now share with you. Another favorite that I play often is this one: 888 expansion.

For those of you interested in educator practice, here’s my most recent essay for the Fred Rogers Institute: Small is Enough.