Welcome to week four of NESTING.
I hope you are finding more and more light each day as spring makes her ways towards us; an ongoing brightening.
This morning, as light trickled into the early spring day, I felt dragged outside by something larger than me. A small black cat was sitting beneath our bird feeders, waiting to pounce on a wee early siskin, unsusually the only bird to have arrived for the first feeding of the day. I stood helpless beneath, willing the ebony-black predator to leave. When eventually she did, I found myself thinking about how vulnerable the goings on of life can leave us. How lonely, confused and scared we feel when we are left, forcibly and without our say, on our own. How much more strength and safety we often feel when in a flock. There is much that seeks to keep us apart from the rest of our race right now but we know, all of us who value this flock – that there is more that ties us together.
Writing seems the still point, the middle-ground, a way that we can lean back into the one-another-ness that is at the heart of our being human. Every act of writing is a means to learn more, and to pass that learning on; to come closer to the heart of the idea of a flock, and how best to soar as one, together. This idea of voice—the inner and outer; alone and together— is so pertinent for creatives at this time. How do we hold each other tenderly but with strength; in unity?
When birds migrate, there is always one bird that must rise before the others. When they flock, they stay together – a swirling, dancing body – in harmony ; as one.
This week's reading
Each week I select a few extracts which will inspire the week's activities.
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