Your Magnetic Heart
Just presence. Just witness. Just with-ness.
The words of this poem may be familiar to some. They blew in around the new year, before this audio space gathered. It seems a good time to deposit them here. You can listen to me read the poem and the rest of this post in the audio recording below.
Re-member yourself, dearheart.
Drench Yourself Anew
When obscurity rises, and
you cannot see where to step next,
your gaze turnsever-so-slightly outward.
Oh, how humbling it is to be human!
You tucked a wish
into the time beyond time; now
the entire surface of your
magnetic heart is covered
in paper clips.
You left breadcrumbs methodically,
vowing never to get lost again.
Can you decipher love notes
written in your own hand?
Nothing can fall out of Love.
What you fear is lost
still hovers nearby,
waiting for an opening.
Do not strain toward clarity
in this top-heavy state.
You will be carried...
past delineation, over deliberation,
into the knowing beyond knowing.
LISTEN TO THE MUSIC!
RETURN.
RE-MEMBER YOURSELF.
Let the ancient, the emergent,
permeate your porous frame.
Every moment is teeming with help;
drench yourself anew.
This is my body.
A friend shared a video of a family detained on the their way home from church. Mom and dad are being forcefully separated from their children. I cannot unhear their cries.
If my ears trace these cries to the heart from which they sound, will I find it on the inside or the outside?
“Warm summer sun,
shine brightly here,
Warm Southern wind,
blow softly here”
In 2021, this video made something invisible visible to my heart’s eye, quickening cellular attention. It marks a threshold that I cannot name.
In response to a devastating loss, I watch the force that rises when a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A singular heart broken. A precious oil poured out.
The words spoken before the song were nourishment for the moment they were living in time, for the particular tragedy of the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting. I have always sensed, though, that this food may be anchored more deeply, that it is a balm that transcends that linear moment and that particular tragedy.
Today, it came for another visit, and it stirred a possibility.
A Quantum Practice
What if, wherever I am now, I could join hands with this chorus as a practice?
For the span of one song, I will reach for hands well aquainted with sorrow, put my hand on a shoulder, and apprentice with supple solidity forged in pain and love, willing to be affected.
Not a mental exercise. Not sentimentality. Not outward doing.
Just presence. Just witness. Just with-ness.
In other words, everything.
Remember yourself, dearheart. Re-member yourself, dearheart.
Love,
Kirsten
Warm summer sun,
shine brightly here,
Warm Southern wind,
blow softly here,
Green sod above,
lie light, lie light,
Good night, dear heart;
good night, good night.
“Dedication”
Music by Richard Burchard
Text by Mark Twain, adapted from a poem by Robert Richardson
Performed by The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus
Dr. Timothy Seelig, Artistic Director
A studio-recorded audio version of the song:
Let’s Anchor Into Presence Together…
My name is Kirsten. I accompany folks as they attune to their inner lives, holding questions no one else can answer and listening for what is emerging.
Soulspace is a spacious place to belong as you are becoming: to anchor amid the chaos, be seen and known, and make room for pain, longing, wonder, delight, and hope.
The Grounding + Becoming blog is a care package of audio and visual invitations and collaged essays about being human. If you feel a draw to embodied accompaniment, I hold space in person and online. Together, we listen deeply and explore rhythms and practices that help you ground what you sense.
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