I have dear friends who travel the world meeting different
spiritual communities and joining them to learn from wisdom teachings.
Occasionally I join in. It’s a big world with many delicious teachings to
encourage awareness.
Today I was walking a trail through the forest, a trail I’ve
walked countless times. Over the 17 years of living in one place, a place in
the literal wilderness, I am struck by what it is possible to learn by staying
in one place with a conscious intention to slow down and be quiet.
My friends and I go into other communities and join in
meditations, vision quests, rituals, ceremonies, yoga and other pursuits. But
just this moment as I write these words there is an orchestra of frog song just
outside my door with such volume as to drown out all else. It crescendos at
night with small practice sessions throughout the day. Living for 17 years with
a two month cycle of frog song each winter is one of the richest rituals of
all.
It is a song to life. A song to the ultimate possibility of
more life yet to come. And year after year this incredible song continues. I
have heard it said that frogs are an indicator species. When an environment is
polluted the frogs, being ever so sensitive, are among the first creatures to
die. I am grateful to live in a healthy place where there are few songs of
human made origin and this amphibious ode to joy, this ode to the incredible
immediacy of sensuous life in the making, and live in the meditation of the
forest itself.
All told a modest count indicates that I have listened
approximately 23,040 hours to the frogs. Their music actually vibrates my body.
That vibration, in the numbers that are outside my door, is significant. There
are tens of thousands of frogs singing. Imagine being vibrated for two months
each year in the ecstasy of pure living!
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