Welcome, friends! I’m so glad you’re here!
Today the third in our series on living in authoritarian times—on how to resist autocrats from the inside out, by staying seated in our own center, in the firmness of our own knowing, our own heart. The first in the series is The Knowing Inside, and the second is Thirsty for the Waters of Life.
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I’d like to begin today with a poem:
Birdsong
Birdsong relieves
my deepest griefs:
now I'm just as ecstatic as they,
but with nothing to say!
Please universe,
rehearse
your poetry
through me!
— Rumi, rendered by Michael R. Burch
My eyes open; it’s still dark. But far in the distance I can hear one northern cardinal already singing up the day. I slip out of bed and grab my clothes, closing the door quietly behind me so as not to wake Tim. I dress and step outside onto the landing, under the enormous monkeypod tree. Two or three more northern cardinals are now calling from various edges of the yard.
I take a deep breath—the air smells of summer-dry grass—and look up. The sky is the deep blue of possibility, the color of in-between. And there, peeking out from between two impossibly high leafy branches, is the moon, still almost full, showering the Earth with blazing clear light. “Hello, moon!” I say. “I’m so happy you’re here, making life possible here on Earth!”
In the treetops a few songbirds have joined the cardinal voices. I recognize the trilling melodies of house finches, with their long phrases that warble and buzz, and above them in register the white-eyed warblers or Japanese warblers—so high pitched, sharp and shrill. I love their syncopated songs. These are the songs I’ve crept out of bed for: the dawn chorus, and especially the warblers. Something about the way their treble and trill land on my eardrums always perks up my heart. Every morning the birds tug me loose from the morass of daily news, wrenching my heart loose and ferrying it straight up to the treetops. Every morning I feel it in my chest, the little opening, a little lift of relief.
Which is why, for the past two or three months, I’ve been going to bed early enough that I can wake up in the dark to step outside and feel this daily miracle all over again.
One male cardinal, spotting me on the landing, has stopped singing and dropped into view, flitting from tree trunk to ground to fence. Weeks ago when I started joining his world in the morning he would launch into his high, sharp warning call as soon as I stepped outside: “chink! … chink! … chink!” But now he merely flits nearby and monitors me, often pausing on the roof to stare down at me. “Hello, beautiful!” I breathe silently to him. “I’m so happy to see you again!”
His partner, the female cardinal with the bright pink-orange beak, is more cautious, and she still sounds an alarm when she sees me. She too lights on the tree, then the roof, staring me down, calling out her warning. “Hello, gorgeous!” I greet her silently.
She and her partner have just finished feeding a fledging youngster. I spotted the family weeks ago on a branch high above me, the youngster calling “chink-chink,” sounding just like his parents except with a double beat. At the time he was colored baby brown with only a red feather poking out here and there. Now all his red feathers have grown in, and he glows in blazing scarlet. Even in the half light he dazzles, so he’s easy to tell apart from his dad, whose red is darker, paler, already molting. They move differently too—Junior is the bright one shadowing Mom about five or ten feet behind her wherever she goes. Mom just keeps circling above me with her warning “chink!” until Junior chimes in with a few “chinks” of his own. She is teaching Junior how to act when a human is nearby.
We’re only five minutes in to the chorus, and light is growing fast. It happens so quickly here! No lingering in the predawn light; here the sun zips through its morning routine. First light to sunup takes a grand total of one hour—sixty minutes only.
And with the growing light, zebra doves wake up, all of them all at once. Zebra doves sound like they’re cooing but in a rat-a-tat-tat kind of way: “Coooo-c-coo-coo-coo-coo-coo!” Soon there’s a full chorus of them overhead. Now and then a mynah swoops in to the tree to offer a bold comment or two, more like a pundit than a singer. And today, for a special treat, a red crested cardinal has joined us in this tree, with a hearty “chirr-rrup!” like a robin but louder and buzzier and bolder. Red crested cardinals are not cardinals at all but part of the tanager family. And the buzzy voice of this one comes across like a big bright hello and welcome to the day, and my heart lifts again.
Now I hear a small whirring of wings and train my eyes on the trunk of the tree. A white-eyed warbler is working the cracks in the bark with a slim, pointed beak. Now a second and then a third one flies in too, poking here and there on the tree. They match the color of the bark exactly.
The warbler rule seems to be, Sing first, eat later, because they sing for only a couple of minutes each morning then get down to the business of breakfast. The two or three on the trunk are flitting here and there, up and down—so fast!—pausing only a moment to dig at the bark and nibble. Watching them every morning for weeks has trained my eyes, and now I can track these tiny birds even in half-light.
In the far distance I catch the song of a mourning dove, rare for here, and I turn my head to listen. Their plaintive drawn-out song is a treat after the vigorous rhythms of zebra doves. I catch a hint of pink in the sky and step around the deck. In the distance lies the blue bay with the West Mountain behind it, a view that lifts my heart over and over again. Toward the east, the light over the Haleakalā ridge is bright, lighting up a few wispy clouds with pink.
In just a few more minutes the sun will be up. I’ve been out here only twenty minutes, and already I am washed clean.
Such generosity! Gifts of birdsong and air, clouds and tree, moonbeams and sunlight, given freely every morning.
Listening to the birds may be my morning meditation, but it’s also an act of political resistance, the first one every day. Because resistance begins at home—in the secret place of our own heart. An open heart is the antidote to everything brutal that the bullies of the world are doing now. It’s the exact frame of mind they’re trying to erase. So holding firm to one’s own inner warmth and stability is a radical thing to do. It’s the foundation of all resistance.
In the last episode I suggested three simple things we can do every day to keep a clear head and a loving heart. Those three again are:
Touching silence.
Touching joy.
And touching Earth.
So today I want to spend a little time on each of them, and to explore exactly why they’re so important at a challenging time like now, when thugs and autocrats are acting with cruelty and hate. Because—I’ll say it again—unseating others is the very first aim of authoritarianism. Controlling others from the inside out is the dictator’s dream. So staying firm on our own seats is the beginning of saying no. It’s a declaration of independence, every day, from those who would control us.
So let’s look first at:
(1) Touching silence. And why it’s so important.
The urge to control others—whether human or other—runs counter to the life force because every being wants to be free to unfold in their own way. People who seek power over others have lost their connection to this deep mystery, the mystery of becoming. When people lose a sense of awe and appreciation for how wondrous, how unfathomable, is this Great Becoming, they try to make things happen by their own power. They try to control the unfolding of life in themselves and others.
The very magic of this Earth is that life is always bringing new forms into being, new adaptations. We call it evolution, but it’s simply a search for new variations, new solutions. A new shape of beak helps a bird find better seeds. A new stripe in a flower helps the flower attract more pollinators. When the land shifts, a river finds a new way to flow. Ever changing, always solving problems in new ways, birthing new shapes and modifying old ones—the great power of life is continually making space for new possibilities. The Great Mystery flows ever and always toward becoming.
So to live in harmony with this flow of becoming, we need to train ourselves in being open—in meeting the new with curiosity rather than clutching at the familiar. And for this, silence is a great ally. When we can stop and come into silence, we open ourselves. We step into spaciousness.
Which is why silence can be so terrifying—leaving behind the known, the expected, the predetermined and overdetermined, the judgments and the assumptions. These are the familiar building blocks of our minds, and they are the very building blocks used by authoritarians to keep others under their power.
Coming into silence each day helps us shake off the mental habits we rely on to regulate the flow of life within ourselves—which are the same exact places we can be regulated and controlled by others. Coming into silence each day means coming into the surprise of becoming. It’s like slipping every day into the great sea of letting-be.
So don’t be dismayed if you find it hard to practice silence. It’s like letting go of all the holds. It’s unnerving, to say the least. It brings us closer to what is simple and real, that center of ever-springing life within. We come home to the Great Becoming inside us. In the silence we open, over and over again, to what is unfolding; we search for and find a continuing yes.
The seventh-century hermit Isaac the Syrian wrote, “If you love the truth, love silence.” Because here, at the still center, we enter the place of truthfulness. It is a place no lying tyrant can touch. In the stillness we keep company with magic. And drawing closer to that ever-flowing spring within, every day, is like declaring daily independence from outside power. We drink from a source that no despot can find, let alone control.
The second practice is:
(2) Touching joy.
We often underestimate the power of joy. But I think of joy as the WD-40 of the heart. It works loose the old stiff gears; it greases up outdated thinking. It lubricates the friction points between people and smooths every relationship. Each encounter goes better with joy.
Bullies and thugs are frightened of joy, which is why they try to stifle it in others. They are afraid of the untamed springs bubbling up within each of us.
Joy can’t live alongside fear and meanness. So joy is our best defense, our best ally for driving out fear and meanness—in ourselves first of all, and from others.
In difficult times joy may not always be available. So when there is room for it, let yourself have it, and have it fully. Joy is our birthright, native joy from our own native springs. Let yourself have unabashed joy, raucous as a baby’s giggle. Joy that gets your feet moving, like a dog catapulting across a yard to chase a ball. This kind of joy is our birthright too. Let yourself drink deep.
Filling ourselves with joy, as a daily practice, is like building ourselves padding for carrying the burdens of life. Joy gives us a more spacious mindset, able to see more possibilities. We have more resources for tackling the abuses of such a time as this. And joy gives us the fuel to do it.
So wherever you find joy—in listening to music or playing with children, in tasting something delicious or communing with friends—now is the time to contact this joy every day. To practice it as a discipline. To let the heart become flexible, able to be lifted, each day, by any tiny gift available in the moment.
And finally, the third practice:
(3) Touching Earth.
Right now, when tyrants are trying to turn the screws of control, it is crucial to touch nature every day. Because nature relativizes their power. Connecting with nature every day helps us remember that human power is not absolute. When thugs and bullies feel indomitable, connecting with nature keeps us in touch with the powers outside human control: the mighty power of seasons coming and going, the awesome power of winds and tides, the nearby intimate power of birds. Whether we putter in a garden or walk in a forest or watch ants on a sidewalk or just listen to the beating of our own heart, intentionally noticing and enjoying some aspect of nature every day preserves our mental independence from anyone trying to take up too much space in our heads.
And there’s another aspect of nature we can enjoy every day, one we may not think of as belonging to nature: our own imagination. Using our imagination, especially when we connect with nature, does more than almost any other practice to remind us that we are not outside nature, we are nature. Every part of us is nature, and that means our imaginations too.
The imagination is one of our ways of knowing. It’s one of our senses. It’s how we can receive the nudges and whispers of other beings, for they may arrive through inner knowing. When we engage our imaginations we lay aside the pretense of objectivity, and we get down to feeling and interacting with other beings—practicing kinship with them instead of thinking we can know them by standing apart from them. Knowing is more complete when we engage all our senses—not just our physical ones but also the knowing gained through feelings, through dreams and visions, through our own creative process. In other words, through the imagination.
I think of Gregory Cajete, of the Santa Clara Pueblo, who wrote in his book, Native Science, that Native people gather their knowledge using all the means of knowing that are available to human beings. These include physical observation and rational thought, as in Western knowing. But they also include the knowing that comes through feelings and imagination, as he says, in “altered states of being, in songs and dance, in meditation and reflection, and in dreams and visions.”
So as you touch nature, every day, experiment with your whole being. What do you hear when you listen with your heart? What do your dreams and visions say? How do the others of nature speak to you?
I’d like to end today with a beautiful example of a young boy, a second-grader, using his imagination. His teacher wrote to poet Joseph Fasano with a story about this second-grader. She said that this student is dyslexic and hesitates to write anything because he has trouble with spelling. So she gave him a poetry prompt that appears in his new book, The Magic Words. Joseph teaches poetry by offering poetry prompts in the form of templates that people who might never have written a poem before in their lives can use. The template acts like a little scaffold, a place to begin, where a person can fill it out with their own words and feelings. The results are often very moving—people who thought they couldn’t write discover their voices, often writing the most moving poems imaginable.
So the teacher gave this little boy the “Nature poem” prompt to encourage him. She told him, “Just write and we’ll sort out the spelling later.”
And this is what the boy wrote. And we’ll end today with his blessing of a poem.
Mammoths and Ants
Look at the fragile Mushrooms.
Look at the Black Widow.
Pause with me a moment,
and hear the cicadas humming.
Here is where I’m home, among the
Mammoth Redwoods.
when I was lost, the Ants absorbed me,
calling me to the Smallness of Earth.
There I heard the Song of Silence.
Come with me through the miniscule.
Listen. the cicadas are humming.
The dawn chorus begins here with one or two birds soon after the winter solstice in December. They sing all spring, and then taper off around the summer solstice. Who sings in your neighborhood, and what is their timing?
How do you keep your sanity in these times? What is giving you energy? What is keeping your heart open? Let us know in the comments!
Thanks so much for being here, and don’t forget to hit LIKE before you go!
For digging deeper
The moon stabilizes the Earth’s tilt, which regulates our seasons and keeps our climate stable. Is life on a planet possible without a moon? Here’s an episode of Science Friday: “Is a Moon Necessary for a Planet to Support Life?”
Isaac the Syrian was ordained a bishop, but after only five months he’d had enough, quit the job, and went off to the wilderness to live in solitude. He is known for his writings on the inner life. The full quote reads, “If you love the truth, love silence. This will make you illumined in God like the sun and will deliver you from the illusions of ignorance. Silence unites you to God Himself.” Later he adds, “Love silence above all things, because it brings you near to fruit that the tongue cannot express.” From sayings 307 and 310 in The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, 2nd ed. (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011), available online and for pdf download at https://epdf.pub/the-ascetical-homilies-of-saint-isaac-the-syrian.html.
Gregory Cajete (Santa Clara Pueblo) explores knowing from an animist, or relational, perspective in Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence (Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 2000); quote is from p. 69. The book is available for online borrowing at the Internet Archive. Or check out his 2020 presentation at the University of New England Center for Global Humanities: “Native Science: The Indigenous Mind Rising.”
Joseph Fasano compiled all his poetry prompts in his new book, The Magic Words: Simple Poetry Prompts That Unlock the Creativity in Everyone (Tarcher, 2024). The prompt that unlocked this child was the “Nature” prompt. You can see the boy’s handwritten poem here on Joseph’s Twitter timeline.
I recorded the dawn chorus in my yard in March a couple years ago, and you can hear in the intro and outro of the podcast.
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