connectivity

I wake at 04.45. I only tell you this because it is a marvellous thing and also complete pants. The former explained thus. It is marvellous to wake at all. The latter I have issues with. It is still blacknightdark out there and nobody else has stopped snoring. Only me, it seems. And then, I hear a car pass by. It is the second morning for this car passing by waytooearly thing. What is going on? I live in the backside of nowhere and island folk, in my experience wake at dawn and not before. However, it alerts me. Every damn thing alerts me, awake or asleep, and, then I consider this. It always did, and I was glad of it back in the day. Moving backwards, my teenage kids arriving safely home, a gale blowing out a window (that was fun), with a power that astonished me, the baleful call of of a cow, a sheep, a horse, all needing help, no matter the hour, nor the dark, nor the frickin gale. Could have been the first snuffle and twist and hoot of a new baby’s call for mama. I have never lost it. Staying in a city is a right twillop for me as there are noises all the night long, although, I notice, that my early sleep hours ignore most everything, and it is around 0400 or 04.45 perhaps, that I am twisted into alertness, as if I was Joan of Arc or Boudicca, and responsible, therefore, for the saving of a people. It is a wonder and a tiddleypom.

It is Saturday. Saturn’s Day, according to the Romans who were invaders, btw. Yes, I know they built roads we still drive along, but they were invaders, nonetheless. We might have got that whole road thing sorted all by ourselves, in time. It thinks me. Although I am British and wotwot, and we had an empire we controlled and invested in, and, let it be said, abandoned the countries which were probably doing ok according to their own understanding of ok, I wonder at the intervention. Bringing down to the individual, how do we interfere? We think, or I thinked, that, as mama, I had the right to ‘guide’. I laugh at that now. How can anyone guide from a generation away?

So, on this day of Saturn, I felt slow and I am never slow. I felt anxiety and had no answer to the question. What makes you anxious? I don’t know. The rain, the pelter, began at 04.45. I came down, wide awake and happy to wake at all, made tea and sat hearing the heavy blatter of cloud tears overhead. I mopped up the house leaks and said, out loud,, Don’t feel bad, old house. You have stood here, strong and protective since 1820 something. I understand a leak or two.

I think of Saturn, way up there, way beyond my looking. All those fiery rings. I do look up often, even as I often look down. Today, I paddled through the lush of super rain. Even the woods were sloshing. My feets were wet and I lifted my head and laughed at the joy of it. Wee Four Legs was a muddy delight on return. On my way, I met a couple staying in a holiday home just inside the estate. We talked, we clicked, we laughed and that connect lifted me. As I rounded for home, I clocked the power of connectivity, even momentual, even random.

And that was my Dies Saturni.

As my departure day moves inexorably closer, I think on the ties that bind. Some I can see, like a rope fence or the woollen threads in my jumper, but many I can not. The familial ties of parent and child, husband and wife, friend connecting friend, distance between places, people and things, all quite invisible, but strongly there, nonetheless. Both ties need careful and attentive attention, all ties do. There are threads connecting us to our past, some of which need the snip, some need untangling from the falsitude of memory and some just need untangling for a more intelligently wholesome second look.

On the ground I have complete control over my ties that bind. I can choose the flavour of my message, text, tweet or letter as I can choose my response to those sent to me. There is an awesome and awful power right there in my hands. I can create and I can destroy just by letting my fingertips dance. They say the tongue is the most dangerous part of a human body. What you say can kill or it can cure. But it isn’t just the tongue. The way I think is the true beginning of everything, for if I think all people are intrinsically good, then this thought automatically controls my tongue. It also opens my heart to acceptance, compassion and humility so that my tongue has no desire, nor motivation, to wag unless, that is, it wants to support another’s dignity, in which case, wag on tongue, wag on.

Connectivity requires intelligent attention in all things, from rope fences to woollen jumpers, from familial ties to a worldwide spread of proffered threads. I have often been astonished, when someone I barely know wanders into my head and then astonished again a short while later to receive a message from them or a phone call. At times when I have met a friend or child or family member in my mind, I discover that on the very day I thought of them, they were going through something tough. However, I don’t believe I ‘thought’ of them through my own undeniable genius as a medium. I don’t believe I thought of them at all. In fact I know, without doubt, that it was absolutely nothing to do with me. Some higher source connected us because that is what higher sources do – they see the whole, the eagle eye view, only they fly even higher and can see a whole lot more. This connection opportunity is just that, and it has a name. Love. My task, down here on the ground is simply to let go of my need to control and to open my mind and my heart.

Doing this brings rewards. Not things, not status, not an ego polish but instead that elevating sense of being connected to everyone else. Deep inside we are all damaged to varying degrees and we all need each other to heal. Think of that smile that some stranger sent your way the day you were late and flustered and cut them off at the roundabout. They could have sworn but they didn’t, they smiled and in that short moment everything changed inside. Think of that WhatsApp message that came through on a rainy morning as you battled with your year end accounts, saying “just thinking of you my old friend” and adding a heart. If we pay attention to these times, we open our hearts and minds for more. We are also inspired to give back in the same way. But paying attention is a decision. it doesn’t just ‘come’. We must invite it in and walk with it wherever it may lead. We don’t need to study. We just need to take the time to notice everyone. There is no feasible excuse for not paying attention. ‘I’m too busy’ doesn’t cut it because we are all too busy if we decide to be. Busy is not productive. Productive is productive and Busy is just making noise and loneliness. Busy cuts us off from others and it is Others we need, not Busy. When people ask me if I am busy I say an emphatic NO, because that screen between me and everyone else has done me no service at all in my life beyond cutting me off from my healing source of light.

Keeping connected to family and friends is comparatively easy, although even then we can erect that Busy screen. But the real and proven way we can heal ourselves and the sadness, loneliness and war right across our beautiful world is to pay attention to connectivity; to let those threads flow out from us.

Every moment, busy or not.