The Ritual of the Night Noises

I notice them usually at some point in the mid-afternoon. A subtle rhythm underlying the sounds of the day. As the light fades, and the afternoon ripens into a summer evening, as everything else slows down they gain strength - more and more of them join the song.

Crickets, cicadas, katydids and those I cannot name, beating out loud Life's constant quest for the Other. A night chant dedicated to the union, the joining of two into one. A multi-layered, river of sound rushing toward the next generation of billions of members of this ecosystem.

Where I grew up it is silent at night. Maybe when the great Caledonian forest still breathed around my ancestors they bathed in a symphony of night sounds. I don't know. But this nightly show seems exotic to me, something magical from another world that blows me open daily.

The pulse of it feels ancient, have they been singing this song since the beginning of the world? Will they ever stop? Will they keep singing long past the age of the human? I hope so.

The insistence of the ever present beat entrains me to the forest, keeps my thinking mind busy so the deeper parts of me can soar. Images roll through, scenes, memories, stories, fantasies, knowings, unknowings all carried in a river of sound through my consciousness.

When I shut my eyes and quieten my thoughts the flow of the tempo carries me into remembering ritual. Ones I have participated in and those that I carry in my bones from way back before these bones. The old medicine man's rattle, seeds in a dried skin pouch, shaking away what's not needed so the clear light of life's essence can shine through. Seeds carrying everything needed for a unique expression of life on this planet, moving rhythmically through the night. My feet stamping in time, yet out of time, on the earth, dancing with shadows from the fire, ancestors from beyond. My blood carrying what's needed for this unique expression of life on the planet.

The cicadas come in with their own crescendo, pulling me up and out, into the vastness of time, splattered across a sky ablaze with stars, before dropping me back down to the pounding of the tempo by my feet, the hammer on the anvil of life's forge.

Bone,

flesh,

earth,

fire,

on and on

and on...

Endlessly seeking union, merging with All That Is, with Spirit, with that which I am.

At some point inevitably I fall deep asleep. They rock be back when I awake. Until just before dawn when they seem to pause, resting from their night of revelry, allowing the silence to thicken before the birds start their morning call to prayer. Catching the pre-dawn pause reminds me of the bigger rhythm, the cycle of nights over moons, around suns and through the river of time.

Where do the night noises take you dear one?