We began our house hunt in earnest the summer of 2021 after my boyfriend Peter, my daughter Aliyah and I attended one of the Lotus Arts Farm Sanctuary events that year. The sense of community we felt with the other families that day, while we all worked on the land planting kale at Gaining Ground Farm, while we sang songs together to the pulse of the drum and celebrated the pollinators through a parade-like procession, honoring publicly together our love and wonder of nature herself to provide and nourish us all in so many ways, was life changing. An old forgotten place woke up in me, in all of us really, that wanted to be nourished, to be fed deeply, by living in closer connection with the earth, with breath, with the natural world and with others. Something about it felt so natural and vital to our existence, how could we have been without it for so long? It’s hard to remember how I had become so separate…
I suppose it happened gradually, over the many years of living in New York City–it had been 18 years for me, 30 for Peter and Aliyah’s whole life – 13 years. The city can eat you up if you don’t harmonize with it, so you do, you find ways to make it work, you find a job so you can make it work financially AND you have to find ways to keep your heart open and continue to see the beauty of the people around you, the languages, the colors and the cultures, the events, the nightlife…Otherwise, you shut down. And maybe you do both at the same time, to make it work. Then if you live there longer than you want to…the shut down sort of takes over and then you don’t feel the harmony anymore. That’s what had happened to me, there became more discord than harmony and I needed to find a way to reconnect to my natural self, a more natural life.
“Sunny secluded,” read the Craigslist ad. Could it be true? It sounded like a fairy tale and the exact one that we wanted to live in. Ahh, just the thought of it eased my breathing.
I often have a song going on in my subconscious and when we made the move to the Hudson valley in early August this year it was a song by Rising Appalachia called Harmonize. We were finally living in closer proximity to mother earth and the words from the chorus “Lay down and Harmonize” kept coming to mind and really became my mantra and my practice as I began to transition from life in the city to life in the country. Harmonize, as it is sung in the song, felt like it should be so innate, like it was something we all know how to do and as I inquired further into its meaning, and what it means for me at this point in my life, it beckoned me into a deeper experience beyond just how the mind comprehends it.
Lay down and harmonize, moved my spirit in this way…
Take a moment
To rest
To listen beneath and into the quiet
to hear,
to hear your spirit,
to hear nature, her spirit
are they not one?
Lay your body on the body of the mama,
Skin to skin like mama and baby
Peel away the layers that made you believe you are separate
Breathe in the cool air, feel it pass into you
So easily,
So naturally
And release it back
Letting go
The thoughts
The doing
The going and achieving
Feel your body touching the earth
Relax the muscles that stiffen you into life’s positions
Harmony – The quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole.
I often think of harmonizing in terms of singing, there’s something almost magical to me when I hear people harmonizing. In order for it to happen, each singer must hold true to their own part so as not to just sing the same note as the others. This seems like an important lesson for us all; to honor our own notes in life and trust that when we come together with others who are singing/being their notes, there can be harmony.
Harmonize – Produce a pleasing combination (greater than the sum of its parts)
I’ve been feeling into harmonizing, here on this land. Feeling her, feeling my own presence, feeling her feeling me, being a part of her world, like the willow or the wren. I am listening to the insects, the frogs, the birds, the silence and the currents of wind as they move across the land passing through the ever-ready-to-catch-any-breeze cottonwoods and on to the maples and the flowing willow tree. I wonder, what is my part? How can I harmonize here, with nature, with a more basic true part of myself? And then, how can I be more fully in the human community in a way that feels true?
“Play me, mother. I want to know my part in the chorus!”, I say. She assures me that I am already a part of the chorus, an important part of the whole, that I have a place here, with all the others. That by listening and being with all that is, I will feel my way and be inspired to sing my part, too.
I am grateful for the vision and wisdom that Ellie and Sylvana carry that inspires them to offer their programs into this world. That one day of honoring and harmonizing with the earth and within community inspired us to make a move to enrich our lives. I hope you have an opportunity to take part in one of their offerings.
