Welcome to this meditation,
The Quickening and the Quieting.
Here in the Northern Hemisphere,
Spring has sprung.
In our forests,
Fields and rivers,
In our neighborhoods,
Streets and towns,
In the calls and cries of the animals,
Life has emerged above the soil,
Above the ground of being.
Flowers and blooms show their heads,
Their barest hint of leaf and bulb.
Winter has thrown off its dormancy that blanketed the quiet nourishing of life underground.
Life now beckons,
Nests assemble,
Seeds stir.
As a creative being like you,
This is the time of year where I feel things begin to stir inside me too.
Today what's captured my attention is a word I landed on in an old novel,
The quickening.
Now you mothers listening will know it by feel and by association you fathers will also know the quickening of the baby when it first begins to move.
It's actually already been moving.
The quickening is the measurement of the mother's first physical perception of her baby's aliveness,
From the first kick in the womb to the motions that will now progress by day and night as she feeds and the fetus moves and feeds with her and gradually attunes to her changing moods,
Her wakeful and restful states.
The word quickening is an archaic term for living and alive,
Appearing in passages of the New Testament and in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Tis for the dead,
Not for the quick.
I'm intrigued by this word today.
I'd like to riff on the matter of the quickening as it pertains to art and creativity.
The quickening as proof of life,
As proof of something living inside us as artists.
The quickening of an idea and how an idea becomes animated.
How an idea that has been moving within us for weeks and months and maybe years one day makes itself unmistakably obvious.
How we wake up to this idea one day and how it begins to move inside us,
Kick at us as it gradually begins to take on life.
How it captures our imagination as we attune to it,
Start to wonder what it is,
What it looks like,
What it will be.
The quickening of an artistic impulse is another kind of divine creation.
Some kind of quickening is happening all the time on scales large and small,
Immense and minute.
We humans are full of ideas,
Even if we're not able to call them by name.
We know there's always something percolating.
Ideas come and they go in cycles.
As rare as it is,
One may come kicking in at morning and be fleshed out to completion by nightfall.
We pull it out of the ether,
Give it flesh and bone,
And lay it right out,
Share it immediately if we choose,
Be it in speech,
Poem,
Sketch,
Song,
Storyboard,
Symbol,
Structure.
More often,
An idea emerges with far more difficulty only to experience a rough and long ride through the birth canal.
We may catch a whiff of an idea,
The scent of it,
Only to lose it.
The moment we lean into it,
It's gone,
Back into the cosmic pool,
Ephemeral.
Indeed,
Timing isn't always on our side.
We may not be ready to parent the inspiration,
And so we return it to sender and trust it to the realm of incubation.
Or we're really ready to manifest it and make it real.
Maybe we felt a little fallow lately,
And at the first inkling of it,
Its scant step through the door,
We meet it,
Greet it,
Like a familiar friend.
Hello,
You there.
I think I know you.
Come closer.
We can always train ourselves to attune,
To pause and sit down when we feel the quickening kick of an idea.
We can acknowledge it while we tenderly stroke our bellies.
We're birthing ideas all the time,
Female and male.
This quickening thing is genderless.
It's a human experience,
A human thing.
And so is the quieting.
If you're listening in the Southern Hemisphere today,
Where summer has come to a close and you're into the autumn now,
The same thing is true.
The quieting comes as the afterbirth.
When you've gestated and birthed and loved and raised and worried over and fledged and exhaled your creation,
Afterwards comes the rest.
You are unwinding,
Inhaling,
Feeling your way into the spentness,
Reaping what you sowed.
The quickening and the quieting.
These are seasonal things that connect us to our grounding in the earth,
The sky and in ourselves.
Though bound to cycles,
Both exist out of time.
And so for our meditation today,
I invite you to attune to the sensations in your belly.
Sit quietly,
Breathe deeply in and out a few times,
Then return to normal breathing and leave the space wide open.
If you are coming into springtime,
Conjure up a recent work of art you've been incubating.
Pull a noticeable thread from the tapestry of ideas you've been weaving all winter.
Feel it like a mother would,
Happy to know it's there,
Curious,
In awe of this creation that is forming inside you,
That is growing and will one day emerge to be held by the world.
Feel your way also into the trepidation.
Now as you conjure,
Something may not come because as you focus your attention,
Such conjurings may decide to run away.
So it may not come in this moment.
It may come later today,
This week,
This month.
If you're coming into autumn,
Pull something forward into your consciousness that you've gestated and birthed,
That has come forth and stood upright in the light of day with the sun fully up above it and highest in the sky.
What do you see remaining that is unwinding into the time of your quieting?
The time of your resting that follows the birthing and the raising up?
You're unwinding your creativity with the changing of the season and the waning of the light.
You're beginning to reap what you sowed.
The key is the attuning,
Attuning to your own rhythm of quickening and quieting,
Wanting nothing for them but to feel them as part of you.
You as birther,
You as creator,
Constantly making and sharing and making and sharing.
Breathing in,
Breathing out,
Inhalation,
Inspiration,
Exhalation,
Expiration,
Turning and returning and returning.
Sit with that,
Be that wherever you find yourself.
At the close of this meditation,
A chime will sound in about a minute,
But of course,
Feel free to continue attuning.
