Nightowl, COP and Constellating
You can listen to this post here. 9 mins. I hope enjoy.
The light has been pared back now, almost brittle in the sky. I watch it linger for moments on the crest of waves, then dance into the long night. In its absence, I seek to create my own.
November affords the creative hours with a strange sense of abundance. As a natural night owl, much of my imagination comes alive at around 6pm and peaks at around 10. This week, on a few occasions, I found myself wide awake at 3am, still writing, painting; ideas and plans swirling. My mornings, I let my body linger in sleep. My mother tells me I’ve been like this since I was a child. Getting to school on time was a perpetual challenge (Why does school have to start so early anyway?). The evening hours. Time stretches. Email beeps, door knocks, daily obligations, these seem like distant relatives to the rising stillness. It’s taken me a long time to allow myself to trust my own circadian tides, at times feeling like I am trying to swim against the dominant current. I am still learning to trust it; my nocturnal ways, and the light I find there. But what if I flip that narrative too. What if swimming against is also, in a sense, swimming towards. And what if that’s exactly what is needed.
Finding, and trusting our own rhythms is anathema to the race, of course. The race to produce faster, more, then more. It is part of what has got us into such a mess, careful of how I use ‘us’. It is a small ‘us’ that has caused the larger body of ‘us’ to find ourselves where we are; in a different kind of race now, literally to turn the tides.
I watched the images and narrative coming from Cop27 this week. Here we have the regular cast of decision makers. Mostly male. Mostly the dominant political elite. Like others, I found myself asking; ‘Where are all the women?’,’Where are the indigenous voices? Where are those who will advocate for voices of the future, human and more-than-human, not just the profits of the future? Then quickly, my own internal critic chimed in, ‘And where are you Clare. What are do actually doing’? It is a voice that frequently rattles me. And rattles me loud. Am I making the right choices? Am I doing enough?’
I was asked to run for local political office once. My ego toyed with the idea for a while, but it was a brief while, because a part in me knew myself well enough- that active political office would be running against my own tide too. It is easy to mistake public profile with importance, with success. The lure is real, but at what cost? To our own callings be true.
Real too is our need to express our ideas, our own marks to make, to honour our own particular gifts in our own particular ways. For some, importantly so, that means running for office, for some it is setting up schools or teaching in them, for others it is holding a child’s hand and helping them to grow into their particular gifts. Notice I am deliberately using the plural here- callings, gifts, longings. We are plural beings, layered with complexity, multiplicities, shadows, and equally with gifts, talents, capacities. We are constellations, and when we allow ourselves, we too can be bright lights in dark times, for dark times indeed need their north stars.
I’m looking into the future now, the not too distant future, seeing the ways humanity needs to adapt and respond to the times we are in. This is monumental change on scales we have never experienced before. The need for us to bring our gifts, our unique contribution, is real too. And as vital as breath is. We need the engineers, scientists, political negotiators, mediators, meditators. We need accountants and financial planners, city planners, marine stewards, stewards in general. We need the nurturers, the storytellers, the media makers, the healers. Space-makers, movers and shakers. We need every gift and talent there is, yours, mine. The table is large, and we can create even more space for everyone. I want to pull up more chairs.
The dominant narrative, of course, is counter to this. It is of fear, apocalypse, permacrisis. But that’s part of the problem- the dominance of this narrative, the singularity of it, when, in reality, in parallel to the dominance, there is always plurality, there are other possibilities taking shape, already taking shape. I look around as see these new stories growing in momentum. Some are organisations doing such interesting and important work. I am inspired by The Presencing Institute, initiating and co-creating transformative educational models across the globe. Or The Bio-Leadership Project, offering alternative business models and networks. Some are movements, a rising up of a new narrative, as the women in Iran have, cutting their hair in acts of symbolic resistance to the hegemonic norms of expectations and control. I turn to writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer, or Robert McFarlane, who are sharing their exquisite craft of language to write new landscapes of awareness and possibility into being. I am enthralled with artists such as Jackie Morris, and musician Cosmo Sheldrake, who, through visual and auditory expression bring the voices of the natural world into the hearts and minds of thousands. From that one woman on a protest march in Iran, to the millions and millions of others around the world who are working on regenerative energy projects, new architectural designs, sustainable policy work, circular economy business operations, and on and on. Yes, there is so so much work to do, which also means there is so much possibility, for all of us. I think of all these people, each expressing their gifts, each part of an evolving narrative, each offering their own light in these dark and troubled times. Suddenly November is constellated.
I’m up late again, drawing. A little Wren has arrived, a tiny tiny creature, so small and so seemingly insignificant. But only a few hours ago, that drawing didn’t exist, and now the world has expanded in the tiniest of ways. Yes, tiny, but even that is expansion, part of the unfolding, and it makes the light in my own heart shine that little bit brighter. I’m turning inwards for the season now, into my own creative cave, seeking what stories I can find there, and offering them to the wider narrative, hoping to join other lights there, yours, theirs. I too am constellating. The dark may not be that dark after all.