inVisible Heart
Exploring practices of growing our love for the sacred mundane
A hearty welcome to all the new subscribers of late - it’s so great to have you here! Thank you for trusting space in your inbox and reading day for these sharings and I - as an avid reader and writing lover myself, I know the respect and commitment offered when we subscribe and read, and even more so when we begin to interact together as a result. So, thank you, thank you, thank you!
And if you’ve recently joined us here off the back of the piece “Being dreamt by country”, then please know that the follow up thinksharings for that one are still fermenting - I’ve had the pleasure of diving headlong into the immense ocean of Cynthia Bourgeault’s life altering and soul illuminating book (“Eye of the Heart”) and am so deep into the thick of it I cannot yet write from this place - it would either come out as a bumbling confusion or risk feeling like an overzealous devotee yelling undercooked rantings, and neither of us need the consequences of that.
(and yes, to my dearest ones who have been wandering this path since its inception and first stumbling steps you know you have my heartfelt lifelong love and gratitude, beyond words 💚)
Nigh on twenty years ago a seed germinated in me; emerging root first into the world of my secret heart, the wondering places of my mind; it took root, and grew deeper into my being. A concept, an idea, a handful of photographs and time spent wandering, awaiting for a time or context I knew not.
Until now.
It seems now, and here with you, is the place this one shall break forth from beneath the soil and send up their tender first shoots; reaching for the light to sustain themselves, and more fully engage in the greater life dynamics they will both change and be changed by (as is the case for us all).
Firstly, to introduce this way of seeing more deeply, a question for you: how many trees can you count easily in the image below?
(as defined previously when musing on living as an odd one out, let’s consider a tree as anyone taller than us with some sort of woody trunk shape)
Have your number? I’d love to hear it in the comments below…! :)
I count eight: four living and four dead.
Aha. Can you see where this piece is heading?
This image is from 2007 when I was living in and wandering around Clifton Hill (inner northern Melbourne, Australia) and became both deeply enamoured with and increasingly heartsore about power poles. That was the germination of this project, now known as inVisible Heart.
Why power poles? Because really, they are trees. Trees sometimes grown simply for this purpose, and sometimes in ‘days gone by’, harvested from pre-existing forests, which we know - unequivocally - were loved and stewarded for essentially forever by our First Nations kin. Trees cut, dropped, stripped of their outer layers, peeled down to the tannin-riddled heartwood (prized for its’ longevity), and then usually impregnated with mummifying type liquids. Trimmed, shaped, capped, drilled into, and all manner of metal implanted. Trucked around the country to then - in a painfully ironic twist - be replanted, to ensure we can power our lives with electrifying current.
And then, by and large, we forget them. Simply stating “that’s a power pole”. Replacing them when their usefulness has run it course; hopefully then utilising them afresh for another of our projects, or perhaps finally relinquishing them back into the cycle of beingness and unbecoming, to become again anew.
Just because we pressgang someone into service for our needs does not, ever, change their essential nature and fundamental beingness; hence my aching, tender heart which still greets trees every day, whether they’re considered alive or dead.
To reframe our thinking - or to simply remember - that power poles (and thus an object for our purposes) are trees (and therefore a subject, with their own life and experience) is a fraught path to walk - be warned, lovely one, that herein lies grief, anguish, anger, and so many emotions, including also hope, love, care, and empathy. At least, probing this includes all these for me. And by all the gods above and below, I will not shy away from this, nor cease to love. No matter the heartache.
So, where does this leave us? In a culture that struggles to have even a modicum of honour and respect for the lives being lived around us, what is to be done?
My being hums with one simple(!?) answer, which is: to love
Not love as in the oversimplified, underdeveloped idea of an emotional switch, by which you are either in love with/or not; No. The deeper and far more wondrous love - actual love - that is daily action and endless witness; think of your love as like a wave on the beach: part of the deep ocean of all love, briefly differentiated, folding over in interactivity which fosters life, and sinking back into the great body in doing so, only to once again froth forth and caress, interact, and impact the lives around you.
Love, which is as Andreas Weber so wonderfully describes (emphasis is my edit): “There’s also an ecological dimension to love, which is realizing yourself in a way that makes the self-realization of others flourish. That’s love on an ecological level.”1 (and please avail yourself of this episode of Green Dreamer with Andreas and host Kamea: it is so immensely gorgeous, and one I revisit often to soften my heart, and melt back into the knowing unknowingness of simply living.)
So to bring our storying to a place of action and to delve all the waters of love in this way, try this simple practice as I so often do:
on your next walk, find a tree now doing us the service of holding up electrical wires; one near your dwelling, and perhaps you can visit them often, maybe every week, or every day for a week;
when you visit, rest your hand against them and peer up their trunk; can you envisage the once-was crown up there? The arching branches, bathing in sunlight; the long limbs offering perch, home, and protection?
visit them in the rain, at least once, to see the water running down the trunk; (Walking when it’s raining is my favourite way to immerse in the aliveness of life ;) )
This project is an ongoing offering, and I’d so dearly love to hear how it lands for you - share your found inVisible Hearts with me in the comments below or on our communal chat here (yep, Substack has a chat feature I’ve not yet used, until now! :) As with all new things, lemme know if that link doesn’t work or you have troubles finding the chat!)
Afterword
Having gestated this piece and now have it pour out of me onto this page, I’m reminded of a kernel that came flashing through some time ago and I wrote down as the lifelove cycle; or said another way, the process by which we can grow into love with another; the steps that seem to me to be involved, as we grow in intimacy and deepening our relationship:
Recognise> Respect> Honour> Enjoy> Cherish>
I’ll leave unpacking that further for another day, however it feels appropriate here as one of the primary impetus behind the inVisible Heart project.
the next paragraph is just as stunning, where Andreas further elucidates: “That’s what’s happening in ecosystems. That’s just what ecosystems do. All beings self-realize in a way that maximizes the self-realization of all the other beings in an ecosystem. If you walk into a flowering meadow or into a dense forest or to a seashore, you see the embodiment of love in front of your eyes, through the pores of your skin, with all your senses. You can taste it on your lips. You can hear it in your ears. You feel it as a shiver on your the tiny hairs on your skin. It’s participating in this mutual gift of aliveness.”