Finding Your Heart Song

At USAF air show in Wichita,TX

Bless me with your laughter.
Enchant me with your song.
Your joy is my sweet sunshine.
Shine on!
  Dorothy Mendoza Row

On my very recent trek to Oklahoma to visit family, I became keenly aware of the presence of the wind blowing across the plains. This is the same wind that creates dust bowls and is the guiding force behind raving ice storms in winter. However, during my visit, I experienced this ever present wind as laughing and singing its joy filled song. This wind replaced the overbearing heat of the sun with pleasant air on my skin. I enjoyed just breathing.

One Saturday, during my visit, I had the privilege of spending a day in retreat with three other wise women. I say "other" because that day I slowly began to really experience myself as among them. The day was a rare blessing of that sense of belonging instead of being the eternal outsider of such a circle of wisdom.  This was refreshingly humbling.

The land around us had recently been ravaged by a forest fire. Conna, whose home sits on this land, told the story of the wall of fire approaching her house. The fire didn't get the house. Perhaps she, who also walks with the ancestors of this land,  was protected by the wind's direction.

She and Jan, the facilitator of "Finding Your Heart Song", the reason for my coming to this circle that day, is a genius when it comes to group process. With that and her 25 years experience facilitating community renewal with native American Indians in Canada, the day had no chance to be other than a kairotic moment in a life's time.

Pat shared her poetry, which I imagined as the delightful laughter of the wind weaving the sunshine gently in and through us.

I am feeling that the heart song we all found that day was the song of the wind itself. As Greg Mortensen  was taught by his Afghan guru to "listen to the wind" for wisdom, perhaps that is where we will find our heart song - or its updated version.

I will return to that day in my memory and listen to my heart song being carried by the wind straight to my heart and out through my voice. I did some bit of listening that day. I heard "Joy is Here.  Here is Joy" - a breathing in and a breathing out of the magical wind that glides across the plains in Oklahoma.


When is a time you were trying too hard to "listen to your heart? (Pat's departing words to me)