Fall Fearless into Love

By Rachel Field,

Heartberry Hollow Farm & Forest – October 27, 2022

 

 

Fall in the Hollow sits in a place where abundance and scarcity hold each other. The
jocund colors of the leaves herald the bareness of stick season. The overflowing fecundity
of the garden precedes the barrenness of winter. Fullness of light tips toward the emptiness
of the dark season. This fall has been one of the most glorious displays of chlorophyll that
anyone can remember and it has been our hardest season out of our four years of growing,
harvesting, wintering, and planting. Between sickness, injury, and the unexpected loss of
one of our horses, we’ve been holding the tenderness of scarcity alongside the
expansiveness of our biggest vegetable harvest yet.
The bins in our storage area holding 250+ pounds of potatoes could not have been
there without the generosity of one of our friends, who dug potatoes for us while I was
away. We recently gathered over 700 pounds of apples from a local orchard, which will
more than feed our family and is spilling over into our community in the form of jars of
applesauce, crisp rings of dehydrated apple slices, and thick apple butter. Jonathan actually
had to take time out from fall clean up to build a set of four 6 foot shelves in our pantry to
accommodate the amount of canned vegetables and fruits that were being produced. The
earth teaches us again and again about the push and pull between abundance and scarcity,
and it is clear to us in the Hollow after this harvest season that community is the ingredient
that shifts the soul firmly into abundance.

 

 

The key to surviving amid such abundance and scarcity is community. As a friend
once shared with me, we are all of us standing on the edge of a great precipice, and the
only thing keeping us from going over the rim is that we are all holding hands. The warmth
of our neighbors’ hands in ours sets us free to “fall fearless into love.” These words came
back to me from a time when I was working in a small community of emergent leaders in
Connecticut. We were tasked with listening for the movement of the Spirit in different
regions of the state…deliciously messy and open. One of our practices during this work was
to gather together for prayer—to actually spend time listening, together, for the Spirit. A
favorite prayer practice for our small community was sung chant. There is nothing quite
like singing to turn a group of strangers into a community. Through the song, our bodies,
minds, and hearts quite literally join as one. Our breathing matches each other, and our
minds are turned to the same words in a vulnerable synchronicity. The pacing of our
inhales and exhales matches and our blood flows at the same rate. We truly become one
breath and one body. For these reasons, it is no surprise that singing is most common in
two expressions of humanity: physical labor and spiritual observance. Our common
heritage is brimming with songs designed to harmonize our bodies for shared labor and
shared praise or lamentation.
As I sit surrounded by boxes of apples and potatoes, another song joins itself to the
work songs and the sung meditations of the harvest time – the deep notes of the earth
itself. Our voices are pulled into the voice whose meter and pitch are the changing seasons
and the vibration of life. Our songs build radiantly off of the pulsing melody that is present
in all creation and exudes from the heart of the divine. By joining our bodies, minds, and
hearts in the harvest, the planting, and the tasting, we join ourselves to the Cosmic song
that is without beginning and without end. We become fully human—alive together as a
shimmering strand within a glorious weaving of abundant voices.

Sung Meditation

This practice is for you if you would like it to be. No matter if you believe that your
singing ability is the stuff of legends or if you are convinced that you can’t carry a tune in a
bucket. Sung practices are as deeply embedded in every spiritual tradition as roots are
embedded in soil—there is no separating them! Even if you are alone please do try this
meditation. If you have a few companions who are willing to sing with you that adds a
beautiful layer to the practice. This type of singing meditation involves a short phrase with
a simple tune that can be repeated for long stretches of time. If you begin to have an
internal stop that “it’s gone on long enough,” that’s a good indicator to do the chant five
more times.
You can find a selection of chants through the Retreat House’s new podcast “The
Forest’s Edge” (available on Spotify) which is a collaboration with Heartberry Hollow to
provide a space for spiritual seekers and religious practitioners to come into conversation.
A simple chant that I find effective for letting go uses the words from Psalm 46: Be still and
know that I am God. Sung in a monotone (using the same note), simply sing the verse all the
way through. Each time that you repeat it, drop a word from the end of the verse. So the
second time it would be “Be still and know that I am.” Until you are left with only “be.”
Repeat as many times as you would like, knowing that if you can continue the chant for
more than 5 minutes, you will notice a substantial change in your physiology. May this
practice be for you as vibrant and vulnerable as a sugar maple blazing orange and dropping
leaf after leaf to the forest floor.