13 Minutes
It’s 7 am in the US. Wintertime in all respects: Dark, cold, uncertain of light’s return. The world is literally aflame with disaster, flooded with tears. Shorelines recede.
It’s 1pm in central Europe. Two women have given the call. From various points on the globe a handful of women gather, laptops aglow. Hovering in virtual space, we reach. We light candles, invite presence. We offer silence and gesture, images and words. We see one another, and so, see ourselves.
For precisely 13 minutes we give ourselves to ourselves and to one another. We hear what calls, peer together at what emerges. 13 minutes: Vulnerable, direct.
It’s as if we’re each checking our pockets, assuring ourselves by way of witness that an essential, precious thing, unnamable and real is not lost. Not lost. You, I, we, are not lost.
A fullness laps our various, singular shores. Together we raise our candles and blow them out. A breeze picks up, surfaces shift. One by one we disappear, heading for other boxes, real or imagined. I zip up and head out.
A poem I’ve loved for a long while now tells of a creature that is loved into being and continues to exist because it is loved. Comes into being by professing the tender, constant possibility that something beautiful, powerful and true could come to life simply because it is desired, is wished to be so. The creature’s visibility and very pulse is conjured and held in place by the hope of its existence, by the belief in its possibility. The possibility becomes certain and clear: That we create what we value, what we honor and caress, by the sheer unflagging focus of our intent. Our constant witness bringing it moment by moment into being. Moment by moment, holding it steady and in place.
Women by light of screen and candle. Breathing, hearing, seeing. Birthing connection, holding the beauty created by our gaze. Our conjured power flickers, sputters, leaps as light does. Is fueled by tender intent, by our constant will to witness. Into the chat we telegraph words, a phrase, one entry each. Messages float untamed beyond the conflagration of commerce. Breath appears, sounds from the page, forms something substantial, true to its own becoming. Wavering alight, our desire wills it so, suspended as we are in radical attention. Fast breaking. Whisper still.