What is ‘the singing’?
You will all recognise this term from the books – after all, Book 4 was named exactly that, The Singing.
But someone asked me recently, what exactly the ‘singing’ is, what I mean by it.
Let me tell you: there is a rhythm to life.
The push and suck of blood. The indrawn breath, the exhaled. The ebb and flow of the tide. The rising and setting of the sun and moon. The shifting of the constellations. The birth, life and death of all creatures. The flow of a river to the sea.
This is the singing.
It is the way of living within this rhythm, and living with it in a way that has a focus to it. It has a noticing, caring quality. It pays attention to the coming and going, the breathing in, the breathing out. The birthing and the dying.
The singing is the way of living in the midst of all of this, wide awake to it, and playing our part to care for all we can that lives within it, and within us. It is making our hearts and lives a sacred place. It is caring for our newborns, making sure our elders pass to the next life unafraid.
It is the joy of being knitted into the warp and weft of the world. It is the song of presence and attention and love.
It is the song that says: I want to be where I am.
From the village, a fiddle-player struck up a tune that wove in and out of the drum beat.
Morghan smiled at Winsome, then turnbed slightly and looked up at the sun-streaked sky ‘The sun rises upon us,’ she called. ‘The Wheen turns, and this,’ she said, turning back to gaze at the crowd.
‘This is our Singing.’
Katherine Genet is the author of the Wilde Grove fiction series. She has been walking a pagan path for 30+ years and is a shamanic Druid, spirit worker, and priestess of Elen of the Ways and the Fair Folk.
Oh, UAU!
You did it again!
Do you know when you come across something that touches you so deed inside you, it makes you tremble from your deepest, like a vibrating string that you suspected was there but didn’t know where, or what it was, nor even its nature. For me it is this: the singing, it is what gives my life a true meaning.
“It is the joy of being knitted into the warp and weft of the world. It is the song of presence and attention and love.” And all I do is to cry, tears of joy, of bless, fall down my face. And I give thanks for the life I have, for the path I walk. For I know now that it is something I’ve been doing, not longing for.