Retreat #5: Song
The stirring of kundalini early in this retreat leads to a softening in my attitude toward myself—and toward my body in particular. I’ve seen my physical frailties and imperfections before, but with a judging eye. Today, though, each scar is part of me, each spot is mine. I see the skin stretched across my bent knee and it is my skin. The eyes peering back at me from the mirror are my eyes. I’m not looking at a body, I’m looking at me. I’m seeing the vessel that houses my spirit. The recognition elates me and frightens me.
At the end of this retreat, after intense examination of my socialization as a female within a patriarchal religion and rational culture, I remember a story I once heard about a tribe in Africa. In this tribe’s tradition, the birth date of a child is counted—not from when the baby is born, not even from when it’s conceived—but from the day that the child was a thought in its mother’s mind. When a woman of this tribe decides that she will have a baby, she goes off and sits under a tree, by herself. She listens until she can hear the song of the child that wants to come. After she has heard the song of this child, she goes back to the man who will be the father, and she teaches it to him. When they make love to physically conceive the child, they sing the song, as a way to invite the spirit to enter a human body through their union. When the mother is pregnant, she teaches that child’s song to the midwives and the old women of the village. These are the women who attend the birth; they sing the baby’s song during its birth, to welcome it. As the child grows up, the other villagers are taught the child’s song. When the toddler falls, or scrapes its knee, someone picks it up and sings its song to it. When the youngster does something wonderful, or goes through the rites of puberty—then as a way of honoring the child, the people of the village sing its song. It goes this way throughout the person’s life. In marriage, the bride’s and groom’s songs are sung, together. When this person lies in bed, ready to die, all the villagers know its song, and they sing the song to that person-child for the last time.
What song did my spirit sing when it agreed to come to Earth, clothed in a physical body? Did my mother hear my song as she carried me in her womb? If she’d been listening, what would she have heard my spirit say? I pull my notebook onto my lap and scribble what comes to me. It’s a beautiful song that rings true.
If my Spirit-Song had been heard, remembered, taught to others and sung to me, the strong messages about the inferiority of females wouldn’t have filtered into my life. I would’ve been valued in all my humanness and femaleness and divinity.
That didn’t happen, but I now know my Spirit-Song. I can sing it.
And I do.
May it inform my days forevermore.