Nature, Body, Bodacious

9/11/26
This late-summer morning is a buzzing swirl of life.
The resident family of hummingbirds arrives at dawn to feast on the ever-flowing nectar of the salvia. Multitudes of bees—from tiny ones to great bumbles—disappear into petals to gather pollen. Butterflies in vivid colors create fluttering crowns across the garden.
Under this wild, interweaving dance of bird, bee, and butterfly is a primordial pulse: the drawing toward, the pulling away, and the inevitable drawing in again—the movement of life itself.

When I meet this thrumming in me, I feel the sensation of my cells gathering inward, condensing me, followed by the answering spring of opening.

Condense… expand… condense… expand…
A breath beneath the breath.
In that resonating pulse, I am bee and breath, tide and storm, galaxy and gravity, the expanding Universe. The timeless patterns of life offer me a conduit for knowing myself—through blood, bones, breath—as Nature.

When I allow this pattern to be my guide, my teacher, something shifts.

In my body:
I bring this enlivening pulse to the pain in my upper back. It feels as though a rib is out of place. Almost imperceptible movement begins to ripple through me, like a fluid breath bathing my back, breathing my back. Held within the support of my full body, within the pulsing support of Earth, the pain dissolves.

In my consciousness:
As I look toward a challenging day ahead, I ask:
What needs to condense?
What needs to be gathered in, held close?
What can I allow to open and expand?
What tempo of pulse do I want to underlie my day?
In this way, Patterns of Nature have become my primary guides for navigating life. Reliable, ever-present, challenging, and surprising teachers.

For more than twenty years, a small and mighty community has been exploring and co-creating this inquiry: remembering Nature as ourselves, and discovering Patterns of Nature as tangible conduits into the mystery and miracle that are always here—even when they feel gently veiled, or deeply hidden, much of the time.

This autumn, we are Beginning Again—letting what we think we “know” fall away, making space for what might arise if we meet the Patterns anew.