I sat in my garden yurt sharing the morning with a dear friend. We wrote, danced and enjoyed the outdoor sunshine. I heard the birds and the distant traffic. A crow cawed loudly, I imagined the black shiny feathers glistening in the sunshine as they reflect back to the sun his presence here in the garden.

There is always a peacefulness here always a creative spark in this place. I wonder what will happen next and what will flow from the energy I hold in myself. There is little to do in these moments. Just to be, to ponder a little. a remembering that I am enough and all that I do despite how I feel really does have meaning. There is a reason for everything, I know this from my deepest core, and as my life unfolds gradually I feel that deep acceptance that all I need to experience will ultimately become apparent and less of a mystery to me.

Like the black feathers of the crow, the mysterious colors and shapes and the shadows that he casts upon the earth, flapping his wings amongst  the branches and the leaves, he will share his mysteriousness with the world without any great thought for why or how and what purpose he was born for. Still he will have an effect on me as I sit here listening to those sounds.

He knows nothing of me yet he affects me. He may never see me or know I exist. But I hear him and he opens my mind, my ears and my eyes to a world that is greater than mine.

So I dance and I stretch my body, I move further into the space, exploring this body and how it needs to move this morning, always it loves to stretch like the wings of the black crow it expands into the light and casts its own shadow upon the ground, I am witness to this shadow. I know it is there. Does the crow know his shadow? Does he peck at it, caw at it, play with it? Laugh mockingly at its strangeness? I wonder at my own dance, as my shadow dances with me. We are connected as my body expands, so too does it, as I dance so too does it dance, as I expand so too my shadow reaches outwards. What is known what is hidden – does it matter if the sun glistens on the black crows back and shows the blue tinges of many shades. Yet it warms the soul, reminding me of who I am and who I am not. And for a moment the crow is silent and I dance to my own voice that speaks quietly to myself and shares some deep thoughts about the next adventure. As the sun shines it reminds me of many fire side rituals that are waiting to emerge and be shared. The women’s voices that are ready to shake their shadows to the core and speak out from the center of their dance.

And if I expand my awareness out further to stretch my mind as well as my wings into the world of the crow, amidst the trees and hedgerows to feel the sun on my face and to be able to touch the same bark and crisp dried up leaves, what then will I hear and what then will I share?

Do the birds silence themselves for fear I may harm them, do they disappear off into the blue sky to alight further afield. I sense the earth beneath my feet holding some of that dark mystery and feeling my own yearning for depth and meaning. I reach my fingers into the rough craggy stone letting my hands meet with the soil and rock, prickly dead leaves and dried up old seeds, sorting through natures collages of what is ready to rot back into its existence, to compost back down and become one earth once more. And still no sound or sign of the crow until I look upward again to a high hedge above my head where I spy a nest old and unused and I wonder who had nestled in this bed of twigs half way between the earth and the sky.

The drum begins to speak to me, it calls me to enter deeply into familiar territory. As I circle inwards to the cavern I knew well, I am met by many crows within council. I stand amidst them asking why am I here and what am I here to do? How much do I trust this way of communicating? Are the crows here to shame me or am I feeling mocked by them?

‘Stand in the circle with us they caw’ and so I enter the circle knowing it to be safe and I explore the teachings here. Be with the circle I am told but ‘which one’ I hear myself say. ‘The one you are in’ is my reply.

I feel my body next to a large black crow much bigger than I and he carries me up amidst the clouds, above the sea we fly, above many lands looking down on vast continents.

Here am I meant to be – sharing myself in flight to the world. To the strange worlds to the black suited worlds – here is the voices necessary circle, find its strength and let it caw. Follow the crow and its pin-stripped feathery clan, laugh at the shadow it creates and step one step at a time, one sentence at a time, one breath at a time until you find a way through the craggy undergrowth for there you will find the emerald jewels.