“There is a reciprocal rhythm and it’s not in 4-4 for it
doesn’t follow straight lines. It’s a wild rhythm where
I help you and you help her and she gets to stop and he
gives all he has for love.
There is a reciprocal rhythm and it’s not in 4-4.”
~ An excerpt from “Reciprocal Rhythm”, a poem by Toni Spencer ~
There was a reciprocal rhythm to a day I spent on July 11th with a group of generous women. We’ve met before and I stepped readily into our increasingly graceful being together, leaving any 4-4 rhythms at the door.
Into the alchemy at the centre of our circle I heard myself say: “I’m interested in growing downward”. I’ve since been feeling my way into what I meant.
The day was an invitation to deepen into material we explored previously in a two day leadership programme, Leading with Power and Grace, that Sarah Rozenthuler and I offer together.
At the core of the programme is “The Seed Graphic” which holds the power and grace at the heart of our invitation. It deeply honours the role of the feminine in her reciprocal flow of ongoing arriving and leaving in all of life, all of the time. As a culture, we’re not good at recognising and valuing the leavings, the endings, the deaths. This has consequences.
The moment a seed is planted, it dies in one way or another. It dies because it breaks its heart open in the dark before giving birth to new life above ground. Or, it dies in the dark, and returns, downward, to nourish the soil from which it came. Life giving conditions require both birth and death, arriving and leaving. Death has a reciprocal relationship with birth so that life can be present.
Author Stephen Jenkinson in his film “Lost Nation Road” said: “It’s our limits that give us our opportunity to practice being human”. He goes on to say that, when his time to die comes, he might say “I don’t want it to end, and as it ends, I’ll wish it wasn’t. But that’s not the same as resentment or having a grudge.” This suggests a willingness to give at the end. An open hearted engagement with death and endings is rare in western culture.
There are many endings in any life, many opportunities to learn the fundamental place of endings in a life sustaining cycle. It is rare that these opportunities are seen for what they are, let alone greeted with respect and openness.
One of the consequences of a growth “upwards” focused culture is that up, out, more and infinite have become entangled with definitions of value and success. Where is the honouring of endings? They have become entangled with failure and, for the most part, eschewed.
In a lack of hospitality to letting go, to let what is leaving die, there is an impoverishment of what might otherwise be a reciprocal return to the earth as nourishment. A cultural indisposition to engage with “remains”, with all we leave behind us, and understand they are either food, or toxins, is part of the enormous environmental challenge facing us today.
We ask everything to continue in the same 4-4 rhythm, never stopping, never ending. Can we even contemplate the generosity of a reciprocal rhythm in which we, like the seed, become food, nourishing our context and feeding future life?
This is the territory of the Crone archetype. A recent post by Toko-pa Turner speaks powerfully to the edges of generosity, and choosing to give back at times of ending. She writes of the Crone: “…..she holds a lamplight at the crossroads and asks you to make a choice. She says; Whatever terrible thing is happening to you, can you choose it? Can you give a good death to that which is leaving you?
This is the domain of Hecate. It is a time of prolonged darkness, where we are met with our greatest fears, perceived limitations, and invalidations to our truth.”
Growing downwards is one way to speak about an embodiment of the Crone archetype, a willingness to engage in the last season of life, and grow into this territory. The lamplight at the crossroads is sorely needed in these times.
When I heard myself say “I’m interested in growing down”, this was the realm I was reaching for. In co-created spaces that spring from gratitude for non-linear flow, for taking time, for pausing to go deep, for integrating what we already know, is a doorway to this territory.
Growing downwards is also a direct challenge to mainstream consumer mind-sets of “more” and “new”, of “bigger” and “better”. The pause before growing downwards is a threshold of sorts. Crossing over it opens the territory of release and letting go – a reciprocal return and giving back.
In these stormy times we are witness to many endings; species, landscapes, glaciers and languages. In these times, the feminine midwife capacity at both birth and death is a powerful grace to reclaim. What might it look like to live full-heartedly at times of loss? At times when it’s a struggle to hold a creative and life centred perspective, what might be supportive and guide us?
In his book “Underland”, Robert Macfarlane says: “We know so little of the worlds beneath our feet. Look up on a cloudless night and you might see the light from a star thousands of trillions of miles away, or pick out the craters left by asteroid strikes on the moon’s face. Look down and your sight stops at topsoil, tarmac, toe.”
The urge to grow downwards is counter intuitive, a reciprocal rhythm and it isn’t in 4-4. It’s non-linear, cyclical, and seasonal, like our Earth. It’s late in the day for a change of rhythm in the western world. These times are consequences of drilling down, of digging down of taking out and ripping up. What of the option, the choice, to give back, to let go, to grow down? What about a kind of de-growth that might begin to honour the reciprocal rhythm? The reciprocal rhythm never was in 4-4 no matter how normal it may have become.
Here is the full poem, Reciprocal Rhythm, by poet and climate activist, Toni Spencer.
There is a reciprocal rhythm. A flow between things.
A velocity of reciprocity that builds a village, builds
a dream, builds the world.
For we are kin and kin means I need
you, and you need me. And the sun.
And the water. And the soil
born of things long dead.
Most of us grew up in little boxes. Little boxes
made of ticky-tacky. My house.
Your house. My plate. Your plate.
In the desert, there is one plate at dinner. One plate
where we all tuck in, fingers first, food for all.
I want that.
I want you to ask me for stuff.
I want you to ask because asking is
the kind of boldness we need.
Tell me what you want and I come
a little closer to you, and we dance.
It’s not the yes or the no, but the asking
that rocks the world to this rhythm.
And the ticky-tacky begins to crumble, walls fall
and we need each other all the more.
There is a reciprocal rhythm. Let me
give you things. Don’t hold back
your receiving, because it leaves us both
bereft of the kinship that ties us, reminds
us of our entwined-ness as ecological beings.
I cannot. No. I will not survive without you.
OK yes, some kind of half living but
not the kind I’m worthy of.
Not the kind you’re worthy of. And not
the kind they are worthy of.
Help me, not to fix but to fill the heart. Not to trade but to
till the soil of inter-being that is all there has ever been.
There is a reciprocal rhythm and it’s not in 4-4 for it
doesn’t follow straight lines. It’s a wild rhythm where
I help you and you help her and she gets to stop and he
gives all he has for love.
There is a reciprocal rhythm and it’s not in 4-4.
