In younger days I spent some time with Egyptian Monks. A long-beard told me that the sun will rise without my help and that goes for you and me both, brother. But I did notice that everything we did in meditation and ritual closely followed sunset and sunrise, lunar and solar events and points amongst and between, guided by the cosmic rhythms of the Sahara skies and ancient astral liturgies of the Wadi Natrun. 

Biological processes are governed by internal circadian (24-hour) clocks in each and every earthly organism from Monks to microbes. Monkeys. Truth is, each distinct cell in our bodies follows a daily rhythm ranging from roughly 21 to 28 hours and together they can adapt to seasonal cues and stresses and hormonal ups and downs that make life flexible and fertile on this spinning marble, the sharps and flats in the melody of days. 

So perhaps everything that breathes and beats, all that vibrates fast and slow over eons and out-breaths, acts and moves together and on each other— cyano-bacterial blooms, heron struts and bobs, bobcat whiskers woodchuck whistles, slow clams, marrows and jams, Cassiopeia and the Pleiades sisters, bucksnorts and gnatcatcher wheezes and gnats. Ginger snaps. 

Do yoga by a pond and fix the leak in your blowup kayak with your feet in the water, have your friend read to you a poem with a catbird sing-along, listen to caterwauls and cottonwoods when you’re fresh out of monks or maybe make your own. Follow the asceticism of hop-toads and the wisdom of widow-skimmers and the liturgies of whippoorwills. Trust your own ears and skin, soften your eyes on the verdant world we live in, give your palms to the sun or your fingertips to the inky night and give a little push. 

Let the chewinks chant the first line.

— Jack Phillips

_{Photos: scenes from our summer 2024 ecospirituality retreats by Jack Phillips.}