The Music of What's Happening
New foragers doing their Orientation Dance before heading out into the world for nectar and pollen.
What is it about Consciousness that lets us know when a particular life form is now a guide? When the honeybees became some of my most profound teachers? It’s like a subtle switch or different internal sensitivity that activates and stirs a recognition of sacred relationship and kinship. Something far vaster than I can imagine is at play in the territory of my heart, this field so utterly governed by the quantum physics of love. The privilege of abiding with honeybees has alchemically changed me and everyone else I know who has felt their tug and leaned their way. Whether we are formally bee stewards or simply free-range bee lovers, some of us both, our hearts are filled to overflowing with gladness.
One of the many lovely things we get to witness as bee folk is something called the Orientation Dance (worthy of capitalizing) which generally happens in my bee sanctuary on warm sunny afternoons. Worker bees, who are female and comprise most of the bees in a colony, live about six weeks in the warm weather months. Halfway through their lives, they graduate from in-hive duties to stepping out into the wider world to forage for nectar, pollen, water and sap. They travel to and from flowers, plants, trees, shrubs, and water sources for the rest of their precious time in form.
On Graduation Day, as I call it, when the new crop of foragers first emerge from their hive, they orient to where their home is located through a dance. It is a lovely thing to see, this cloud of bees moving in a loose figure eight then eventually spiraling up as they take in landmarks that help them to identify their address … the position of trees, buildings, where the sun is, the skyline, and even what their particular colony smells like thanks to a citrus-scented pheromone that other worker bees are fanning out from their abdomens. Once familiarized, they can fly away and know precisely how to return home, their honey stomachs full of nectar or back legs full of pollen … food for the seventeen generations of bees that can be birthed in a hive across a year in my sector of the BeeVerse.
May is an abundant nectar season here in the mountains of western North Carolina. Blackberry Bushes, Tulip Poplar and Black Locust trees are throwing out blooms with abandon, igniting an explosion of pollinator traffic. Most days when I go to the apiary, I can hear the bees even before I see them. It is an ecstatic, Dionysian bee delirium … and it is loud.
My friend Layne Redmond introduced me to anahata, a Sanskrit word meaning the un-struck sound which is behind and sustains all of reality, one too subtle and fine to be perceptible. What is audible and considered the closest sound to anahata is the buzzing of bees, which Layne called the celestial buzzing sound of creation. This thrumming humming ever-changing conversation between thousands of wing-ed beings going about their holy business is pure aural Medicine for my soul.
Another vibrant, lyrical thread in my life is the poet David Whyte’s Three Sundays series which he has hosted every other month since the spring of 2020. It was one of his creative responses to the Covid lockdown. I have attended every single session and remain utterly enchanted with both David and what he so generously offers. Last Sunday he mentioned an old tale I had heard many moons ago about a mythical hunter warrior in Irish and Scottish mythology named Fionn mac Cumhaill.1
One fine day, Fionn and his rascally band of young nomads took a break from protecting Ireland and building the Giant’s Causeway to rest and debate this question: What is the most beautiful sound in the world? One man replied: the hoo-hoo of the owl as the moon goes down and another, the CUCK-oo of the cuckoo. Others replied: the bell-like cry of a lark, a laughing girl, the bellowing of a stag, the clash of a spear against a shield, a distant monastery bell … and on and on. When all the warriors had finished, they turned as one to Fionn and asked him what the most beautiful sound in the world was. And he responded, The music of what is happening.
I love this story and its celebration of the sacred-in-the-ordinary beauty, meaning and blessings that are tucked into the fabric of everyday life … and the invitation for us to be present with the small things and with all things in each moment. For me that especially includes time in the vibrational field of bees and their songs. They recalibrate me and suffuse my life with grace. I remain infinitely grateful for my astonishing and astonished life with bees.
As I write this post, my morning what-is-happening soundscape includes: the high-pitched rhythmic mating whine of thousands of cicadas in their rare 17-year emergence, the distant rumble of a post-Hurricane Helene clean-up truck, the shrill chatter of a bossy wren, the bark of a crow, the clink of Joe’s spoon against his cereal bowl, and the message from a grieving friend who just shared her continued despair over the death of children in Gaza (a lament that plays in my heart as well). And always the bees. These inner and outer soundverses are ever in a sacred weave … and I give thanks.
I wonder about the music that is happening for you in this very moment?
I want to end this post by sharing the voice of Sacre Coeur, one of my bee families from many summers ago.2 Layne requested this recording which she then wove into the last CD she created in her life, Hymns From the Hive. In each track, the bees are in there somewhere. “The Garden of the Hive” is the final piece. You won’t hear any human voices or instruments, just the bees. This is a heavenly choir which has long fed my soul like a fine time-released feast. And this is for you, from my bee-loving heart to yours.
Blessed be ❤️ Blessed bees ❤️ Blessed beings ❤️ Blessed life
❤️ Debra
My reference to the Fionn mac Cumhaill tale draws from these sources (in addition to memories of this story’s telling when I lived in England):
Brían Ó’Súileabháin, The Music of What Happens. Brían also references the work of James Stephens’ book, Irish Fairy Tales.
Singing Head, The Music of What Happens.
David Whyte, Three Sundays, “Everything Is Waiting For You,” Session 1.
Thank you to my dear friend and remarkable musician, composer, teacher and producer, River Guerguerian for making this wonderful recording possible. It goes on (and on) with its own beautiful life. ❤️
As I sit here reading your beautiful words, stories and invitation, Debraji, the music I am listening in this very moment is the melody of countless songbirds - blackbirds, wrens and sparrows, blackbirds, nightingales, blue jays and swallows -, a rooster crowing in the distance perhaps still making an effort to wake up any sleepyheads still asleep on this late Saturday morning, faint sounds of cars passing by, my neighbor Fatma's voice calling to her husband, a chicken fervently laying eggs... I feel truly blessed to live in this soundscape.
My heart goes out to those living with a more harsh soundscape; can I hear the sounds of human suffering if I listen far and wide enough? How far can we hear starting from our home places? I wonder, if my listening becomes so comprehensive, without dismissing the music of my everyday life, would I still consider any sound as "noise"?
In a recent movement retreat I attended, our facilitator invited us to move to the sounds of the world on that first morning where there was no power to listen to the usual music broadcast from a computer. It was enlightening. When I deeply listened to the rumbling of an airplane flying far above, I could not help but imagining all the places and people it was flying over that morning, all those places and people waking up to a new day, their daily occupations, all the joys and sorrows of human life. It was a beautiful meditation of compassion.
I enjoyed this short teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh who shares how to receive a sound mindfully and practicing returning to presence with the help of sound:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsVB-L-IFG4&t=260s
May the music of what is happening bring us closer home to ourselves as well as closer to all beings.
Wonderful. The symphony of bees recording is remarkable. My whole body is buzzing alive in response. I am hearing the cicadas, birds chirping, the clock ticking... I woke into the day with cats purring and kneading the blanket over my belly. Thank you for this Holy Mischief.