march dark moon rituals newsletter

sacred longing

Have you heard of the loneliest whale in the world?

In 1989, a haunting song was detected in the depths of the ocean, the crooning of a solitary whale at a frequency of 52 hertz. This peculiar song was the only one of its kind - the closest nearby whale species, blue whales and fin whales, have never been observed singing at frequencies higher than 39 hertz. Scientists speculated that these other whales cannot hear at this frequency either. And so, the story goes, the 52 hertz whale, dubbed 52 Blue, is a creature of quintessential loneliness, trawling the depths of the ocean alone, calling and calling and never receiving a response. No other whales can hear them; no other whales speak the same language, so to speak.

What a heartbreak. What a shattering ache.

It is quite a human thing to project this narrative of loneliness on a creature, and I think it is our own existential loneliness that has caused this story to capture the minds and hearts of many people over the years. It certainly captured my heart this month - I found myself at a particularly low point for several days, prompted by personal ruptures and collective chasms to feel profoundly isolated. As a neurodivergent, deep-feeling and deep-thinking person, I have always felt different, and I have had trouble articulating my inner world to others in my life. I was feeling despair at my own isolation last week, and at the great chasms of division that capitalist-colonialist society has wrought amidst our communities, cleaving us from each other, from our ancestors, from the land.

Something in me saw a kindred spirit in 52 Blue, and I couldn’t get them out of my heart-mind. I shared my longing for connection, and my despair at feeling it, through the story of the 52 hertz whale several times to different people in my chosen family - over dinner, on a phone call, and in a voice note to my queerplatonic partner/best friend. She recently moved to a different state, and this is certainly contributing to my loneliness, as several of my most beloved ones live far away from me now. We’ve taken to sending each other increasingly longer voice notes, that we both await eagerly - they are our “favorite podcasts”. I told her, through tears, the story of 52 Blue. I told her that, in that moment, I felt exactly like that whale: so unintelligible to others, so unable to be seen & understood, trying over and over to sing my song but receiving a response of resounding silence.

I’ve discussed this before in my writing, and how my deep longing for belonging compels me into deathwork, earth connection, and ancestor work. Being a human, in an individual body, is an inherently lonely experience for those of us who long to rejoin the stars from whence we came, to weave our veins and sinews into the roots of the trees and learn once more the language of birdsong. When I was in high school, one of my favorite books was Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, and I was captivated by this quote about the aching sadness of our individuality, which is worth repeating in its entirety here:

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?”

It feels so true, this fact that we are such mysteries to each other - that I cannot simply merge my inner world with yours, and so understand you on the most fundamental level. And I have now to come to understand that part of the loneliness at the heart of the modern Western psyche is due to the severance from our ancestors, land, & community - from the warp and weft of the villages that held us, the many eyes watching us in our comings and goings, the wheel of the year that oriented us, and the land that nourished us. When our animistic ways of being were ripped away, we found ourselves in a profoundly lonely world. If the trees are not people with whom we can relate, and if our dead are lost to us, oh what a barren, despairing existence we find ourselves in! No wonder loneliness is an epidemic in our world today.

And even as some of us rebuild relationships with our ancestors, with the plants, with each other - we can still feel the vast relational chasms. We can still feel the ache, even as we feel the tender closeness. In some moments, even though I know my beloveds love me, in my efforts to bare my soul I feel profoundly alone and misunderstood - singing on a different frequency. And in many moments, as I seek to live in deep alignment with the earth and to work towards the liberation of all beings, the dissonance between the reality of the apocalypse and the hoped-for future grates me unto despair.

But last week, in the midst of my loneliness, I listened to the most recent episode of the Emerald podcast (which many of you will recognize as a frequent inspiration in this newsletter), and I soon found myself weeping, as Josh spoke directly to my heart. The episode explores the practice of “singing to the beloved in times of crisis” and is awash in the paradox of what it is to be human - to be always yearning for deeper intimacy, for union with the Great Spirit of Life, and to always return to the remembrance that we are already home, already Beloved. I feel this so deeply in every one of my beloved relationships - with ancestors, the earth, my human beloveds, even myself - relationship is a constant dance of ebb and flow, close and far, union and separation. And in the midst of ecological apocalypse and deep severance in human communities, the separation feels oh-so-pronounced. We humans feel like 52 Blue - destined to wander the seas alone. As Josh says, “the great homesickness, you feel it? It calls us to leave home, calls us back home, calls us to wander, calls us at last to rest, the pull that won’t let go of our hearts. It’s lonely to be a human in this dark night of bright stars. And we never quite seem to feel at home.”

We seek union, and in moments of deep clarity we feel it - union with our lovers, with our ancestors, with the earth, with our divine Beloved. And then in the next moment, that feeling is gone and we are alone again. But the thing that floored me, was Josh’s reminder that the longing itself - the distance, the ache, the thirst - is holy, and not only because it leads us toward connection (although that is part of it): “the invitation isn’t to force ourselves into feeling the immediacy of the Beloved. It’s to recognize that our exact condition is one in which we long for that which is right here. And so it’s an invitation to sit in the charged, nascent space of longing.”

The longing itself is holy. The aching itself is sacred. The yearning itself is beautiful. This is the dance of reality, of relationship, of consciousness, of mystery. We are always pulsing toward the Beloved and flowing away, the very movement itself a part of the beauty. Love is here now, home is here now - and so is pain, and longing. And what can we do, in this beautiful, ache, but sing to our Beloved? We sing to our Beloved, naming our pains & longings, even when we feel far away from the one to whom we sing.

My best friend hadn’t listened to this podcast when I sent her the tearful voice note about 52 Blue, and she was having a painful week like I was. I sat in my car, listening to her voice break as she said:

“I hear your whale song… and even if no one hears my song, or they hear it and it’s not ‘right’ in their ears, which is how I feel right now, we just have to keep singing. And I don’t know why we have to keep singing, but we do… we must continue on, and we must keep singing.”

All at once, my heart melted. Here I was, thinking I was 52 Blue; and in fact, there was someone else who could hear my song, who could even sing back to me. Even when I feel alone and unheard, I must keep singing - and trust that I will be heard.

We must keep singing. We must keep singing. We must keep singing.

The paradox of my loneliness was that the very act of speaking my longing & articulating my isolation allowed me to be met by eyes that could see, ears that could hear. Being witnessed in my longing by beloveds allowed me to love and long at the same time, to be-in-my-longing. To belong, and the be-longing at the same time.

As my mentor Shauna wrote recently, “Yearning flows both ways. You are vital. You are missed. Follow your tender longing and allow yourself to be met.” Our ancestors are waiting to meet us; the earth is longing for us again; and our beloveds are aching for our embrace.

And our loneliness is real and true; our disconnection is deep and painful. It is okay to be in this ache. It is okay to feel the longing, to know the longing as holy, to not rush to consummation or union.

And just like I found that someone could hear my song, there is evidence that has been uncovered in recent years that there is at least one more whale out there who sings at the same frequency as 52 Blue, and shares the same migratory pattern. Perhaps, just like us, the loneliest whale on earth is not alone as we thought.

So let us listen to the wisdom of the whales, and of the people in my life who reminded me: keep singing, even if you don’t think anyone can hear you. Let your whale song be a poignant hymn of Sacred Longing. Let every part of the wave, the ebbs and flows, the union and separation, be sacred. Let it be vital. Let it be beautiful and tender.

                            Oh mystery of mysteries,

                           that I can long for home,

               while wrapped in its warm embrace.

Ritual:

Find some whale songs to listen to, and let their power and beauty wash over you. Let them inspire you to sing your own songs of sacred longing. Sing your pains, your aching, and your joy to your altar, to the trees, to your beloveds, or to yourself - but whatever you do, just keep singing.

in tender longing,

Summer