Crow- Relations

On city life, attention, and the slow practice of remembering we are nature through relationship with the non-human world.

As a Londoner I have had an interesting time trying to come into right relationship with nature. Like many of you I did not grow up inside a tradition that particularly venerated nature. I heard nature through dreams and within myself, I could see the auras of things that were natural and not. I knew there was big power there but I didn’t have tools or people to talk to about this for many years.

Here is what I know now: you are nature, I am nature, and the tree outside my window as I write this is nature. There is no outside of it. We do not visit nature like a country we travel to on weekends; we are already inside it, stitched into its fabric, whether we remember or not. City life makes this easy to forget.

For those of us who are open, or opening, the city can feel like too much, too many frequencies pressed against the skin at once: engines, voices, alarms, the chemical singe of exhaust, the constant human weather. Something in us has to adjust to survive it. We do this by turning down the volume of perception, like all nature - we adapt. Openness and protection begin to coexist in strange tension, like two incompatible spells running at once, and it can be exhausting.

And yet it is possible to remain porous and protected here. We do this just like we would if we lived out on the land - we do this through creating relationship.

The beings who taught me this most clearly, and most mysteriously, are the crows.

We are meant to have commitments with nature, routines even. If we lived closer to the land, these would be obvious: harvesting, chopping wood, finding water, following light and season through tasks that our lives could be woven in with. In the city shrouded in concrete and ‘convenience’ we must invent them like private liturgies.

Everything alive is already in relationship with rhythm. Everything responds to consistency. A tree doesn’t wonder whether to bloom; it’s just part of its routine. A fox does not reinvent its path to food each morning; it learns the route with its body. If you’ve ever had an animal living with you, you’ll know - as wild as nature is, nature loves routine.

So it is with relationship.

What builds trust with humans, with other beings, with ourselves is repetition that carries attention inside it. Showing up and showing up again. Being trustworthy is being consistent in energy, generosity, listening and sometimes just physically being in the same place at the same time in all weathers. For humans this is being available on the phone or showing up at your friend’s door with pizza when they are sad. For crows it’s the same, showing up with nuts at the gates each morning. Being curious enough to want to hear about someone’s day - this is a skill, and the crows love it too. In fact all beings love a trustworthy presence - kids, animals, nature probably also you.

This is how we make contact across all worlds at once.

There is a magical arithmetic to it. One gesture made sincerely in one direction alters the others. In the old sense of the magical rule of three, to tend one relationship well is to shift the structure of them all. To learn the crows is to learn yourself; to learn yourself is to become more available to others. Something opens by correspondence rather than a forcing of things. The spirit of generosity that comes through committing to a routine that is helpful to a being brings blessings into your life you cannot predict.

When I work with clients who are having trouble focussing, who are working with anxiety - especially anxiety related to health - I send them to make a commitment with the crows.

The crows know what to do to bring us out of worry and into the present. The crows make a black rainbow as their bodies gather and move around you when you get to know them, their aliveness and presence disrupts the energy of anxiety and sometimes even the energy of illness.

In a world that moves at hyper-speed, I challenge you to do the patient work of making relationship with one non-human being. Spend at least a year committed to this being. Visit them in all weathers, as often as you can. Be consistent.

I promise you, your life will change.