Invitation

Abstract

The author invites the reader to be receptive to what is before and within them. This becomes the portal to seeing, listening, perceiving, and responding in new ways and to being open to the unexpected. All of life is a performance—waiting for you to participate in its conversations. What would it mean to let your body take up the call and respond with your torso in conversing with the natural world? How could you extend your morning or afternoon walk and reach out with your hands, limbs, hips to the bending willow or sit in the presence of birdsong? The author shares how she finds resilience in the reciprocal relationship of communing and communicating with all living beings and the more-than-human world and encourages others to take up the call to take small moments to live into awe—spontaneously moving wherever you may find yourself, listening to what words may arrive. The chapter invites the reader to respond to the invitation that waits for them and to inhabit the terrain of their own bodies.