This is dedicated to the ones I love

Hi Everyone! I wrote this piece in response to an article I read about the blue whales. It seemed to want to be read out loud, so I made an audio recording of it as well. To praise the world I remember violets. I remember working on a strawberry farm when I was nine with a woman swore gloriously and knew how to gather just the right details to make a story worth telling. I praise songbrids and lemons trees and peacocks screaming their heads off. I praise fields of golden rod, waterfalls, and monkeys that steal sugar off the tables of restaurants in tropical places and laugh and laugh when the waiters get mad.I love this earth so much I would marry her.The blue whales have stopped singing.You guys.The blue whales have stopped singing.Not completely. But their songs are slowing down.Do you know what those songs hold? They hold the memory of the planet. They hold the love of a whale’s heart, which is the size of a car, and whose beat can be felt for two miles. They hold a vibration so low and sacred we can barely hear it, but it heals the earth soothes the water. Their songs are getting quiet. They are hungry. The ocean is getting warmer, the krill are harder to find. It is also loud because we keep doing seismic testing under the sea for oil and for weapons, which causes their ears and brains to bleed.I am asking for a miracle. The miracle I am holding out for is that we somehow stop all this and bring back their full songs. That it isn’t too late, and that we can help them. This is on my vision board, except it’s not a vision, it doesn’t come from my mind or intellect. It comes my deepest heart.So it’s my felt board. My feeling board.We need those earth-holding ballads.My mother had a good friend named Sandra. She was big and had a huge laugh and made a lot of what I can only call exclamations. Barbara! Look at your table! Oh! Those flowers! Becky! Look at your hair and long legs! You’ve become beautiful! This girl! This face. This kitchen! This music!No one in my family did this. When she came to see us, the whole house changed and there was loud laughter and it was like we were all speaking Spanish or Italian even though we weren’t.One night when she and her family were visiting all of us kids went up to bed. We didn’t want to go--it was a summer night and the moon was out. We weren’t ready to go asleep, we were jealous of the adults staying up downstairs, laughing and playing cards and putting on records. So we were bad. First we threw pillows and ran around. Then we broke something, I think it was a lamp. Then we put pajamas on the cat. Then we kept going downstairs—first me--for a drink, because there was a mosquito in the room, because my sister was making too much noise, and then my sister went down to say I was being annoying, and then Sandra’s daughter went down because she needed a band-aid, and finally my mother sent. Sandra. Up.And she put her hands on our backs and rubbed them and opened her throat and sang a song that held all the sorrow and grace and love and beauty and knowing of some gorgeous ancient mother.Bed is too small for my tiredness.Give me a hill covered with trees.Tuck a cloud up under my chin.Lord! Blow the moon out!Please.When it was done we went to SLEEP.That’s how powerful that song was.I believe in the power of song.Oh blue whales, I will sing to you! I will write letters and use even less plastic and do other practical things, but I will also stand on the shores of the ocean and sing to you, you who hold all the compassion in the world, the knowledge of a million years of swimming the seas and are so evolved you don’t have to change one more thing.I will stand in my kitchen and I will sing to you.I will stand with my sisters and we will sing to you.Don’t give up.We will sing to you.Don’t give up.Oh, my friends! Don’t you give up either.There are beautiful ways to live on this earth.We can know all of them. Or one of them. Or three.There are people in the Hopi water clan dancing hoop dances, where each time their body passes through a hoop, it gives another day to someone who is sick. I saw this dance performed this summer and it was so wonderful, so generous, I felt blessed just being near it.There are monks who chant daily, asking that all beings be happy, all beings be safe, all beings be free of suffering.Not far from my house, a family of women lives together, rehabbing an old estate bit by bit, growing flowers and sheep and knitting and tending the land. There is never enough money. They don’t care. They have each other and the barn swallows and the sheep are healthy and loud and their wool is gorgeous.There are beautiful ways to live on this earth.Choose one. Or three.The water, with her vast intelligence is waking up. The miracle I am asking for is that she hears my song and carries it the whales, and this music becomes a healing vibration that helps grow a new garden of krill, or the whales feel better, and/or people put down their plastic forks and spoons and start calling in a new way. I know how this sounds. I don’t care. When you ask for a miracle you get to do what you want. Last night the whales came to me in a dream. They said, It’s true. All is not well in the depths of the sea. Humans can assist with making this better, and we thank you.They said, also, listen! We have something to tell you!The shift that comes from this time is truly unbelievable! By that we mean, you will not believe it!It is like a rogue wave—a sudden, surprising collective joining of the hearts of all living things that is so wonderful, so freeing! it is hard to imagine right now! But you can start weaving it in, with the way you look at your neighbors and the people and animals that cross your path. Whisper, Your heart and mine are one. Your heart and mine, are one. Make it a game. Make it light.There are beautiful ways to live on this earth.Choose all of them. Choose more.Sing to your big family of all living things.After all, what is a song, if not another gorgeous form of water?Here is a video of Sampson Sixkiller Sinquah, one of the hoop dancers I saw perform this summer, along with an interview about the dancing. (I tried to video the performance I saw, but I liked the dancing so much I forgot about my camera and ended up making a video of my shoe.) And a few other songs that remind me of beautiful ways to live on this earth: If you’d like to help the whales, here are some things you can do: * Reduce plastic use. Plastics affect krill, among many other parts of the living ocean. * Reduce your use of fabric softener, or stop using it altogether. A) it comes in a giant plastic container, b) it is unnecessary, and c) it’s full of non-biodegradable chemicals, including PFAs, which harm marine life and can contribute to harmful algae blooms, which make water unsafe for everyone. * The MMPA (Marine Mammal Protection Act) is currently under review due to a proposal by Nick Begich (R-Alaska) that would soften language about what causes harm to marine life, including noise pollution, which makes was for more seismic testing. If you feel called to, especially if you live in Alaska, you can research this and write to him. * Support organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity, which keeps tabs on legislation that can be harmful to whales and other marine animals. Oceana.org is another one I like, as well as the Ocean Conservancy. * Otherwise, sing, dance, send love when you meditate, write poems, and do all the other things you do every day to keep your spirits up and the world happy. I believe in the power of all these things, too!Have a great week, everyone! Thank you so much for being here. You are magical. Love, RB This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rebeccabarry.substack.com/subscribe