I had the pleasure of meeting up with my grown son on New Year’s Day, and we talked about our approaches to the New Year. My son shared that he begins his day with a meditation by Thích Nhất Hạnh regarding how to approach a new day, breaking out of old patterns and establishing new ones. The prospect of approaching a New Year, however, feels more exciting to him because a year offers a much larger set of patterns and more possibilities for enacting change.
As I reflect on this idea, I remember the many times I watched the dazzling murmurations of the Purple Martins over Lake Pontchartrain as the sun descended, wearing its radiant evening garb, and again I am drawn out of myself and into an exhilarating dance of shifting patterns and forms. Although the murmuration provides warmth and protection from predators, the full reason for them still eludes researchers, who have learned that the flock is governed collectively and that information moves quickly, with almost no degradation, across it. They found that, when there is uncertainty in sensing, the birds in large flocks coordinate their movements with their seven nearest neighbors, as this is the optimal number for balancing group cohesiveness and individual effort, providing valuable insight to the fields of evolutionary biology, sociology, technology and, I would add, spirituality.[1]
I dance with all of creation into 2024 with an awareness that I participate in and respond to clouds of shifting patterns, forms and information, with groups both large and small, to become someone who is ever new. Murmurations pull us out of ourselves and into larger gestalts of shared consciousness and intention and draw us into an ever-shifting future – one that can be trusted, due to the elegance and efficiency of the process.
I invite you to join the Center for Christogenesis in the sky dance as we move into an uncertain future with beauty, creativity, grace, and the wisdom of both science and religion, for together we are spectacular!
Notes:
[1] Young GF, Scardovi L, Cavagna A, Giardina I, Leonard NE (2013) Starling Flock Networks Manage Uncertainty in Consensus at Low Cost. PLoS Comput Biol 9(1): e1002894.
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