Energy Rising

January 11, 2026

January 4, 2026 - 10 minutes before sunrise

I find myself in a quiet place. The words I need to express myself in writing aren’t there. In their place is a swirl of feelings, sensations, and emotions.

A swirl of bluebirds, purple finches, and yellow-rumped warblers feasts on whatever is found beneath those leaves.

I thought I needed to write something, express this sense of inner chaos that matches the outer chaos I see in the world. This sense of fear blended with a knowing that somehow, even in this, all is well.

It looks like chaos, but all the birds know it’s the place to be.

I thought I WANTED to write something to express the way this chaos swirls around, fills my soul, and presses upward towards the light.

Is bluebird feeling this energy too?

I finally realized it has no words. It is the sensation of a seed growing underground in the depths of winter and starting to reach upward in an effort to break the shell.

Perhaps junco can see what’s beneath the surface.

It is the energy of a swirl of birds, rising into the air and spinning around, and yet somehow the movement is hidden inside.

A large flock of red-winged blackbirds flying over.

It is the colors swirling in the sunrise, blending together and shifting from red to orange and holding on until the sun finally reaches the horizon and the colors fade away.

January 4, 2026 - at sunrise with the last of the color lingering.

It is the quiet being broken by the awakening birds leaving the roost at sunrise to forage in what can be found beneath the leaves.

Robins come wrapped in chaos too.

It is the woodpeckers simultaneously storing nuts and retrieving food they stored before.

Yellow-bellied sapsucker saying grace before his meal?

It is love rising and calling everything that is out of harmony out into the light. It is a recalibration of vibration, a coming into resonance with something new.

I was hoping the cooties would let me come into resonance with them, but they were having none of it.

It is the promise of an expansive peace wrapped in the threat of annihilation.

My young red-shouldered hawk friend is also beautiful (to me) and a threat (to other creatures). There are both hawks and small creatures within me too.

It is the resonance of winter, the deep yin of the year, building potential for what can be born in the spring.

Building potential the way the water builds the ice.

Dark to light, light to dark, each wave shifts this creation.

It is Life herself stirring in my bones, moving through my body, shaking loose everything that needs to be transformed.

Yellow-bellied sapsucker taking off.

I am not sure I want to experience it, and yet some part of my being is saying YES. It’s as if I’ve entered some sort of cocoon, even while I seem to be still operating in my current form.

Crows always seem to say “Yes”.

I thought love rising would be calm, like unicorns and rainbows and soft hippie songs.

Peaceful, like a pied-billed grebe at sunrise.

It turns out love rising is a mad energy, threatening to tear me apart while promising to make me whole.

A filament of fire in the water and ice.

I don’t know what comes next - I suppose we never do. I don’t know what this transformation looks like. The only option is to love myself through it.

My purple finch friend doesn’t seem to worry much what comes next.

I’m both ready and not ready at all. Every day, I learn more and more why the instruction is simply, “Stay.”

Just like the bluebirds stay through the winter.

May we all trust and nurture the love that is emerging while tending to all the parts of us that are afraid.