When the Rooster Crows

Rise and Shine

For most of my life I was an early bird.

I remember rising before my parents as a teenager as I worked a job before AND after school.

There’s nothing like the clarity and calm that comes with witnessing the sun come up at dawn.

The sleepy ugh that washes over me right as the day breaks and the temptation to hit snooze becomes the greatest challenge to battle…. just 10 more minutes…just 5 more minutes.

There is something magical about laying in that space half asleep, half awake…. fully receptive and present…. the perfect moment to set the stage for the day.

But life got in the way and I found myself burned out…burning the candle at both ends…. pushing through snooze, not as temporary inconvenience, but a nervous system that genuinely needed rest from expending energy in all the wrong places.

In some ways I’m still in that place, healing and recalibrating from getting caught in the rat race.

Then 2020 came, the façade of fear grew, the illusion was magnified, and I walked out my door only to find that I was living in the Truman Show. Masked neighbors in khakis and leggings, manicured micro lawns, and beige houses that blended together in lifeless languish. The power-hungry HOA in training to run for political office on watch duty to send out threatening letters if your garage light bulb went out.

I couldn’t breathe and it wasn’t from wearing a mask as that I did not do…it was from feeling suffocated in a pressure cooker of deadlines and dead-lines.

I watched a 5G tower erected down the street, the ugliness alone was enough to make me want to vomit, visceral shivers screamed Get Out. My nervous system felt the pulse of the looming metal tentacles, these things signal big brother merely from the design…or lack of…grotesque and gargantuan, it’s no wonder birds attack them…they know.

The uglier the insides of people in our world get, the uglier the outside of the walls…. buildings, cars, décor, fashion...even appliances that are only needed for function used to be built to be beautiful…what happened?

So much comes back to beauty…. beautiful music, art, architecture, dance, homes…. whatever it is, there is no denying that nature maintains its authentic allure, and beauty…. while the artificial world created by humans who forgot they, too, are nature deteriorates and no longer emulates God’s grace…the sunset, set…. because it has become so disconnected…from itself…humanity, that is.

When I heard that “Get Out” in the back of my mind, I started looking for a place to move outside of the city. Five offers later, I somehow felt the call of an old farmhouse. I didn’t want a fixer upper…and boy oh boy was it a fixer upper.

The previous owners were here 45 years….and this house had a lot to say…. Band-Aids and baggage ran through its veins. It taught me more about my practice of Feng Shui than I ever could learn from a course…my own 47 years (at the time) were feeling the same….frazzled wires and peeling paint, lived in, yet neglected, time to regain some strength.

It’s taught me that the inconveniences of life stick to us in the best way possible over any comfort and sense of safety.

First, I had a fire. Here, in the middle of a pasture, the winds howl fearlessly, loudly and often. The electrical wires passing through a tree had been wearing thin for some time eventually causing a spark during a thunderstorm and blowing up the electrical panel as it connected to the house. The panel needed to be replaced anyway…this was the beginning of a sort of necessary inconvenience.

It was my first year here, in November, and beginning to get cold. While the repairs were under way, I ended up being without electricity for 5 weeks. I used the woodburning stove to stay warm and I had a small generator for the refrigerator and to charge things as needed. I didn’t use the lights in the house during this time. Oddly, this helped me restore my internal clock to rise with the sun and go to bed at dark.

When the power was restored, the light bulbs coming on felt blinding. The strangest part of it all was that I had a lot of fun during this fiasco. I sat outside in the dark and made fires. I was more aware of my usage of energy in all ways. I realized how little we really need…. but don’t get me wrong, I was glad this was resolved before the temperatures dropped too low. I’m definitely not ready to be “off-grid,” but it was a great temporary lesson…and adventure.

I learned that in crisis I’m creative and calm…it’s the everyday life I too often let “get to me.”

Since then, I’ve had chickens and ducks to tend to every morning and night. It’s restricting in a lot of ways as there are no days off, no breaks, yet every morning after I get up and get moving, I feel so grateful for them keeping me on track….I see the excitement in the ducks waddling to their water, having no clue that I just lugged 6 jugs from the house (in winter), cleaned up mouse poop, filled their food bowls…..all for their little quacks…and crows.

Every morning my dog and I walk to the coop to retrieve a duck egg, and she leaps with joy awaiting this…her favorite snack.

The rooster(s) crow and my heart is full. The inconvenience of rising, no matter the weather…wind or rain, no matter how tired or how much I want to stay in bed, is washed away as I gaze upon the sun and give thanks for another day.

This morning, my dog chased away a Bobcat…. the blood in my veins was pumping, oh my what a sight to behold…definitely not the skittish coyote that I usually clank pans at or ring bells to deter…. for these moments, these interactions with nature breathe joy, life and great cause to the signifigance of rising and shining.

And I have no idea what I’m doing but I’m learning as I go….I’m learning that animals have far greater wisdom and much more to teach us than we could ever learn in a lab or even a book….that the hour I just spent shoveling pine shavings or my terrible attempts at putting up a chicken wire fence bring more joy and feeling of making a difference than a lot of others things I’ve spent time on. Anyone that’s had pets of anykind usually knows this, they touch or lives in ways that are often without words.

When the rooster crows, it’s time to rise, to get up and get going…days off are days lost…. not because you need to be productive or accomplishing anything in the “traditional” sense, but because your purpose is to have experiences, to be alive…. really alive, not going through the motions of groundhog day in the concrete jungle…but alive in the jungle of being human that requires a deeper faith, a sense of awe and trust in something greater….finding the magnificence in failure and the merriment of the inevitable messes that come with trying…you know, doing the work…the chopping of wood and carrying of water stuff(s).

I have 4 small cockerels right now, teenage roosters, and the smallest one was the first to learn to crow….I guess it knew it might be the underdog because it’s smaller in stature so it found its voice first to make up for it….as the others learn to crow, I watch them find their voices one by one…I watch how the elder rooster showed them the ropes and now is kicking them out of the nest….nature knows and we are nature….and when we stop to take it all in, we get to remember who we are, too….animals know who they are and their place in the circle of life….but humans, human’s forget and when they forget things start to take a turn in the wrong direction….and beauty fades in what we create.

It's no wonder city ordinances stop people from owning Roosters…. all the “noise” and other pollution is allowed in the cement cities but that which will WAKE humanity up is banished…. coincidence, I think not.

For the rooster’s crow reminds us every day is a new dawn and it’s time to wake up humanity, wake up from the lies, clear the sleepy from your eyes, go outside and get busy living…finding your wise…stop asking permission to live, it’s time to take notes from the birds and the wind.

I don’t know if I’ll live this way forever, all I know is the experience of now, but it’s been quite an adventure, incredibly difficult, filled with predators (of all kinds) and challenges….but also life lessons, beauty, and joy that has touched my heart and soul forever.

Animals show us how to live in connection, in a symbiotic exchange and remind us that when we make an effort to make someone else’s life better, whether animals or humans, we make the world better and our own lives. In this me-me-me selfish easy-button land of selfies and comfort, we’ve lost the importance of sacrifice and inconvenience….of how to be present for another, of the importance of showing up…..for ourselves and others…..of being someone we can count on and be counted on…and that doesn’t take away individuality but breathes life into it, into our character and contribution to the land with which God has given us to walk upon.

I’ve learned that to really change means getting uncomfortable and inconvenienced, even though some days may result in whining and wondering what the hell I’ve done….and then the next day, wake up and stand in the stillness of a new dawn and put one foot in front of the other knowing I can do this….and, if not, I can always choose another direction.

What’s calling or crowing for you to make a change…and are you going to find the courage to wake up and go towards that change, ever how inconvenient, even if you have to do it alone…or sink back into the Truman-like manufactured world that is anything but true…that has forgotten the importance of our role and connection with nature, as nature…and beauty…and God?

Rise and Shine…witness the glory, behold each day, for there are no days off from being,

The early bird really does get the worm….stay on alert for predators and let your voice be heard…..cock-a-doodle-do from my little farmhouse!

Angela