We Don’t Hear Stars Anymore

"Humanity’s ability to perceive the sentience of Earth is critical to our survival and to all life on earth..." ~Rebecca Wildbear, the Animas Valley Institute. I invite you to listen...

Everyone Listen With Star Eyes

I recently came across an article about how indigenous people (our ancestors) could hear stars. This stirs a great grieving in me as I have a deep and reverent relationship with the stars in my night sky. Every evening, weather permitting, I spend time quietly looking towards that beautiful dark sky filled with stars.

Ever since I was a little one, I spent time outside gazing at the stars. I slept outdoors, in the subarbs, on our deck, in a lawn chair, so I could be with the stars. (By the way, I saw some UFO’s!

I gasped in wonder at falling stars and meteor showers but I have never heard the stars with my listening ears. I didn’t even know that was a thing. No one informed me that stars sing or make a sound. At least, not from the ground looking up. Some sensitive mechanical/technological instruments, perhaps NASA powered, could pick up sounds from stars. But I think I’m leaning my ears and my heart towards something I can hear as a human being. I want to relate to the stars because I know they have something important to relay to me.

How connected do I need to be to hear them?

That must be what people talk about when they describe near death experiences. The music of the spheres. They talk about an indescribable music that is so beautiful that they cannot explain it or contain it.

“In The Lost World of the Kalahari, Laurens van der Post writes about living among the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert and describes how shocked they were that he couldn’t hear the stars. 

At first they thought he must be joking or lying. When they realized he really couldn’t hear the stars, they concluded he must be very ill and expressed great sorrow. For the Bushmen knew anyone who can’t hear nature must have the gravest sickness of all.

For nearly all of the time humans have been on the planet, regular conversations across the species border were an everyday natural part of life.

Sadly, this seems like a strange invitation in our world today; most people have difficulty initiating such a conversation. Perhaps this is because we’ve been taught from a very young age to perceive nature as separate, a life-less object, a commodity. This mistaken perception seems to be at the foundation of our cultural ills.

Humanity’s ability to perceive the sentience of Earth is critical to our survival and to all life on earth.

Longing to be in conversation with nature can catalyze us. And perhaps the natural world longs for this relationship with us too...”

So what are we hearing with our listening ears these days? I hear a lot of noise. Noise to distract us. Fake texts, emails and phone calls by bots or people trying to scam us, invasive adds and pop-ups, deliberate brainwashing and indoctrination thrown into our faces, like mud to muck up our human dignity and aliveness, to suppress our powerful spirits…it’s agitating and isolating. There’s an addictive quality about it. It reaches in like an insidious hook and attempts to reel us in. And succeeds in doing so much too often.

The more I notice how this noise permeates almost everything in our modern world, the more I want to retreat. The more I ask and listen. Listen for quietude. Listen for silence…

I am longing to listen more with my whole being…hoping that I might actually hear the stars with my ears. Oh, how I ache to hear them! How I long for all of the music that has gone dormant in this density we live in.

This longing is a gift. This longing is my prayer. 

If I can relate to the Earth and Sky as living sentient beings, if I can relearn and re-remember how to do that, then can I hear the stars? No wonder I’ve written so many poems and songs about stars, planets and the moon. All the while, a child-like wonder coming from my eyes and from my heart.

Everyone Listen with Star Eyes…from my book of poems,

Careless Blossoming,

“…everyone listen with star eyes…

the forgotten reasons I came into being

are ignited by star showers…

I am a child

I listen with star eyes”

to hear the soundtrack of my poem/song go to my first Substack article or my Soundcloud page:

Everyone Listen With Star Eyes

I leave you with another poem and song…