It went well! People liked it. I think close to 20 people were there? We watched a beautiful sunset in silence, shared some poems, found patterns in the trees, then went and found the moon, shared snacks and drinks, and some of us climbed a tree.

I felt connected to every living thing around me.
– anonymous attendee

We met at a park and found a hillside with sunset views. I sang my own acoustic-guitar rendition of Jordan O’Jordan’s “We Came Together”; a call to order. Explained how things were going to go:

Default to silence.
Share something if you brought it and want to, but no expectation that you do.
If you share, keep it short, 3 minutes max. Don’t dominate. (Someone joked ahead of time that he was going to read the entire book of Ecclesiastes. Don’t do this.)
Silence+poems for 20 minutes, then pattern-spotting in the trees/clouds/whatever’s visible. (20 minutes turned out to be way too short! Clock-watching me shared first at the 15 minute mark, which still felt too soon. Everyone was really digging the silence. The silent portion ended up lasting closer to 40 minutes! Someone present mentioned that Quaker meetings last an hour, and it’s no wonder. It takes time to settle in.)

It was a conveniently-timed sunset. The last full moon of summer turned out to be a great time to start! Fabulous weather was also convenient. The cicadas, natural though they may be, were the only thing threatening to harsh our vibe. 80+ decibel late-summer cicadas wear me out. But five minutes into our silence, they hushed up too. They did this in waves, first in the trees right behind, then off to the right, each group starting and stopping a couple uncoordinated times, then—🦗🦗🦗—nothing but cricket background tone. (Ok, and distant internal combustion engines. And a couple people murmuring on a bench off to the back left. Still all chill.)

At one point another group of people came over and sat down to the right of ours. We set a good mood, I guess. They honored our silence; watched the sunset with us for a few minutes. Then wandered off, as silently as they arrived.

A relaxing, meditative, and thought provoking experience that helped de-clutter my mind
– anonymous attendee

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Moon shining through a haze of clouds above a leafy tree line — We ended by going to the other side of the hill and looking for the moon, which was behind clouds until nearly everyone left. 📸: @_lisli

Steal this event!

Before I say more about our particular event, I want to urge you: steal this idea!

You can take any parts of my event invite that you like. Modify it, or don’t. Make it your own, or don’t. Tell us about it here in the comments, or don’t. Keep it free, or don’t! This is a public domain license. Do the fuck you want.

If you want to try some sort of Scientific Animist event but this doesn’t feel like the one, here’s other ideas. Or come up with your own!

It’s fun to actually try. Talking’s fine. Ideas are cool. This whole Scientific Animism concept has started loads of fun conversations. But I’ve been eager to leave the world of talking for a while and play with experience. Out of heads, into bodies. Out of individual, into collective. You’ll like it too.

Share

What did people share?

Like I said, I was watching the clock and thought we were tryna end at the 20 minute mark so I finally shared at 15, to get things rolling and demonstrate the idea. I shared a quote from The Overstory:

The fear of suffering that is her birthright—the frantic need to steer—blows away on the wind. And something else wings down to replace it. Messages hum from out of the bark she leans against. Chemical semaphores home in over air. Currents rise from the soil-gripping roots, relayed over great distances through fungal synapses linked up in a network the size of the planet. The signals say: a good answer is worth reinventing from scratch again and again. They say: the air is a mix we must keep making. They say: there's as much below ground as above. They tell her: do not hope or despair or predict or be caught surprised. Never capitulate, but divide, multiply, transform, conjoin, do. And endure, as you have all the long day of life. There are seeds that need fire. Seeds that need freezing. Seeds that need to be swallowed, etched in digestive acid, expelled as waste. Seeds that must be smashed open before they'll germinate. A thing can travel everywhere just by holding still.

Next, Jake untubed a whole-ass poster and turned on his phone flashlight so he could read it despite the dimming twilight. It was called Instructions on Being With Trees. You’ll need to buy either the poster or the booklet to read the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt:

Instructions on Being with Trees
I.
Even when newborn, your veins mirrored trees – a system of branches, roots, rivers under your fine, translucent skin. The trees breathed out the oxygen you needed, and your milk-new breath whispered out the carbon dioxide they lived on.

II.
Their gift to you: shelter, strength, and quiet. In summer, shade, and in winter, protection. Draw into them like the embrace of a beloved.

III.
Lie down on humus. Look up at the canopy of bare branches, leaves, light, sky, sun, stars. And so take your small place in the order of things. We all return to earth.

IV.
Under you spreads a root system as immense as the branches you see above ground. Resolve to go deeper; live deeper. Know your seasons.

Audrey shared next, a poem called Singing Everything from Joy Harjo’s collection, An American Sunrise.

Singing Everything

Once there were songs for everything,
Songs for planting, for growing, for harvesting,
For eating, getting drunk, falling asleep,
For sunrise, birth, mind-break, and war.
For death (those are the heaviest songs and they
Have to be pried from the earth with shovels of grief).
Now all we hear are falling-in-love songs and
Falling apart after falling in love songs.
The earth is leaning sideways
And a song is emerging from the floods
And fires. Urgent tendrils lift toward the sun.
You must be friends with silence to hear.
The songs of the guardians of silence are the most powerful—
They are the most rare.

Zach ended it, with a one-line benediction (if you will) from Kurt Vonnegut:

Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.

Refer a friend

What did people spot?

It was dark by the time we got here; the best pattern-spotting was in the inky black trees against the dark blue sky.

The branches above to the left of me looked a bit like a t-rex. Manny agreed, and added that the wind made it look like it was roaring.
Audrey saw a dragon climbing a hill in the tree to the left of the sun.
Kylie saw sideways lungs in the tree to the sun’s right.
Em noted a heart, or maybe a whale tail, in the negative space carved by two trees.
Jonathan noted that the distant treetops looked like cloud tops. If you framed the shot right, it’d be hard to tell: Clouds? Or trees? Fractals repeating.
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What did people think?

You can view the full feedback results here. (Only eight responses; next time we’ll make the form ahead of time and send it to people right away, and assure them in the text that it’ll only take one minute to fill out.) Some takeaways:

People were split on the opening song.
It was hard to hear each other. Maybe we need to sit closer next time? (This is also contentious!) Or sit in a circle? (But then how do we watch the sunset?) Competing with ambient noises does make things tricky.
I attempted to use the Insight Timer app to play a nice little singing bowl sound to mark the end of the silent period, but apparently they now charge a monthly subscription to get access to my favorite tones? We need a better way to demarcate the phases of the event. Borrow a singing bowl from someone? Use something else?
Speaking of, for the meditators among us, the readings felt abrupt, even startling. Especially the first one. Maybe having a “silence only” period followed by a “sharing, maybe?” section, with a pleasant chime in between, would be a nice way to keep things less surprising.
Introductions! It was a small enough group; we should have started by going around the circle and saying our names.
Someone recommended adding a discussion portion to these events. “E.g. someone brings a reading, and we take time to discuss it together.” I wonder if it makes more sense to have a separate discussion-focused event. Maybe moving this silence-centered event to the new moon, and having the discussion events on full moons? Seems like that would work better with the yin & yang of new & full moons. Inhale & exhale.
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Here’s a fun chart:

Forms response chart. Question title: Which aspects of the event did you find worthwhile?. Number of responses: .

Looking forward to next time!

I’ll be out of town for the next full moon, but a couple friends who were there are going to host.

This first one was semi-private, but once we figure out the flow and establish a rhythm, we can hang flyers all over town and share the invite more widely.

If you live nearby, maybe I’ll see you at one of these sometime!

If you don’t, steal this! Zoom makes no sense for this sort of thing; I personally have no interest in making that happen. So your only option is to start a similar event in your area. Sorry and you’re welcome!

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