Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, host of this show, an executive editor of Emergence Magazine,

located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people in present-day Marin County.

Each week, we feature interviews, stories, poetry, and author-narrated essays,

exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

As one trillion cicadas prepare to surface simultaneously from underground this spring across the Midwest

and southeastern United States, a phenomenon not seen in 221 years.

What might we learn from this rare moment of collective emergence?

What does it mean to participate in a convergence of cycles and extend far beyond human timelines?

In anticipation of this year's mass visitation, we are resharing a narrated story by Anisa George,

who experienced the arrival of a billion cicadas in 2021

in the midst of the pandemic.

Amid the cacophony of the brood's sudden presence,

Anisa grapples with her sense of isolation after leaving her religious faith.

Reaching into the hope of community offered by the cicadas appearance,

she seeks belonging in a new chorus of voices. Teaching into the hope of community, offered by the Cicada's appearance,

she seeks belonging in a new chorus of voices. Cicada, you are blessed.

On the earth's bed you die drunk with light.

May my heart be cicada upon the divine fields.

This year the periodical cicadas of my region emerged after 17 years of subterranean living.

I learned about their impending arrival back in 2020 at the height of the pandemic,

while many of us were leading contracted, if not light-deprived, lives.

During that particularly dejected year, the cicada emergence began to take on a mythic dimension

...