Speaker 1: Welcome to the Meditation Nest Bedtime Stories for adults. I'm
Speaker 1: Beth Buttram, your host and narrator. Here stories become gentle
Speaker 1: meditations design to help your thoughts unwind as you slow
Speaker 1: the tempo of your life and embrace the night ahead.
Speaker 1: I invite you to slow your breath, soften your thoughts,
Speaker 1: and find peace as you drift into rest. This is
Speaker 1: your time to rest, reflect, and dream. Tonight I share
Speaker 1: a tale with you about threshold, about the almost invisible
Speaker 1: spaces where something shifts not with noise or with forest,
Speaker 1: but with quiet recognition. There are moments in life when
Speaker 1: we find ourselves pressing against something we cannot quite see,
Speaker 1: a pause, a barrier, a question that lingers longer than
Speaker 1: we expect. And sometimes the way forward is not pushing harder,
Speaker 1: but in noticing what has already been open. Let your
Speaker 1: breath slow, let your jaw soften, Let your shoulders relax
Speaker 1: a little more than they were a moment ago to
Speaker 1: Night's story is called between glass and sky. And as
Speaker 1: we begin, allow yourself to rest in the space between
Speaker 1: effort and ease. Are you ready and we begin? There
Speaker 1: are moments that arrive as though the world is remembering itself,
Speaker 1: before the first car passes, before kettle's whistle, before even
Speaker 1: the birds fully commit to song, Light gathers slowly in
Speaker 1: those early hours. It doesn't rush, it doesn't announce itself.
Speaker 1: It simply thins, the darkness, brushing along the edges of curtains,
Speaker 1: pooling quietly across wooden floors. In one such room, a
Speaker 1: small bird mistook reflection for sky. The house was still lavender,
Speaker 1: hung drying near the window. A stack of books rested
Speaker 1: neatly on a narrow table. Dust motes hovered in the
Speaker 1: faint blue of pre dawn, and there against the window pane,
Speaker 1: wings fluttered, soft, urgent, persistent. The bird was no larger
Speaker 1: than a thumb, feathers the color of river stones and
Speaker 1: fallen leaves. Its tiny chest rose and fell in quick rhythm,
Speaker 1: as though the air itself had grown too narrow. Again
Speaker 1: and again it pressed toward what looked like open air.
Speaker 1: To the bird, the glass was endless sky. To the sky,
Speaker 1: the bird was already free. It fluttered upward, down again,
Speaker 1: side to side, each movement guided by instinct by the deep,
Speaker 1: knowing that flight belonged to it. The window did not
Speaker 1: move the world beyond remained luminous and untouched. Gardens bloomed,
Speaker 1: washed in pale green, the faint outline of trees preparing
Speaker 1: for light inside the room. The bird persisted, there is
Speaker 1: a kind of determination that comes from believing the path
Speaker 1: forward must be directly ahead. The small creature did not
Speaker 1: question its direction. It only tried harder. Its wings beat
Speaker 1: more quickly. Now, a tremor ran through its narrow frame.
Speaker 1: The glass reflected sky so convincingly that it seemed unkind.
Speaker 1: For a moment, the bird paused. It clung lightly to
Speaker 1: the thin wooden frame, head tilted, as if listening for
Speaker 1: something beneath its own effort. The first thread of sunrise
Speaker 1: slipped across the pane, and in that light, the barrier
Speaker 1: became visible, intact, just exposed. There are times when effort
Speaker 1: exhausts us, not because we are weak, but because we
Speaker 1: are facing the wrong direction. The bird shifted slightly. A
Speaker 1: draft brushed along the curtain's edge, cool, fragrant with damp
Speaker 1: earth and distant jasmine. The curtain moved barely behind it,
Speaker 1: a narrow opening. The window wasn't closed, It had never
Speaker 1: been fully closed. The bird hovered in place, suspended between
Speaker 1: urgency and awareness. It didn't rush toward the opening at once.
Speaker 1: It rested, wings trembling, breath, slowing, stillness, not a surrender,
Speaker 1: but a recalibration. Outside, the garden held its quiet, dew
Speaker 1: clung to rose petals. The horizon lightened from slate to pearl.
Speaker 1: In the distance, a low morning breeze began to weave
Speaker 1: through the branches. The bird turned one tiny adjustment of
Speaker 1: its body, one tentative flutter. The air shifted differently. Here
Speaker 1: it felt less resistant, less reflective, and then, without ceremony,
Speaker 1: without spectacle, the bird slipped through the opening. The first
Speaker 1: beat of open air flight is rarely smooth. The bird dipped, corrected, tilted,
Speaker 1: slightly left. Its wings remembered what its fear had nearly obscured.
Speaker 1: The sky quietly expanded behind the glass. The room remained unchanged,
Speaker 1: The lavender still swayed, the books remained stacked. The light
Speaker 1: continued to gather. But the air felt different because some
Speaker 1: one had been watching. A woman sat wrapped in a
Speaker 1: soft shawl in the corner of the room. She had
Speaker 1: risen before dawn, unable to sleep through the thin hours
Speaker 1: when thoughts stretched long. She had heard the fluttering first.
Speaker 1: She had watched the small bird press and press and
Speaker 1: press again against what seemed like endless sky, And she felt,
Speaker 1: and she had felt something in her own chest mirror
Speaker 1: that rhythm. There are glass panes in every life, invisible ones,
Speaker 1: polite ones, the kind that look like possibility from one
Speaker 1: angle and feel like confinement from another. She had been
Speaker 1: pressing against her own unanswered questions, old regrets, conversations she
Speaker 1: wished she had spoken differently, paths she believed she should
Speaker 1: have taken. The bird's persistence had felt familiar, the way
Speaker 1: effort becomes its own echo, The way can sometimes disguise
Speaker 1: itself as urgency. When the bird paused, she leaned forward.
Speaker 1: When it noticed the opening, she felt a quiet tinge
Speaker 1: of recognition. The way forward for her may not be
Speaker 1: where she had been pushing. She rose quietly and stepped
Speaker 1: toward the window. By then the bird was already outside,
Speaker 1: hovering uncertainly over the garden path. The woman opened the
Speaker 1: window wider. The air that entered was cool and generous.
Speaker 1: She left the room to step outside barefoot. The earth
Speaker 1: felt damp beneath her feet, moss springing gently back after
Speaker 1: each step. The scent of jasmine mingled with wet soil.
Speaker 1: At the edge of the yard, she observed a butterfly
Speaker 1: testing the air between blossoms. The bird again caught her eye,
Speaker 1: circling low, its flight imperfect. It wabbled, it recalibrated, It
Speaker 1: found a current of air rising from the garden's warmth,
Speaker 1: and then it lifted higher, steadier. Its wings didn't grow
Speaker 1: stronger in that moment. They simply aligned with what had
Speaker 1: always been there. The bird, having risen above the garden,
Speaker 1: circled once more with deliberate grace. It spiraled downward, landing
Speaker 1: lightly on a slender branch, just beyond the window's reach.
Speaker 1: For a few brief moments, it watched the woman as
Speaker 1: she stood barefoot in the dew, her gaze steady and soft.
Speaker 1: The air between them felt charged with recognition, neither hurried
Speaker 1: nor hesitant. Then, as if the pause had offered some
Speaker 1: silent understanding, the bird lifted off the branch, wings unfurling,
Speaker 1: and soared again toward the widened sky. The woman watched
Speaker 1: as the bird became smaller against the widening blue. She
Speaker 1: thought of all the times she had pressed against her
Speaker 1: own reflections. Times she believed she had failed, times she
Speaker 1: believed it was too late. Times she believed the sky
Speaker 1: had narrowed around her, And yet here she stood, breathing.
Speaker 1: Here she stood beneath the same sky the bird now rode.
Speaker 1: The sky doesn't close, it waits. She moved slowly through
Speaker 1: the garden, fingertips brushing tall grass. Dew dampened the hem
Speaker 1: of her night dress. She paused beside a small pond
Speaker 1: whose surface reflected morning light like softened glass. Her reflection shimmered.
Speaker 1: She understood then that the glass in her life had
Speaker 1: often been made of assumption, of expectation, a verurgency that
Speaker 1: masked itself as determination. She had mistaken reflection for reality.
Speaker 1: The bird's flight was not triumph. It was participation. It
Speaker 1: didn't conquer the sky, it joined it. There is a
Speaker 1: space between glass and sky. It is thinner than we think.
Speaker 1: It asks for awareness more than force. The woman closed
Speaker 1: her eyes and listened the hum of waking insects, the
Speaker 1: hush of wind through branches, the faintest echo of wings
Speaker 1: in the distance. She felt something in herself expand. In
Speaker 1: that moment, she realized that the day would still carry
Speaker 1: its demands, the conversations would still wait, the questions would
Speaker 1: not disappear, but she no longer felt pressed against them.
Speaker 1: She felt turned toward the opening, she looked once more
Speaker 1: for the bird. She found it again, circling over a
Speaker 1: neighbor's oak tree. The bird was almost a silhouette, now
Speaker 1: against the widening gold of mourning. For a brief moment,
Speaker 1: it seemed to hover in place, held effortlessly by a
Speaker 1: current invisible to the eye. The woman inhaled exhaled. The
Speaker 1: air supported her too. A gentle breeze brushed against her arms,
Speaker 1: carrying the faint, briny tang of distant rain. She allowed
Speaker 1: herself the opportunity to gaze at the cloud covered to
Speaker 1: the north, noticed the soft tickle of grass against her ankles,
Speaker 1: and the subtle, pulsing chorus of crickets hidden in the underbrush.
Speaker 1: The warmth of the rising sun touched her face, slowly
Speaker 1: dissolving the last cool shadows of night. Surrounded by these
Speaker 1: quiet sensations, the earth's damp coolness, the perfume of jasmine
Speaker 1: at the edge of her garden, and the tranquil breath
Speaker 1: of morning, she felt herself anchoring deeply into the present.
Speaker 1: Each inhale seemed to root her more firmly to the ground.
Speaker 1: Her worries, loosening like dew lifting from the grass. In
Speaker 1: this stillness, she felt unmistakably here, steady, and at peace.
Speaker 1: She returned inside only when the sun had fully crested
Speaker 1: the trees. The room felt unchanged, yet gentler. The window
Speaker 1: remained open, Light spilled across the wooden floor in soft patterns.
Speaker 1: She folded her shawl and placed it neatly on the chair.
Speaker 1: As the morning deepened, the woman found herself drawn back
Speaker 1: to the garden, allowing herself to be guided not by
Speaker 1: the weight of expectation, but by the gentle invitation of curiosity.
Speaker 1: She knelt to trace her finger along the pattern left
Speaker 1: by a snail in the dew, marveling at the quiet
Speaker 1: persistence winding through even the smallest lives. Each moment felt
Speaker 1: like a new pane of glass cleaner, now revealing not
Speaker 1: what she must do, but what she might notice if
Speaker 1: she chose to look more closely. With each step, she
Speaker 1: found herself more attuned to the language of her outdoor haven,
Speaker 1: the way the breeze answered, the rustling leaves, the soft
Speaker 1: creak of a distant fence, the subtle changes as time
Speaker 1: moved forward and the day's song brought new voices of
Speaker 1: life to be appreciated. In this space, possibility felt as
Speaker 1: present as the sunlight slowly unfurling across the grass. She
Speaker 1: thought not of obstacles, but of invitations, openings she had
Speaker 1: overlooked before. The day waited patient and wide, and she
Speaker 1: moved forward, gently, ready to meet it, awake to what
Speaker 1: might unfold. As she returned inside, she pondered about how
Speaker 1: one bird had shifted her entire day, how one open
Speaker 1: window made way to the wonder of what the day
Speaker 1: held for her. There would be other window panes in
Speaker 1: her life, other reflections, other mornings when she might forget,
Speaker 1: but somewhere in her bones she would remember. Flight begins
Speaker 1: with turning. Freedom is often found in noticing, and the
Speaker 1: sky has been open all along the end. As you
Speaker 1: rest tonight, consider the quiet pains you may have been
Speaker 1: pressing against, the places where effort has felt necessary, the
Speaker 1: spaces where urgency has whispered that pushing harder is the
Speaker 1: only way forward. Now, imagine yourself pausing, not giving up,
Speaker 1: simply softening. Notice that subtle draft along the curtain's edge,
Speaker 1: the nearly invisible opening, the minor adjustment of perspective that
Speaker 1: changes everything You don't need to conquer the sky. You
Speaker 1: are already beneath it. Let your breath move easily. Now,
Speaker 1: let your body settle into the support beneath you. Like
Speaker 1: the small bird. At dawn, you are allowed to recalibrate.
Speaker 1: You are allowed to turn gently toward what has been
Speaker 1: open all along. The air will hold you. Rest in
Speaker 1: that good night. As this episode comes to a gentle
Speaker 1: clothes and the world outside grows quiet. May you find
Speaker 1: comfort within your own meditation nest. Let your mind settle softly.
Speaker 1: May tranquility wrap around you, inviting deep rest and serene
Speaker 1: dreams until dawn. If you'd like to help keep the
Speaker 1: meditation nest aglow, please consider buying me a cup of
Speaker 1: coffee by visiting k O dash f i dot com
Speaker 1: slash Beth podcast. Every small kindness helps the light travel
Speaker 1: a little further. You can also access a free weekly
Speaker 1: blog on substack dot com. Check the show notes for links.
Speaker 1: Until we meet again, rest in the quiet, knowing that
Speaker 1: you are safely held by the night.