Widening circles

I found this beautiful raindrop-on-the-lake pattern inside a golden beet. The smallest shape at the center could be called the nonmoving point of origin, what Masanobu Fukuoka describes in One-Straw Revolution.

A few nights ago as I fell asleep I became aware of my heart beating and imagined each beat like a drop on a lake, sending out widening circles from my chest into the room. Irene had fallen asleep across my chest, and I felt her heartbeat too, sending its own circles. Harriet lay beside us making even more circles.

When I was first pregnant with Harriet, an early ultrasound showed what looked like a tiny seed made almost entirely of fluttering heart. She was that first little dot, the center of all that follows.

Roxanne Swentzell at the Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute talks about this pattern and others in this video I came across last year:

        

And then there's this Rilke poem someone recited on a radio program twenty minutes ago:

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?