Lessons from a finch

This morning while in my bathroom, attempting to comb down my well-slept upon hair, I heard a strange fluttery sound. I thought at first it was my husband, choosing his shirt from our tiny closet on the other side of the wall. This idea was negated when he walked past the bathroom and the sound continued.

I looked out the bathroom window to see what the commotion was. We have a large group of finches who spend the majority of their morning in our maple tree out in the back yard, and their cacaphony seemed louder than ever.

Imagine my surprise when I found one of the finches, apparently stuck to the window screen. The fluttery sound was the little guy attempting to fly away, with his feet firmly clamped around the mesh of the screen. Every few seconds, a couple of his flock-mates would come swooping near him, chirping and fluttering around him in encouragement, but the small bird didn’t budge.

Cooing words of encouragement to him, I gently touched his claws on my side of the screen, trying to determine where he was stuck. He responded by hopping along sideways. Hmm, I thought. He obviously isn’t stuck. By this time my daughter and husband had come into the bathroom to see what was going on. The finch hopped on the screen again, up a little higher but still apparently unable to fly away. He’d flutter his wings, but held tight to the screen. His friends continued their periodic swoop-and-chirp campaign, attempting to help him let go of the screen, but to no avail.

Birds are hard creatures to read. They have no facial expression to show how they feel, and I am completely unfamiliar with avian body language. However, I felt that this little guy was really and truly scared. After all, he could let go the screen, but he just didn’t. Even with the encouragement of his flock, he still held on there for dear life.

I put on some gloves and went outside to the back yard, leaving my family in the bathroom. I approached the little guy gently, touching his back in what I hoped was a soothing motion, all the while sending him a gentle swoosh of Reiki energy, to help him with his innate fear of all things human. Gently I wrapped my hand around his soft and tiny body and lifted him from the screen. In a flurry of feathers, he was away from me, chirping to his friends who had settled in my neighbor’s yard when they’d heard me come outside.

Just like that he was free. He could fly, his feet were not stuck in the screen. There was no physical reason that he couldn’t have let go the screen. Even with the encouragement of his peers, the little bird was scared to let go. Being perched vertically on the screen, I can only surmise that he was frightened to let go because of the strange angle and perhaps a fear of falling.

Drinking my coffee later on, and listening to the cacophony that is finches in the morning, I realized that we all need a little help and encouragement now and then. It’s so easy to hold on, to stay with what feels secure and familiar–even if it is slightly scary–because the unknown is always scarier than the known. We need to listen to our flockmates, take the plunge and find out that scared or not, we can soar after all.

Journal: On Love

 

Each time anyone comes into contact with us,
they must become different and better people
because of having met us.
We must radiate God’s love.
We must know that we have been created for greater things,
not just to be a number in the world,
not just to go for diplomas and degrees,
this work and that work.
We have been created in order to love and to be loved.
Love does not measure. . . it just gives.
Mother Teresa
*********************************************************
This is a beautiful quote. It says so much about what to strive for as we bump along our journey. So many people strive for success, be it financial or other, when in reality, all we need to do is just love. Plain and simple. Spirit is composed of energy and energy is supported by love. Whether you believe in God, Goddess, Higher Power…whatever name for it. That energy and pure spirit is just love and a piece of it resides in each of us.
If something isn’t working…if the love just isn’t happening and it is causing great sorrow or pain, then move away from it because it is counterproductive to what you need to do. You should not live thru great sadness or suffering just because you think that the pain brings you to greater insight. It doesn’t. We are not meant to feel emotional pain all the time. We are meant to revel in the joy and love that is given to us in such abundance. We do not need to self-flaggellate in order to find God or to find spiritual strength and being. We do not need to stay in a place that hurts us or others because of the what if or the maybe….Life is to be lived and life is to love. That’s it. This is not to say that we walk away from others that need us because we are unhappy and put ourselves first. But that we open our hearts and allow love—shiney and clear and bright as the sun–to flow. It is there. Remember that when you speak a heated word, or withhold a kind one. You need to be one with the energy that is within us all and that energy is first and foremost love. Its the kind word, the unsolicited compliment, the willingness to learn and grow, the ability to see beyond the physical into the realm of what makes each and every one of us unique yet completely the same. Find within you the understanding that we are all bouncing along the same frequency, it’s a matter of tuning in to see the similarities in each other. We all want to find happiness. We all want to cherish and be cherished. We all desire the closeness and companionship found in a great friendship or a great romance. Don’t deny it to yourself or others. Live and love in the moment. That stranger that you smile at might just become your best friend. That person on the corner holding the will work for food sign might be your father or brother. That person who is crying at night when no one is looking might be you someday. Love yourself, love your neighbor. Love your life. THat is the simple prescription. Be kind to things smaller than yourself. Don’t be afraid to let go of pain, because it is simply not part of the equation.

Journal: Reflection on seeking the divine spark

If God/Goddess is in everyone, and we are all a part of the same cosmic recipe, why don’t people treat each other accordingly? I think its crucial to find the divine in everyone, no matter how hidden that spark might be.

I think that I am doing my best to see the divine in everyone, and that is not always easy. In my line of work I see people at their worst. I have had drug addicts crying and begging me for pills, I have had people swear at me and threaten me. I have also held people’s heads while they vomit, and held grown men as they sob over the death of a loved one. I’ve gone home with tears still drying on the shoulders of my scrubs. I’ve helped deliver a few babies, and I’ve cared for people as they lay dying, and after.

I want to be the person who finds the divine in everyone.

I spend a lot of time looking within myself, hoping that if I can see that spark in myself, perhaps I can see it in others as well.

I make jokes about ‘compassion fatigue’ but its not always a joke.

Its hard to search and look for the beauty all the time. I can only hope it will get easier the longer I do it.

Journal: Dream of endless love

Last night’s dream included a young man, kind of stubbled beard, dark black hair, singing an acoustic song which of course I knew the lyrics to in my sleep but not so much anymore. The part he said over and over, however was ‘Endless love will save you”. I woke up hearing it.

What is endless love?

Isn’t all love endless?

There are people I love and people I LOVE. There are many degrees of it but I don’t think I ever stopped loving anyone I truly loved–no matter what type of love it happens to be.

Love can change…from romantic to friendship, or the other way for that matter as well. It can go from maternal to friendly, or encompass both. It can be a small jelly bean in the candybowl of life or it can be the grain of sand that made the glass bowl that holds the jellybeans.

All things change.

But does love ever go away? Does it ever end?

Goddess/God love us. We are given life, bounty, shelter and the beauty of the experience. Goddess/God are eternal…endless.

Is not their love endless as well? Can you put boundaries and limitations on something that is part of the Eternal AM?

Is it conceited to assume that the love we feel, as chips from the great Light, is as eternal and enless as Theirs? Or is it perhaps sacreligious to assume that our love can be so limitless?
But are we not challenged to aspire to become Godlike–to nurture the wise and loving traits that are gifted to us from God/Goddess? And if so, then to put limits on the love we feel for others is sacreligious as well.

Journal: dream of a dead friend

Last night I dreamed of a friend that died while I was still in high school. I was my age I am now and he was young in the dream…he was about 20 when he died, I was probably 17. I was slow dancing with him in a reality where he was still alive but I knew he would die. I asked him if he loved his life and he said yes. I asked him if he had any inkling of his future and he said “I think I know what you are leading up to and I know it.” I told him he was a fine young man, and that when I was teen, I had a crush on him (true). He smiled and kissed me and said “Just because God gives you one person to love and stay with, it doesn’t mean that you can’t love more than that one person.”
I hugged him and the dream ended.

Journal: Putting the garden to bed

Yesterday was one of the last unseasonably warm days we will have here in the frozen north. I’d put off cleaning up my garden until the last possible minute, as it saddens me to cut and prune away the plants that have brought me so much joy this past summer.

Truthfully, I probably waited too long. The Poke was keeled over, blanketing some of the shrubbery and the hostas had gone from a fiery yellow to a damp brown. Other annual flowers had dried and withered. If for nothing other than asthetic purposes, I knew it was time.

I got my clippers, put on my gloves and got to work.

 As I took down the drying stalks of poke, the berries fell all over the ground, making a slippery mess where I’d stepped.

Under the old hosta leaves, I found a wooly mammoth caterpillar (is that what they are called?) hiding in the damp.

I sat back for a minute and thought. The birds will like the poke berries, and now that they are not mixed all in the shrubs they will access them easier. I picked up the wolly caterpillar, who was now exposed and at risk of being birdfood, and put him in the sheltered back corner of the garden, where he would be nurtured and hidden within the last bits of poke.

I got to work on the rest and came finally to the corner where my spider had lived all summer, spinning her web between a hosta bloom and a spike on a shrub. I came to that one particular piece of hosta and as has been my habit, bent down to look for the spider. She was no where to be seen, and had been gone since the frost about 10 days ago. I sighed. I really didn’t want to cut down this piece just in case she was still using it or, more importantly, in case her babies were nestled within the pieces she had so meticulously wrapped together with her silk webbing. However, I knew that if I didn’t cut it down and there were babies in there…they would be exposed to the elements and the immenent cold weather.

I cut the hosta stalk down, and with it the branch it was connected to. And then I laid it gently in the back of my garden, safe and warm under some leaves.

Next came the datura, my favorite plant. The leaves had withered but the seed pods were fine, as evidenced by the number of painful pokes I got from the sharp spines. My daughter helped me as I laboriously cut the seed pods off–I promised several coworkers they could have some seeds from my plants–and saved them in a tupperware bowl for later harvesting.

After I was done, I scanned the garden. It looked bare and empty but I realized something.

The dead stuff–it had to go. It was encroaching on the coming green. I know that deep beneath there, tulip and daffodil bulbs lay sleeping, waiting for the call to springtime. Roots of the lavender trail through the dirt, ready to spring new shoots when the winter is behind us. The hosta roots lay in tight balls beneath the dirt, their springtime shoots now had room to grow, now that the old leaves and stems were removed.

And even the spider, should she grace me with her presence next year, will fresh new greenery to begin her task of web-weaving again.

This correlates so well to life.

Letting go of the old, no matter how cherished it is to us, is so important. We have to remove the dead leaves and branches in order to make room for more roots and buds. I realized that my inner garden needs a good cleanup too.

I resolve to let go of the old feelings, old hurts, past regrets. I resolve to trim down the old to make way from the new. Goddess surely has beautiful things in store for me, as she does all of us, and I want to make room for the new and wondrous beginnings that are surely just around the corner.

(poetry as yet untitled)Dedicated to…

We lay on the beach,
You and I.
Lord and Lady.
God and Goddess.
Man and Woman.
Sacred star beneath us
sacred circle around us.
Waves, lapping gently as
the moon shone benevolently
upon our salty skin.
Magic sang in our blood;
our bodies
met and joined
in the sacred dance
the Great Rite.
And as the waves grew and crashed
thus did our magic,
until the stars fell
one
by
one..
upon our circle
from my eyes.
We lay sated
in the sand,
breathing as one
and welcoming the dawn
of Us.

Journal: Journey to the Goddess, seeking Her

My journey continues and I am looking for the Goddess in everything I encounter.
My whole life I’ve lived with God the Father, God the Almighty, God the Redeemer, Judge and Jury….Yet a loving God, but God none the less. I’ve felt His gentle presence as much as I’ve felt his absence.
It’s time for me now to seek the touch of the Mother.
I’ve searched for a mother figure for years and years. Perhaps in Her I will find that solace for which I have hungered. Perhaps in Her I will find my own self, finally.
I haven’t told my family yet that I am travelling this path. My daughter told me that she and her friends were speaking about being psychic and that my daughter’s best friend mentioned that I am a witch. So things have not gone unnoticed around here…but still…spells etc are just such a small piece of my path right now.
Its fun to read and learn about correspondences, charms, amulets, stones…we all like having crutches to get us through.
But where I am now, and what I am doing, is deeper than that.
This is spiritual. This is something I am doing because it speaks to my core self. My soul, if you will.
I bought a great necklace, the triple moon )0( in silver, with a pentagram in the center of the full moon. I’ve been wearing it a lot. No comments from my family at all.
I wonder have they noticed?
I found a journal from two years ago yesterday. The recent post here entitled “Autumn” was the last entry from that journal. It was from October 2006…I was doing then what I am doing now.
Hence, its time to bump it up a bit. Get a move on and see where this is all going.
It’s one thing to meander along a path, stopping to smell the flowers, but its time, I believe, to find that destination at the end of the path.
So I am looking for Goddess and I am finding her everywhere.
She is in frost that sparkles off my windshield on the early mornings, and in the sun that shines in the golden afternoon. She is in the joyful reach of the trail of ivy leading up the side of my house and She is in the huge garden spider that is living beneath my hosta. She is in the wind and the rain, the thunder and the quiet of deep night. She is everywhere that I once found God, and I believe they are together.
I hope she is yet in me.

Journal: Spiritual Handfasting for a year and a day

Beginning on 10/31/08 up to 11/1/09, I will committ myself to living a Wiccan lifestyle.
I will immerse myself in the Wiccan way, and will walk the path for a year and a day.
I am not foregoing my current and past belief systems, but instead I am concentrating on one of them, in order to better understand myself and my relation to Creator.
Being a solitary practitioner and the only ‘real life’ wiccan of whom I am aware (although I know there are more out there), I will attempt to find new paths to the old ways.
I’ll journal my journey, both here and in private.
I welcome others on the path I am undertaking.

Journal: Dream, message

This morning I woke up with words running thru my head. The tail end of my dream involved me reading a poem out loud. What I heard was the end of that poem, but even though I was reading it, it wasn’t totally my voice.

What remains is:

To live we must be forgiving

and giving is for us to give,

and the reason for living is loving

and the reason for love is to live.

Pretty cool.