Sunday, December 10, 2017

12/11/17—Talking to the Birds

This week I have two (three?) stories to tell. 

The first is that, while sitting on the front porch with Kizzie Friday, I saw a small flock of four birds. Their flight seemed erratic. They were circling the area over and over, as if frantically searching for something they'd lost. Even in their circles, they were zagging and zigging. And as I listened for why I was being shown these birds, it occurred to me that I've been feeling like them for a while.

I feel like I've lost my way and have been frantically searching for ways to connect...to my spirituality, my health, my path. And I feel like I've been going in circles for years and not moving forward. 

Of course, that's not true. I've moved forward in many ways. But it's almost like I've got part of me anchored to the ground. Or like I'm stuck in some endless Groundhog Day cycle like those birds. 

The second story is that on Saturday we received the first snow of the season. Now, I love cold and I love snow, so I sat outside getting snowed on for over an hour. (I sit under the eaves, so I'm mostly protected.) 

I'm sure I must have seen this before, but I don't remember when. But the snowflakes were so perfectly snowflaky! They weren't big and wet. They weren't little balls. They didn't fall and instantly melt. Instead, each flake was perfectly distingushable, all the way down to the intricate designs. That is an actual photo above. And not only that, but my aging fuzzy eyes could see them clear as a bell on my lap. 

It was magical.

I also noticed when I was out there that, as long as I'm not moving around, I feel perfectly healthy. I'm still having problems with breathlessness, despite being able to breathe clearly and deeply at rest. It's just when I move. And there are better days and worse days. So I just take a lot of breaks. Tonight, unloading the dishwasher wore me out, so I rested for a minute and then went back to rinse dishes and load them. It's like that. It makes life really hard. I'm going to see a specialist soon. 

Anyway, it has been years since I felt healthy. I mean, in my mind I only focus on the worry and exhaustion and what to do about it. But while I was sitting out there realizing I feel perfectly healthy if I'm not moving, I decided to just really enjoy that moment of feeling healthy. "Right now, I feel healthy." I have no idea why it never occurred to me before. Probably because I am so fixated on how bad I feel most of the time. I don't give gratitude or attention to those moments of feeling "right", even though it's only circumstantial. My internal script is that I feel bad all the time. And, to the extent that internal scripts create our realities, I switched things up today. 

While I was out there, and this might be the third story, I saw that flock of four birds again, doing their frantic flight. I only saw them for a moment, but this time it struck me how the flock, though moving erratically, stayed in perfect formation. And it just all seemed to be a metaphor for life. Their ability to stay in formation despite what looked like a chaotic flight path is similar to how we move with the universe. We have that same kind of communication thing that allows us to account for small, random changes in the way of life and continue forward, effortlessly zigging with the zigs and zagging with the zags. 

And it also made me think of my own "flock", whether that's me and my three dogs flying like that or me and my friends. We all seem to encounter similar zigs and zags that we're connected by. And that's how we move through life together, in small groups, bound by our shared energies and moving in tandem with that. Until we don't, I guess. Then we create a new flock. Which is something I addressed in my last post, which I somehow didn't make live last week. 

So with these insights and the peace that came, frankly, at the end of an emotional week for me, it occurs to me that maybe the birds on Friday weren't bringing me a message as much as opening a door for me to find my way back where I belong. And, after sitting outside for a long time today and not seeing them, maybe they finally found their way back to where they belong, too.