The Hawk

Yesterday I held a hawk. I wish I could say it was alive. We had noticed something on the roadside enroute to the hardware store. Returning home, we pulled over so I could get out and see what the animal was. I intended to bury it or at least place it in the tall grass away from the asphalt and cover it with leaves.

When I saw what it was I exclaimed in horror and surprise, "It's a hawk" and quickly grabbed something from the car in which to place it. Arriving home I held the young hawk close like a newborn child in my arms, marveled at its beauty and listened.

We suspected this was "our" hawk, the young one that often perched in the top of a nearby tree swooping down periodically to get one of "our" birds. I had just in the past two weeks made a deeper peace with these offerings in nature. The animals take only what they need. The hawk would take one bird, not six or a dozen as we're prone in our glutinous ways.

We dug a hole and made a nest of leaves. Then placed the hawk under "its" tree.

Later an interaction I witnessed earlier in the hardware store crossed my mind. Three customers stood in line. It was three o'clock and closing time. Looking somewhat rough in his work clothes and boots, the man at the front of the line wanted to pay off a debt. The store owner, ready to leave, was impatient and brusk until he discovered the customer with whom he was speaking was actually the owner of the company. He immediately apologized for his treatment of this man and said, "I sorry. I didn't realize you were Mr. X."

His comment was revealing seeming to imply that he would have continued being impatient if the man were someone of lesser status, not the owner of the company.

Then I recalled my reaction, "It's a hawk." Of the many squirrels and opossums I have driven past lying dead on the roadside, never once have I declared "It's a squirrel or opossum!" My attitude suggests they're of lesser value in the animal world.

Yet Native Americans believe all the animals have messages for us, that every animal has specific traits we need and messages to heed.

The message in the store and along the roadside for me is we are all one. There is no separation. How often I've heard this yet never gotten the picture so clearly.

None of us is better than the other. None of us is lesser than the other. We are all equally and beautifully connected in this web of life. I suspect the hawk lying now under its tree, its body returned to earth, its spirit returned to the stars, would agree.

Oh that we would open to the messages of all animals so they come alive through you and me. Imagine that shift.

-The Hawk and Dawn, the Good News Muse 03/28/10