Messengers of Flight Along the Sidewalk of Life - The Real Story of Lizards & Birds, You & Me

(This story is an unexpected continuation of the one prior: Hidden in Holes-Hope for the Heart.)

Two days after seeing the bird feed her babies in the wall and wondering who owns the eyes that hide in the sidewalk hole, I came upon half of a small blue egg during my near-daily walk. A sign of new feathered life lay in the grass near the concrete's edge.

I wished for a camera then realized a few yards ahead was the hole in which life hides. Just as I thought this, something darted into the dark. Eyes, I've assumed of a lizard, had glimpsed me.

I walked on wondering if lizard asks, "How did I end up crawling earth?" Does it remember eons ago that its flying kin gave up their wings over time?

I was reminded of all souls before birth before we give up our wings and choose life on earth. Once we get here we tend to forget our wings and the heart's freedom in flight. We construct walls and like the life in the concrete, we retreat.

I once knew someone who thought people, especially many politicians were reptilian. Being the former owner of "Iggy" the Iguana as well as one who loves animals, I didn't like reptiles being dismissed this way.I also had hope for people, even politicians.

Arriving home, I grabbed my camera and drove up the street to take the above photos. I mindfully approached not wanting to frighten the life and there it was.

The lizard allowed me a photo. I thanked it and blessed it. Inside I smiled. It was kin to the lizard Mystery befriended from our second floor window this time last year. Just after the flood, this little meeting of two would convene on the roof on either side of the window. The lizard masculine in my mind hung out with our cat, the symbol of the feminine in eons past. Even then I wondered if lizard on a cellular level remembered that once it could fly. I imagined the lizard asking 'Do you know the secret of flight?' and Mystery conveying, "The secret is inside."

One Christmas Iggy did fly. As I walked past our Christmas tree, he flew from my shoulder into the tree and from those limbs of green I like to never have retrieved him.

Hidden in holes cellularly within or in Iggy's case a tree, lies the heart's wings, flight's memory.

********

On Wednesday this week, I hurriedly walked prior to the predicted rains. For the third time in the past year near the church on the corner, I found a pile of light bulbs. Like the prior times, I picked this little stack up and thought, 'Now here's a story.'

"Discover the power of Jesus," they read.

Yet the story had not come.

Placing the light bulbs in my pocket, on I walked. Overnight rains had washed twigs, mud, rock and leaves to the curb and over the metal grates along Natchez Trace.

The first grate I came to I uncovered with my bare hand. As I neared the next one, I wished for a glove. There lying crumpled at the base of a shrub was a brown, clothe glove damp but ready for use.

I uncovered each metal grate along Natchez Trace wondering what passers-by thought if they even they even noticed the small, smiling gray haired woman squatting at the street's edge with dripping clods and clumps in her hands.

I had learned this art from Judy my 70-something neighbor who does the same thing around our street. I smiled realizing I truly didn't care what others might think which for a Southern woman from my family was really quite a feat. I was transported to the past first to sandboxes then to the memory of ooze as we walked in the ditches on my grandmothers street. After the rains mud covered our feet. My heart was happy.

Making my way homeward, I came to the cracked sidewalk. No sign of life darting to hide. Had the lizard been swept away by the overnight rains?

Just as I got to the block before my street's turn, there lay a little blue egg unopened among large landscaping rocks. What to do? I looked for the nest from which it might have blown then gently placed it under a nearby butterfly bush. I had to get home yet I couldn't leave. I held it and said, "Tell me what to do?"

"Take me home. Take me home and remember I am a symbol of the new. I hold the new man.
I hold the new you."

Moments later I sat writing this piece the little blue egg tucked inside a clothe heart near my own heart mindful the next day I would return it to the base of the butterfly bush.

Butterfly, birds, lizards and Mystery messengers of transformation for you and me.

*************

This morning the realization came that for the past six days, I had been given the pieces to a story in reverse, the story of love and rich life here on earth.

We arrive here whole like the egg, dropped from the Universal heart's nest. Most of us land in rocky places unaware that above us hovers the butterfly bush. In these hard places, heartache, disappointment and trauma covers our hearts and who we are, stopping the flow like the mud covered grates. We forget our winged selves and like the lizard we hide, feeling vulnerable, fearing the eyes of life and light. Then through gentle hands or kind words, the mud is lifted. We feel a shifting, a stirring of our wings. We've the opportunity to experience the current of love (for some the 'power of Jesus' as the light bulbs read). This Love if we receive it breaks open the egg, allowing our hearts to take flight. This is how it was meant to be, fear and hurt when we're receptive are part of the path to becoming free.

As I completed the paragraph above and thought it was time to return the little blue egg to the butterfly bush, I heard a slight crack. I took the egg swaddled in feathers from the heart-shaped pouch. For 24 hours I had kept the egg safe. Now the pouch was damp. The story was complete and I had accidentally broken the egg. I wept as I took it out. A crumb of a dried rose petal from my father's funeral was stuck to the egg. I had once carried rose petals in this pouch.

I cried and cried. The me that loved mud between my toes as well as climbing trees held hope that somewhere between home and the butterfly bush I would find a robin's nest in which to place the egg.

Life seeped from inside the egg, like the life in my heart flowing from my eyes reminding me of the new me, the me that finds joy in vulnerability. If I someone who's lived decades with a walled heart can fly, there's hope for the lizard and humankind.

Love through Life's story pours from the cosmic egg.
Receive.
Let your heartbreak open.
Let your heart break open.
Fly. Be free.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 28 April 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com