When I first noticed the robin couple flying in and out of the thin green limbs, I was immediately apprehensive fearing the floppy, vertical limbs couldn't hold a bassinet. I watched the nursery being built for a week before finally peering in one moment when construction had slowed. As I feared all the building materials had fallen to the ground. I found a bit of rope and put on gloves so as to not impart human scent and wove the rope in, out and around the limbs. Then I placed twigs in horizontally and some of last Fall's leaves.
The determined robins continued building. My offering became the basement as the robins built a level above mine.
For a month, they've continued to come and go yet earlier on this May morning I sensed a shift. Birthing has occurred. I cannot imagine a finer place to be born than in our yard filled with ferns and hostas, fountains of green, encouragers of birth.
The presence of a nest so near the back door and ten feet at most from my writing and star watching spot has slightly cramped my style. Initially I avoided using this door for when I did the parent's left the nest. For the longest if we were on the deck, both parents would watch from a limb afar seeming to weigh in on whether it was safe to come home.
As I watch this morning an inner voice chimes in: It's just a damn bird.
What? To me it is a sweet life. Because I love I can't imagine not caring especially about an animal's life.
Maybe if this person had had someone like me to tend their birth they would not have grown so callous.
I hear: It's never too late.
My challenge is to tend their soul today. To send out on these cool airwaves vibrations of love, not just to the robins, but to my human kin all around this Earthen delivery room so appreciation for all life is birthed.
Of course their soul is my soul, the voice within is one of the many in mine. My greatest challenge is tending my personal capacity for callousness. Because I love, I care and at times my heart becomes so heavy and full that I tune out rather than cry out. I ignore my sadness and throw in the towel causing an inner disconnect. Yet seeing robin parents and hearing peeps from the nearby labor and delivery room brings me home to my heart and home to Me.
*******
Then I walk into my office and see vases of flowers, each bouquet in a state of dying.
'My office is a morgue,' I think. And for the first time ever I take sage and smudge the flowers.
Why have I not thought of this before, this ritual of honoring and thanking roses, peonies and iris for sharing themselves with me? I feel such gratitude in this realization.
In the tissue paper petals I see nooks and crannies and lines unnoticed when these same petals were filled with watery life a week ago. In these petals, I see my drying skin. I have never this closely looked at leaving blossoms nor have I considered Earth a morgue. Yet that is what it is, isn't it or at least a funeral home?
And maybe this is one reason why my inner voice can be so harsh. To live in a state of constant birthing and letting go is tricky. I'm much better at letting go than I use to be but if I stay awake I experience new layers of holding on.
I awoke recently in the middle of the night with watery life flowing down my face. Flowers were on my mind. I awoke sobbing, grieving the loss of flowers and their having to die.
I lay in the dark trying to console myself knowing this is part of their seasonal cycle, yet my heart was breaking of a deeper sorrow. I knew so many flowers were dying without being noticed, really noticed, fully embraced and taken in deeply. I'm guilty of this not noticing when I excitedly take flower photos to share yet don't fully take in their beauty and grace in that moment.
Yet I sense I was also grieving another flower, the flower of the heart that grows callous and shuts down. My heart's known "Closed for Business" well. Its shopkeeper has been the critic that called the robin damn. Its shopkeeper started with a huge heart but slowly built a damn.
This is how I've forgotten that on this precious portal called Earth between the coming and going, arriving and leaving, entering and exiting, I've an inner heart flower through which to access the Divine.
In my heart I want to hang a new sign: Open for Business - Welcome Births, Deaths and All That's In-Between.
This is how I've forgotten that on this precious portal called Earth between the coming and going, arriving and leaving, entering and exiting, I've an inner heart flower through which to access the Divine.
In my heart I want to hang a new sign: Open for Business - Welcome Births, Deaths and All That's In-Between.
In this business there are no taxes to pay or license for which to apply, no inspectors
nor codes. Well there is one code. The only code is Love.
Imagine the Shift to the code of Love today as people around the world open the business that is their heart.
Imagine the Shift to the code of Love today as people around the world open the business that is their heart.
-Dawn! The Good News Muse 30 April 2012
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