The Never Ending Story of Love

I returned to the city from the country this week happy to be home and glad to see Jerry who I hadn't seen in days.  After work, my good mood and I opened the back door to go outside and as we did a startled hawk flew from being perched on the deck.  In most settings, I would have been amazed by the massive brown and tan wings opening as I glanced up.  In my yard, I was relieved it flew.  I heard myself call out, "Stay away from my birds."   The suddenness with which this came surprised me.

Just last week, I was pondering my birds - the cardinals, titmice, chickadees, starlings, blue jays, sparrows,downy woodpeckers and mockingbirds- all feeding their babies around my postage-stamp size city yard as several of us have bird feeders.  I am attached to the birds as most parents are attached to their children. Judge me as shallow if you want, but the birds around my home bring me joy and their deaths hurt my heart.

I was relieved the hawk flew away empty clawed or so I thought until moments later I found dove feathers scattered beneath the table and on the nearby bench.  This was the third dove in the last week.

Dove and hawk were the reason I had stayed in the country longer than expected.  I spent much of two days being mindful of the personal messages of these specific birds from previous encounters.   

I scooped up a handful of petite, downy feathers and walked to Templeton's grave.  Doves became significant to me as my cat died in 2006.  During the days we knew she was leaving this plain, I told her the doves would arrive to help see her home. I didn't know why this thought came to me but it did.  And true to what I told her the cold January morning we buried her, I came inside only to look out moments later and see several doves sitting encircled around Templeton's grave.  Those doves came to her but they also came to me.

They arrived again unexpectedly three years later in France.  Each day, but one, I heard the coo of a dove at synchronistic times.  Each time I was reminded of the message I received through Templeton's death. 

This week though something happened unexpectedly as I placed the feathers before my cat's grave.  Weeping overcame me as I heard myself say:  "Stop hurting my children."

These were not words made pleadingly.  As I made my demand, I suddenly knew this was the voice of the Divine Mother coming from me, speaking these words to those involved in sex trafficking:

 "Stop hurting my children."

My voice was the voice of mothers near and afar who have lost or forgotten their voice, mothers whose children have been seduced, stolen and sold into the sex trade.  My voice was of the Divine Mother in that moment speaking to buyers and sellers of children's bodies everywhere.

"Stop hurting my children.  This soul-killing practice must stop." 

I sat on the deck listening.

Hawk, considered the Messenger, is a bird of prey reminding me of those who prey, those who prey sexually and financially upon the vulnerable.  Yet I was also reminded of those who pray, those who pray, meditate and focus Love's energy on behalf of the victims of human trafficking, an obscene and thriving business.

How beautiful this bird of prey would remind me also of those who pray.

I thought this story had ended until....

The killing of the dove haunted me throughout the night. I would awaken thinking of the killing of the doves and the killing of Love.  This stayed with me even more so because I had the visual of the hawk flying six feet away from me and the feathers and blood that remained.

Then in the wee hours of the morning, the memory of three dove feathers came to me.  I found them while roaming a church in LePuy France.  It was my 50th birthday and I had gotten up early to roam.  We had arrived the day prior and I had been overcome with sadness as I walked the city's streets up to the top of the hill where the church stood.  Walking into the circular hotel stairwell an hour before, the words "Joan of Arc"  went through my mind yet it wasn't until I stood in the church weeping that I learned her mother and friends prayed in the crypt of the church to the Black Madonna for Joan's freedom.  Prayers on Joan's behalf did not work.  The powers of the time that killed her burned her body, then her ashes two more times to ensure nothing was left. 

The sudden sorrow I felt in this town prompted my early morning walk around the church where I found three dove feathers outside a back entrance.  Tattered and worn they reminded me of the beauty of Love over time.

These were the feathers I thought of early this week.  They and the killing of Love were on my mind as I resisted going outside as is my morning routine. Yet I went out and as soon as I sat down, I saw two doves.  I saw them and thought, 'Doves like Love continue arriving as opportunities to keep my heart, though pained, open.' 

Love like the doves arrives every day on the front page of the newspaper and through internet headlines.  Love keeps arriving through events that are hard to see in order to open my heart even as it's breaking.

This was the end of this story until....

A bit later as I took my walk, I came upon a van idling a few houses away in the middle of the street.  A man sat inside on the phone.  I walked past, made my turn and found him still there unmoved.  This time I walked on the other side where I saw the message meant for me.

This transportation company's emblem was a blue circle. Inside the circle was the silhouette of a white dove its wings spread in flight above the silhouette of 4-5 human body shapes   The companies name was "Charter" and this was vehicle # 11.

I thought, 'How perfect.'  A charter is an agreement under which people are organized.  For me the number '11' is a doorway although I found on-line at one site that depending on what and who you consult '11' can represent the spiritual messenger, extravagance and sin or internal conflict.   And in a way these things are all connected to trafficking.

It feels to me that something is unfolding on a profound soul level and that we all arrived for this time as part of a charter coming together to create the opportunity for deep collective and personal healing as has never happened prior.

I came in from my walk and opened the book "Animal Speaks" to read of dove. I had not read it the day prior.  I read that dove represents maternal instinct, the essence of the voice that arose from me the night prior as well as Joan of Arc's mother and friends as they joined together in prayer. 

I came upstairs to add to this story what I had seen on my walk and found in the book. As I wrote and rewrote, I looked out at our bird feeder from the window above.  It was time to close the feeder for awhile.  The birds needed to find food elsewhere as did the hawk.

This was the end of the story I thought until.....

I walked out, closed the feeder then walked around front to get an unopened bag of mulch. I wanted to cover any leftover seed that might attract a dove.

To my surprise there along my driveway, the one we had walked up and down only two hours prior were feathers.  Thick piles of dove feathers of all sizes along the asphalt.  I picked up a handful and walked to Templeton's grave again. This time I did what I did not do the prior night.  I joyfully thanked doves for coming to Mother Earth and I asked them to continue returning to be with us.

Then I joyfully thanked Maternal Love rising in so many people right now, people symbolized by the feathers.

I did not see the hawk, yet I heard blue jays in a neighboring yard.  Then I did something for which some will judge me.  I have had beautiful exchanges with hawks yet I stood in my yard and asked hawk to leave.  Honestly I heard myself say, "I DEMAND you leave."  I saw the flap of wings and realized hawk sat twenty feet above me.  I clapped and it flew away.  I returned to the feathers and placed several in an open container for a ritual at a later time. 

This was the end of the story I thought until.... 

Diana and Rhonda at Berry Hill's Wild Birds Unlimited told me hawk feastings such as ours were common this time of year as hawks were feeding their babies as well.

Of course.  Hawk is driven by its own maternal instinct to feed and care for its young.

This time I did not assume the story had ended. 

Before bed that night I remembered the container with the feathers.  I was tired and worn out, but took the time to find a baggie in which to place the feathers.  I was upset and impatient with myself for not returning to the country. I had intentionally arranged my schedule to return and write yet had distracted myself by running errands on my never ending list.

Allowing myself to get distracted and the self-judgment that ensues are two of my personal soul-numbing practices.  These do not compare to the soul-numbing brutality of sex trafficking yet the results are similar in that I shut down to everything around and within me and live on auto-pilot until I am again awakened.

Rather than feed into my self upset-ness, I went outside the next morning with the bag of feathers to listen and write.  What I saw took my breath.  At the closure of the bag, was a fleck of a feather.  Its pattern was a shape I've seen in visions recently and have been unable to discern. 

Tears of joy overwhelmed me as I looked at this smallest of feathers that I knew was Love's pattern. Love's pattern exquisite, beautiful and small embedded in everyone and everything. 

And as I sat there over my shoulder from the neighboring yard came a sound met by another.  Two doves cooed back and forth to each other as I sat holding Love.  This was the very same back and forth I heard three days prior in the country while sitting outside.  These are the only two times I've ever had doves cooing to and fro in stereo.

Their perfectly timed, gentle back and forth reminded me of fear and love over time.  Fear in varying shades of control has reigned and is trying to hold on tight.  Yet I sat in my yard swing with dove's echoing the reminder that Love's small, potent pattern has held through time. 

Try as they might, in Joan's time and ours, the pattern of Love will not be killed for the maternal is rising as part of Love's charter in this Time across races, religions, economic levels, in all ages and in women and men.   

This is the beginning of the New Story of soul healing in the never ending story of Love.  

With deep gratitude to the hawk and doves, 

Dawn, The Good News Muse 29 June 2013

dawn@imaginetheshift.com