All is Light Changing Form - An Earth Day Vision

I determined not to work this Earth Day in order to give myself time to reflect on the past twelve months since Earth Day feels like my birthday. I typically use my May birthday as a day to reflect on the year prior, read my journals, and look through photos. I also took Earth Day off because I have been exhausted. This weariness of body, heart and soul is connected to the experience in my yard the day after Earth Day last year. 

Last year, on this day I watched a raven eat a baby robin from its nest. I had been a witness to the robin couple diligently building their nest cupped in the branches of the leafless crepe myrtle two feet from my kitchen window. An upstairs window gave the perfect vantage point to seeing directly into the nest. I knew when each blue egg was laid and I knew when each little life came into this world. I would awaken and pray fervently in the middle of the night during last spring’s stunning rains and I energetically imagined shielding the mother and her children as she hunkered over their growing little bodies. I developed a whistle to which the parents would respond and hop to me to eat meal worms and peanut chips I tossed them when the ground was too cold for worms to emerge. I had a relationship with these robins. 

Cognitively knowing that what I witnessed was part of Life’s cycle did not help my broken heart. Being told the raven possibly ate a weaker one didn't help either. 

For me, this experience was shattering especially as one who is sensitive. I journaled. I met with friends who are intuitive and I went into what I call my Joan-of-Arc mode. I placed a scarecrow created of my clothes, my hat and a wig under the nest. I personally sat vigil nearby hidden for two weeks as the raven returned daily in the early morning and late afternoon. When I could not be present, my dear neighbor Jo sat in my hidden place. 

One evening after a session with an intuitive friend who helped me piece together what I was living, I came out to my car and there sat the raven on a limb on my neighbors driveway side. It was head high and urgently talking to me. In retrospect I wish I had stood before it and listened. Instead I was “on.” I shooed it away and I never really gave myself time to listen or feel (anything but rage) until yesterday. 

Yesterday I reread my journal from that time, reflected, listened and felt.

Mid-morning, I walked into the front yard and impromptuly decided to dig. Getting dirt under my nails revives me on all levels. 

The first thing I noticed in the dirt by the driveway were 6-7 tiny down feathers. In the past year I learned from Gary my hair guy that down falls from the mother's breast when she's laid her eggs. Previously I thought it meant a bird had died.

"New life is here" and I was being told to lie down. 

Lying down in the middle of the day is challenging for me even on Earth Day. It suggests I’m not being productive. This societal, tribal, familial message is hardwired into me. Yet I knew to ignore this message was to ignore listening. To ignore listening was to ignore the Divine directive shouting through Nature to me.

I gathered the feathers, placed a sheet in the grass and lay upon it. As I felt myself sink into Earth, I saw a butterfly made of fuchsia light. The butterfly then turned into a hawk. Then I saw the head of a rose breasted grosbeak. I knew I was being shown the grosbeaks are near. They migrated through our yard for the first time last year just after the baby bird was eaten. 

Seeing the butterfly turn into a hawk, I knew Everything is Light changing Form - Everything even people, past and present, judged as horrible, they too are Light Changing Form. Mentally I know this yet being shown this helps me “get it” in my depths. I needed this message in relation to the raven and the robin to assist in my healing. 

And this morning as I sat outside I looked up to see a male rose breasted grosbeak at the feeder. I saw its black, white and rose coloring and thought, ‘Black and White rose together.’ 

What if those of us, black and white, rose together? Imagine the glory of that? What if we moved beyond our internal and external opposing black and white positions of good and bad? What, just what, might rise from that? 

The one thing I had not done was look up the symbolism of grosbeak. I went inside to find “Animal Speaks’ and read: 

Grosbeak represents the healing of the heart. 

To me this is divine perfection and grace? 

I stumble, resist, ignore, procrastinate and delay, yet the Divine through Nature shouts, "Dawn, I am a partner in your heartbreak and your healing if you listen and allow. New life is here!!!"

As I hold this message personally, I invite you to listen to the part of this experience that resonates with you.

New Life is here. 

Everything is light changing form. 

The heart can heal. 

Nature speaks. 

And imagine our collectively "getting" that Everything is Light Changing Form. Black and white are rising together. Divisions, fear, separation, judgement, and violence are diminishing. New life is here as we are experience the healing of the heart, the individual heart, the racial heart, the collective heart and I believe the Earth’s Heart. 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse  23 April 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com