Blog prompt: What anchors keep you centered as the beloved?
Hope. Broader perspective. A return to center through intentionally meditating on feeling hopeful, easeful, beloved. And choosing thoughts through the day that support this. See story example below.
What happens when you lose sight?
It gets dark real quick!
Yesterday evening I was sitting outside in my backyard. My husband and I were in different places but on a conference call with our business manager. He was delivering bad financial news. My mind started racing. The tug of war began. The war between worry and centeredness, between resting in easeful, trusting belovedness and walking with anxiety over to shame. Shame was calling.
I noticed what was happening in my body. I noticed the stark contrast between feeling safely pampered in Paris just a few days ago on this gift of a trip from my mother. And the financial concerns I returned home to in real life. A primary concern being, how will this affect the kids? Then…
BAM! The sound of the bird’s body came crashing into the window near me like a torpedo. Swooshing down to follow was another bird. This one just missed the window and landed on the first. The sharp reverberation snapped me out of my worry spiral. I was suddenly mesmerized by the cloud of feathers fluttering around the birds.
Then, stillness.
As my mind took in what had happened I stood up and saw, directly in my line of sight, standing Triumphant on the dove, a hawklike bird of prey. Staring back at me. And just like that, the hawk spread its wings and lifted off with the dove clenched in its talons.
WOW. Ok what just happened? This is so bizarre and jarring. I left the conference call and walked over to the feathers on the ground and looked around. All was back to normal.
I looked over to the phone and immediately took in the placement of this shocking event. What does this mean? What a shocking display of animal spirit tearing into my experience and interrupting my Darth Vader meeting of darkness that was coming for my soul. Or at least my peace. What synchronicity this was. It felt like a sign.
So, I looked it up. “What does it mean, spiritually, when you see a hawk take its prey?” Not in my topical Bible index of course 😉 but in the slightly less holy writ of Google. And not to disappoint, one tradition, with highly ranked first page search engine optimization on Google, believes what I saw, “… represents abundance, and that you’ll always be able to care for yourself and your family.”
Okaaaaaaayyyy. Maybe it IS a sign. And you know what? At this crossroads of cynicism verses belovedness – I’ll take it. Today the Lord speaks in mysterious ways. Today I still have the power to choose Belovedness. Today God reached through the fabric of my normal and used nature to get my attention. “Hey, hey you. I’m still here. You’re still mine. All this is mine. Keep your eyes on me”.
Also, weirder things have happened. So why shouldn’t they happen to me?
But I also know that even without this bird-sign interruption, I would get to remembrance of resting eventually. Yet this sign helped me get there sooner as it felt personal, caring. And maybe there’s a reason for my needing to get there sooner. Maybe my steadiness is needed now. I determine to remember, “I have the power to set the tone. I can show my children we remain Beloved, come what may.”
So many times the pattern in my life has been God sending me signs – reminders of my belovedness. Reminders of whose I am and of what really matters. I choose to take in those synchronicities, signs and wonders.
I am reminded that, be it little or big problems, short or prolonged, I do not suffer without hope. Hope of the Spirit’s presence with me here and now, within me, even going before me, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord of hosts”. What a gift!
Now most of my life my guidance has been found primarily in Scripture or “special revelation”. But sometimes, general revelation speaks a word of truth. Today I am going to let nature, or “general revelation” speak to me. Reveal to me. Shake me out of my doubts and back into Beloved’s Presence.
PS – Since our larger conversation is also about race and injustice, I want to include that when I hear white people say, “God always takes care of me” that it has given my body a reaction and I think “That might also be because you have historically had many safety nets available to you that minorities have not. So it’s easy for you to say that you magically always come out on top”. And I am aware of how it may sound naive when white people say “God always takes care of me materially”. So I write about my hope and trust while also acknowledging how white people have designed a whole system of safety nets to keep us materially and financially stable more easily. And that feels unfair and unfair to attribute it only to God. So I want to acknowledge the unfairness and realness. And the discomfort I have writing something that could sound or even BE ignorant and unfair. I’m here to hold this up to the light and explore that discomfort with you.
4 comments
Thanks for sharing such an awesome supernatural nature encounter. At the very least it was a gift to be stunned out of the creeping dark shame, but Riley– that was a sign!
Your P.S. has me reflecting and thinking deeply. It is a gift for you to share your experience with us, and I appreciate you keeping the conversation going.
Thank you so much for sharing this with us. What a gift to sit in this time via this image with you. I see you and hear the gift of this reminder in the midst of the swirl…
The section, “Hey, hey you. I’m still here. You’re still mine. All this is mine. Keep your eyes on me”, spoke to me.
I also appreciate you naming the reality of “safety nets” that are often present and invisible and yet from a position of privilege. I will keep holding this and wrestle with it with you. Thank you.
This is an incredible image that you have painted to take us along with you in this experience. Thank you!
In your last paragraph, I found myself nodding along in resonance – I have been known to take issue (loudly) with the “#blessed” mentality that seems so pervasive in affluent white Christian spheres because even in those white affluent spaces, it tends to send the message that if somebody is experiencing hardship then it’s a failure that reflects on them not having enough faith or not following God well enough. I appreciate your holding up to the light the systems and safety nets that historically have benefitted white people the most, taking care not to attribute your sense of security solely to your trust in God.
I noticed that you turned quickly in the middle of your piece to naming the ways that this helped you see your belovedness, which felt like the clear message to me – that your trust and hope is in God calling you as beloved and on the reminders of “what really matters” as you named. The image that comes to me, from this, is not one of God necessarily pulling you out of hardship or providing those safety nets you so aptly named as a part of the very human systems from which you benefit, but rather of God coming alongside you and walking with you in whatever may come. I wonder what it feels like to rest in that image in light of your reflection?
Thank you for sparking this conversation!
Woah. What a moment! I’m an advocate for “general revelation” especially as it relates to encounters with birds and so I deeply appreciated your reflections here. Thank you for being interruptable (although it doesn’t sound like you had much of an option) enough to allow Spirit to pull you out of anxiety and re-establish you in the experiential knowledge of your belovedness. Thank you, too, for your acknowledgment at the conclusion of your piece. For taking the risk to include that not in an effort to perform, but to generate conversation that leads to deeper transformation. I hope others dig in with you here…I’ll be back to join the conversation.