How I Got My Wings, Part 3: Ceremony

Read How I Got My Wings, Part 1: Dead Cardinal here.

Read How I Got My Wings, Part 2: Second Encounter here.

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On January 29, 2021, I took the dead cardinal wrapped in the dishtowel and plastic bag out of my freezer. It was afternoon and the impulse to do something with the body came suddenly and strongly.

I gently unwrapped it and began the work. Standing at my kitchen counter, I started plucking out breast feathers, feeling both certain and uncertain at once. Thankfully, Knowing helped me to overcome all the messages that have kept me in unknowing for so long. There is still so much unknowing to shed.

Soon after I started the process, I stopped. What I was doing was sacred work and deserved to be treated as such. This was ceremony.

Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote, “Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm. These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic. These are ceremonies that magnify life.”

I lit sage and palo santo, blessed the body, blessed myself, and allowed myself to feel the heaviness of what I was doing. I shed tears, perhaps as much to commemorate the life no longer in this body as to commemorate the beauty of the moment of reverence I was living in.

After the blessing I resumed the work. I pulled as many soft, downy breast and back feathers out as would come easily and paused. What now?

I broke the wings off, tears still rolling.

I broke off a leg.

The unknowing asked as it had the previous week, “What are you doing?!?”

Knowing answered, “What needs to be done.”

After removing these parts, it was clear that I was finished with this part of the ceremony. I placed the feathers and leg in a bag, the wings carefully on top. I still didn’t know what to do with them, only that I was to keep them.

I asked Spirit/God/the Universe (these feel like different names for the same Oneness of which we are a part) what I should do with the body. It didn’t feel right to simply throw it away. The answer was to put it in my yard, not buried, but simply placed on the snowy ground, trusting that Nature would finish the ceremony in my absence.

The next day I went back out and something had begun to eat the body. By the third day there was no sign of it.

Life circling death circling life.

Expanding Gratitude

Every Wednesday I spend about an hour on the phone with a friend, or what people in Nonviolent Communication cirlces would call an empathy buddy. Each week we take turns speaking what is moving through our mind, heart, body and reflecting back what we hear. It is a practice of deep witnessing. We've been sharing in this way now for 4 years, having started just after attending our first intensive training.

Most calls we focus on one person's sharing while the other reflects. This morning my friend was the primary sharer, noticing places of deep grief and deep joy in her life, ways she is supporting others and finding support for herself. She commented on the complexity of being human, of being in relationship with other humans, and the sense of aliveness possible when we are willing to be in it all. The conversation brought us both to a place of reverence, honoring what is.

Being grateful for what is.

Turning toward what is.

Allowing what is.

Finding the gift in what is.

I am currently reading Braiding Sweetgrass, written by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who repeatedly invites readers to imagine, step into, and honor our interconnection. Reading this book, I am aware that even as I say over and over again in my work "The primary goal is connection," there are many connections that still feel fragile, tentative, waiting to be made between me and myself, me and other people, me and Creation. I believe gratitude is a primary path to connection. Kimmerer also writes about gratitude as a foundational connecting practice. Even though I have written a gratitude list nearly every night for the last 5 years, still my practice can be shallow.

Because of both Kimmerer's writing and my friend's sharing this morning, I want to practice expanding my sense of gratitude, allowing it to saturate my being. I want to practice extending my gratitude to include what and who frustrate me (how is this moment or this person teaching me?), what I see as my own shortcomings (how can this lack of skillfulness or capacity bring me into relationship with someone who has greater skill or capacity? How can I practice self-acceptance?), and in places of grief (what love is my grief pointing me to? How can I open my heart and co-create greater love in and for this world?).

As I consider these questions, let me share a few recent gratitudes:

I am grateful for three days in the car with my parents. I recently drove them from Texas to Kentucky and though not all moments were easy, I am so grateful that I was able to help make their trip possible. I am grateful for the sharing that happened between us along the way.

I am grateful to have had a small bit of time with them in Texas, experiencing and hearing stories of a place that is dear to them.

I am grateful for a recent toe-dip into relationship. I spent a few weeks getting to know someone and though we then parted ways, the gift came in connecting me to old grief I didn't even know I was holding. As it surfaced, I allowed myself to feel and to release some of that old stuff.

I am grateful for a friend who has just started collaborating with me, helping me to shape my work. She most definitely has skills I do not have. She also has the gifts of vision, insight, deep care, and enthusiasm for the work I'm doing.

I am also so grateful for you. I am grateful that you have chosen to be connected with me in ways that are sometimes fleeting and sometimes profound and long. I am deeply appreciative for times you respond to my writing, for times I get to work with you, for times I get to play with you, for times I get to learn from and with you. If we haven't yet connected in a personal way, I hope that someday we will. It is thanks to you that I can do the work that I do. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I could spend the day expanding the list. When I take the time, I notice that I have so much, so very, very much to be grateful for. I hope this is true for you, too.