SAM'S SKY

This photo was taken by my son Sam. I chose it for today's posting because it stirs a holy light in my heart and today is Saint Valentines Day. I breathe in the wide expanse of sky and feel the slow thrum of my heartbeat. Something is choking me up...a thickness in my throat...perhaps something that I have not spoken or expressed is asking to be heard. Sky was the name of one of our parakeets years ago. Just Saturday, Sam texted us that he had passed over the Connecticut River and spotted an adult bald eagle and two juveniles in the very same spot where many years ago, I saw my first bald eagle soaring. I felt such gratitude to Sam for spotting it, that I wept. I had given up thinking I might ever see a wild and free bald eagle thanks to the damge done to our ecosystem. And yet, that sighting was the first of many and now...where I live by the Androscoggin River we see bald eagles almost daily during the summer and fall. Eagles are omens of powerful healing...at least in my life. Look at the photo of the sky and just imagine soaring effortlessly under and above the wisps of cloud and over the verdent carpet that covers the mountains. It is a vision that bursts through limits and gives me a taste of eternity.

My heart aches for my cousin. She is so young. So absolutely necessary to her preteen children and her beloved...yet she is in the throws of a life and death struggle with cancer...and yet my mother in law is in a nursing home with Dementia and a strong body that keeps on keeping on even though she has lost all visible quality of life. The two situations stand in stark contrast to each other and seem to rise up in my heart as a response to this "blue true dream of sky". I can imagine angels might gather in the rays of light and peace is emanating from the cerulean blue. I can imagine there is some natural intelligence behind the matter I can see, in the heart of the heartwood so to speak. I think sometimes that our religions do us a disservice by conditioning us to believe in heaven as an afterlife occurence and that if our minds could be as open as this sky shot, we might actually be able to take into our hearts a heaven that is right here and right now. I feel a movement in my heart.

Could it be the stirring of a soul bird? The inner sap beginning to dream of moving upward through the tree's canopy? Or perhaps the flutter of a deep love that begins to seek expression in the outer world? I think of my Dad during his last days when cancer had confined him to his third floor bedroom. He called it his "aerie"...a word used to describe an eagles nest. I think of a dream I had years ago of an eagle throwing itself against a window in an effort to break the glass...and I remember Stephen promising to find me an eagle feather at the National Zoo when we were newly weds. I didn't believe him. He found me one anyway. There is something about eagles and the ability to do the impossible...perhaps a heart letting go of fear and doubt so that the impossible can be manifest. This is a quality also ascribed to love...love gives us the power to accomplish the so called impossible.

So with this wonderful sky photo as a prompt to envision the healing power of the eagle, I send out the great love of the eagle's energy to surround my cousin and mother-in-law in their struggles and I become filled with gratitude for all the blessings I am able to enjoy in my life today. I see Sam's sky and a timelapse sky that Will posted a few weeks ago. And I recall a poem I wrote once that began..."My heart is a wide dark sky" and today I feel like the light has come on. Happy Saint Valentines Day.