The Finches and the Dove

 

Image by edbo23 from Pixabay

2020 has been a rough year…to say the least. I’d been feeling down and wondering if good things were coming again. And then the finches showed up. Four house or purple finches, one each day practically on my faux balcony outside my office window. Two even serenaded me. This was a few weeks ago. Before that I had seen two dead gold finches. Symbolically it was about me focusing on all that could go wrong. The purple finches came to remind me to focus on the good and the good that was coming.

Then on this Monday morning a mourning dove landed on my balcony and kept looking in at me. The mourning dove is about faith and peace. Eventually she left and then a purple finch came to see me right after. It was chirping as it peered in at me. That morning I’d been struggling with feelings of disappointment with myself and what seems like a long, hard struggle to make my way in the world. The birds, Nature, Spirit had come to remind me again to trust it’s going to be okay.

And of course, the birds have been showing up. I had made the intention to live more connected to Nature and to live more mythopoeically…to see the meaning and symbolism all around me.

When we peer beyond the veil of our own little world, we see everything is connected and flowing. We see the dance that goes on behind the scenes. And when we align with the flow, magic happens. The struggle falls away. The effort doesn’t.

The push and pull of creative tension is still there as is the simple though sometimes wrenching pain of birth and growth. Those are a part of life, of entering the world of form. Joy is a part of it too. But struggle is our resistance to life. It’s us asking does it have to be this way. It doesn’t have to, but in the moment it is. We get to accept that and then enter the dance to make changes. We are not at the whim of this life of ours and we’re not in full control. Sometimes we get to lead and sometimes Life does.

I always loved to dance. As a child I dreamed of being a ballerina. I got books on ballet from the library and learned some of the moves. I listened to different kinds of music and let them move me. I look back and see there was a lesson on how to live being learned in all that. I’m still learning it.

The finches, the doves, Nature, Spirit remind me I am already in the midst of magic. To be out of alignment, to feel out of the order of things, is simply me not acknowledging a greater what is and yet to be.

We are always in the dance of becoming, swirling through the darkness of possibility until we become brighter and can see the next step. I take a deep breath and plié, étendre, relevé.