Eagles and Birthdays

Insights on how we speak and listen to the truths alive in us and others

For my son’s 18th birthday he wanted to take a nature walk on the ICE AGE trail. Remember that movie - the one about the unlikely friends who come together to form a family?

Here’s our time to do that as a humanity. As it turns out, a warthog, a heyena and a porcupine are showing us how to live together in peace. From positivenewsus.org:

So a porcupine, a hyena, and a warthog walk into a burrow…

No, it’s not the setup to a bad joke, but the abstract in a scientific paper published in the African Journal of Ecology which found they all were able to co-habit the burrow.

Despite the cramped confines of the dug-out den being flush with quills, teeth, and tusks, no blood was spilled on the pages of this rental agreement.

In fact, the scientists, who discovered this novel phenomenon while observing camera traps outside hyena dens in a wildlife preserve in Kenya, suggest that it was, in fact, a “healthy respect for the threats presented by their mutually formidable weaponry.”

Den-sharing isn’t completely novel, it has been observed among porcupines, pine martens, foxes, and badgers in the same hill-burrow complex in Italy in 2019.

However, this is the first time it’s been seen in African animals. In one of the hollows could be found up to, seven hyenas, three warthogs, and two porcupines, and in another, 11 hyenas, six warthogs, and two porcupines.

They shared the space for months, and would sometimes come and go within minutes of each other.

My husband drove and our son sat in back with the dogs, because he figured out which seat has the lowest EMFs and chose that one. The dogs were seat belted in too, and a good thing, as they otherwise might be prone to either jump out the window or go from being a backseat driver to a front seat driver - a situation which is both uninsured and more importantly, would test just how much intervention G-d is willing to give to keep us on this whirling blue and green planet of love.

When we were nearly there, we saw an eagle soaring in the sky. On our way home after an exhilarating and short walk, we headed for home. And on our way home, either the same eagle or another similar one again greeted our skyward eyes. A while ago I was looking up good news stories, as it is so important to fill ourselves with these, as well as create the energy and the new we want to be/see/receive for our future and our future generations.

Once endangered, bald eagles have made a remarkable comeback in Wisconsin. Their recovery was made possible by the national ban on the pesticide DDT, added protections under federal and state endangered species laws, river cleanups, citizen donations and monitoring by DNR’s Natural Heritage Conservation staff…

dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/WildlifeHabitat/baldeagle.html

Both my son and I are truth-speakers, each in our own way. I have been in awe of the way sometimes my son speaks his truth through silence. When someone - be it a relative or neighbor - says something that isn’t his truth, he often will simply allow the space to be, without offering agreement, nor being combative or direct. He has his dad’s east Asian in him, yet he is willing and able to stand up for himself and those he loves when he sees fit. He also expresses his truth in a way that blends authenticity and the beauty way with such sweetness through his music. My style is often a bit more lovingly, dynamically in your face. Long ago I had a coaching client who called me “Ruthlessly loving.” If spirit wants me to not open my mouth and speak exactly what I think, spirit has to give me a clear sense to shut up and take a different approach. I try to listen. I’ve learned it is often helpful to ask permission before offering feedback, ideas or a perspective that may be at odds or expand in an unexpected way, the one that the person in front of me is currently working off of in their mind and heart. haven’t always known when to be quiet. I have been an open book at times it would have been better to exercise discretion. I thought everyone was more comfortable with the truth, since that is how I am. It turned out to be a really big assumption that I have had to learn from. Sometimes another feeling uncomfortable is exactly what they need, but my goal is now to speak that which might cause upset only if it is truly aligned divinely, to the best of my knowledge, rather than for the sake of saying it if, having grown hopefully a tad bit wiser, I get a little inner memo that the thing I’m thinking doesn’t need to be heard by this other person or people. The positive side of being innately direct is that I simply don’t have casual conversations - all of my interactions that I can remember, for quite some time, have been rather epic. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve learned to appreciate simply expressing thanks for the sun or empathy for the cold and rain or when to simply acknowledge anothers presence politely and with warm goodwill and move on. All of my actual conversations are phenomenal or at least darn good and interesting, may or may not involve a hug and usually include speaking about both soul and controversial things that overlap with soul and the human world.

“Eagle teaches how to embrace an elevated perspective while bravely speaking your truth.”

One such conversation occurred the other day just prior to my son’s recital. Alot of other activities were happening in the same space, it being the second floor of the building downtown with bare breasted lady sculpture posed just before you get to the display about Jesus that the Christians have up, which is just feet from the one about the Separation of Church and State. It’s a dizzying building filled with remnants of Greek culture and all sorts of weird symbols and halls that jut off from the main circle, leading to little rooms where officials and representatives of various interests meet. I asked an older fellow where they bathrooms might be and he said, “You’ll find them in the inner circle .” I chuckled and said, “Yep, the inner circle is always where you’ll find them.” My husband was a stalwart support because on this particular day that energy in this nexus of Christmas, Dreidle Dreidle and Bare Breasted Greek lady - and all the inner circle stuff that is how the now-decaying and soon-dying old power structures wheel and deal, was not suitable for me feeling good at all. I nearly didn’t go, but in spite of having a sense that the vibes would be tough on me, I felt the way had been cleared for me to go. As we waited, having arrived a little early, I made multiple trips out to the marble plaza to breathe fresh air and seek the sky. On my last trip back before settling in to listen to various 30 second pieces, with a few more advanced, longer ones, I saw a man very near me with a huge telescope-like camera that was clearly for professional use. I complimented it. And then, when he seemed disappointed with its absolute, robotic effectiveness, I returned his creatorhood to him and watched him go from sadly contracting out “everything” to this modern digital beast, to recollecting outloud that his ideas are inside his head, that he is still the director. And then he began to tell me about in spite of his misgivings about social media, and what a weird place it is, he’s met some of the kindest, most authentic people through it. “Not everyone is sparkly though.” He then shared with me about the challenges of spiritual awakening. Now in this conversation he did almost all the talking, but my energy was loud in saying, “I am the kind of person you can talk to about this sort of thing.” I observed things, such as his ability to disentangle himself from technology that allowed him to assert outloud things he feels. I offered resonance. He felt free to share. It was beautiful.

And my son in his way shared his freedom of expression: He played Peace - a song he wrote - on the Capitol.

Afterward when I was chatting with his piano teacher, and we both resonated with the intention I shared that, “hopefully by next year we can have peace in the world,” and she recounted her adult student who said, “How about we start by not killing each other. Let’s start with that, how about?” I told her about an empathy spell in the kids' book series, “Wings of Fire.” Different tribes of dragons are fighting, and this one dragon wants to help stop the fighting with her magic object, but without becoming a controlling dictator like the fighting dragon’s leader, who uses magic to make dragons do what he wants. She settles on a 1 minute empathy spell, in which all the dragons can feel and truly understand what its like to be the other dragons - what they like, who they love, what their insecurities and worries are, what they fear most, what matters to them in their heart. Needless to say, the dragons stop fighting.

They find another way.