“Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it? They fall, and falling, they’re given wings.” – Rumi
On New Year’s Day, there was a murder on the golf course behind my house. Hundreds of crows descended on the fairway and green of the ninth hole, cawing to one another and flying in tight circles. Although memories of Hitchcock were the first to arrive at the base of my attention, the fact that crows are symbolic of rebirth in most shamanic traditions gave me a lot of hope as we started a new year. I’ve seen four large murders like that since the beginning of the year. Yesterday’s was the most thrilling.
Around the eleven o’clock hour, they convened in the oak trees that grow from my back yard and cover the house. My wife and I stood on the lanai in amazement, looking up through the screen at the magnitude of the avian festival. Hundreds of them hopped from branch to branch, flew all around the tree, and cawed excitedly. Considering I had just finished the promotional video for my latest book, I again, took it as a good omen. It got even better when a flock of smaller birds joined them.
I’m not sure if they were finches or starlings, but they were much smaller than the crows. They took to the tree next to the crows and started singing their songs, the two species coming together to offer us a wonderfully melodic symphony of caws, tweets, and twitters.
Actually, all day yesterday, it seems as if I were seeing birds of all sorts. On my morning walk around the golf course, I saw a great blue heron, a hawk, white herons, an anynga, ibis pecking at the grass, sandhill cranes dancing for me, and a grey heron let me get within a few feet without flying away. In the most prevalent paradigm I’ve come to understand, birds represent thoughts. Yesterday, it seemed as though they were flocking in a quite miraculous way.
When birds are hatched from the hard shell which protects them as they develop, they are fed from the very mouth of their parents until their wings are strong enough to flap. Then, the birds jump from the nest in anticipation of the flight they are called to. Very few actually fly their first time. Most fall to the ground with great thanksgiving for the ability of their soft bones to bounce.
As we bring new ideas into the world, the seed of a thought will grow into an egg of theory, protected by whatever concepts surround it as it develops into an idea. Once it grows beyond the concepts which nurtured it to maturity and breaks through limiting perceptions, we continue to feed the idea as it expands, cultivating it through conversation and consideration until it is strong enough to fly on its own. Just as with the baby bird, few ideas will fly on their first attempt.
Nevertheless, ideas do bounce. Though some may take longer than others, as our ideas continue to bounce from place to place and mind to mind, they eventually take flight. As this year continues to offer us a multitude of days in which thoughts will flock around us longing to take wing, continue to cultivate the dreams, ideas, and visions you long to see soar.
Photo courtesy of Pixdaus
Steve McAllister
Steve McAllister is an actor, musician, accomplished author, filmmaker, and the man behind Your Daily Groove at Modern Hippie Mag. His most recent novel, The McAllister Code is available now as a Limited Edition Advanced Copy paperback. Find Steve on Twitter, @InkenSoul. Read his reviews and articles here.
