It was a ghost-like silhouette of an owl, not a verifiable owl in nature. During the day, I was creating Beaded Bubo (the piece pictured above), but in the dark, Night Eagle was working on me. Owl was present in the both/and.
How often do we fail to experience the commingling of matter and spirit, by our lack of awareness?
Did I conjure up this owl-form flying over me? Did I need to believe that there was something more than the histrionic news of daily events? Possibly, but I don’t think so. If I’ve learned anything from Life, it is that wholeness encourages awe within ordinary reality.
Can you feel the difference in melodramatics and wonder?
I can sit outside in the early morning hours, wait for months and never see anything unusual. Or, I can be present to the stars or clouds over me and let the night sky be magical enough. If it is not, perhaps I need to strengthen my connection to the Sacred within.
On occasion, something rare may happen. That said, chasing the phenomenal only makes it more illusive.
Members of the genus Bubo family are not always a welcome sight to people living close to the land. Many Native Americans equate seeing an owl with a physical death, but also with truth.
Do you need the meaning to be either/or, or can you bridge a relationship between two seemingly disparate things? Consider death and truth, or spirit and flesh.
Do we miss mystical moments with our excessive need for rational answers? We talk about a spirit world and an earthly one. In the animal kingdom, Owl comes as close as any to modeling how to live in the mysterious both/and.
What if spirit and flesh are together in you and in order to experience both requires only awareness? What distracts you from this level of attention?
Unarguably, owls I hear in the wee hours, and Beaded Bubo, are matter. Still, I wonder about the both/and, and how much I miss that lies beyond what I can hear, see or prove.
Making Spirit Flesh*
Death and truth: Metaphorically speaking, could it be as simple as dying to an old identity, in order to live from a place that feels truer for you, now?
Flesh and spirit: Practice being present to the sensate. Perhaps it will lead to the both/and.
