As I sipped my coffee this rainy morning, watching the happenings at the feeders through the kitchen window, I spied the young male cardinal tucked solitary into the lower branches of an Elderberry Queen.
I followed the cardinal’s downward tilted gaze and laughed; a male squirrel that I have christened “Gets Along with Birds” was frantically rummaging through the new morning offering of seeds upon a split log.
Undoubtedly the intention of our squirrel friend was to bury most of his seed finds yet he appeared consumed with an equal desire to fill his belly with these delicious morsels; his frantic pace possibly a result of irritation stemming from his own indecisiveness.
Resident finches and sparrows chirp as they congregate happily around the iron ground feeder; a clear signal that their greet and eat this morning is an enjoyable one. A few errant doves waddle about the brassica bed, pecking here and there as they roam, occasionally extending a wing as the steadier rain dwindles to a lighter drizzle.
Nowhere that my eyes did drift had I spotted the female cardinal so seemingly her mid-morning interlude kept her elsewhere; I glanced back to where her companion had been a few moments before finding he had now placed himself on the curled iron top of the shepherds hook while still awaiting his turn to feed at the log.
I found myself drifting into a brief reflection as to how I arrived at this moment of such contentment and peace afforded to me through my relationship with these petite wild-ones.
It has only been a few short years since my three beloved fur children had returned to Spirit yet I see now clearly that it was in their departure that the space was created and seeded for these precious moments that I am now experiencing to exist.
Though the transition of my little soul mates and occurrence of subsequent events was not the only time I had experienced this truth it would seem that the gravity of my grief during this most recent “loss” delivered this wisdom to me in a manner that I now behold as Truth.
It is with that last thought that I hear quite simply;
“Every Parting offers us a Gift; sometimes it just takes us a while to unwrap it.”
And so it IS.
S.B. 9.22.2022
Into the Mystic 