The Bird of Time

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In the final days of my mother’s life, I carried with me a book that was one of my father’s favourites – Edward Fitzgerald’s “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”.

On those nights when I sat in the dark alone with her as she slept, I would read to her the poetry my father once read aloud.

“Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring

Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:

The Bird of Time has but a little way to flutter

and the Bird is on the Wing.

Yesterday, as I began work on the final 2-page spread of my Sheltered Wonder art journal, the Bird of Time flew onto the page, reminding me that “Time is fleeting. Savour every moment and then, with a loving heart, let every moment go and flow with grace into the next.”

This moment in which I sit typing, watching the river flow deep and fast as spring runoff swells its waters, it is the only moment I have in which to be present within the beauty and the mystery of life and death.

Three months ago, as I sat in the dark of night in my mother’s room, reading to her, singing, holding her hand or sitting silently within the stillness of her breathing, the Bird of Time was fluttering its wings calling her home to where she yearned to go – back to her family, back into the arms of my father, her beloved Louis, back to the God who had never forsaken her.

This morning, I sit writing and the Bird of Time is on the Wing, calling me, just as the Egyptian goddess did on an earlier page, to ‘Awaken and Dare’.

There is much brokenness in this world of ours. Much despair. Anger. Fear. Death. Turmoil. Angst. Inequality. Injustice. Prejudice. Racism. Apathy. Confusion. Silence. Condemnation.

And always, in the brokenness, there is the wholeness of life. There is Love.

Yesterday, as I walked in the forest with Beaumont the Sheepadoodle and watched him run and chase the ball and stop to sniff grass and dandelions in full bloom, I was reminded of just how precious this moment is. And how filled with miracles life can be.

This turmoil that Covid has brought, the death of one man under the knee of another that has erupted in cries for justice, change and equality, perhaps they are the carriers of the miracle we have needed to force us to stop chasing after dreams of more wealth and power and to become present in the beauty of this life we embody of planet earth, our shared home.

Perhaps, they are bidding us to dare to examine our human condition and awaken to its priceless beauty, a beauty that affects each of us the same, yet different.

Every human being has skin covering a skeleton made up of bones upon which arteries and veins, organs and muscles rely. The inner workings of our human condition are the same for each of us. It is just the outer manifestation of the miracle of our life that is different for all 7.5+ bilion of us.

And, just as my mother’s passing was not the ending of my life but the beginning of a new phase, the miracle that Covid brings and the miracle that has erupted with George Floyd’s death is not a symptom of the dying off of our humanity. It is our awakening.

What we do in this moment, right now, matters. It matters how we respond, how we step forward, how we find healing, how we give and find and receive forgiveness. How we share grace.

It all matters, just as the lives of those who have died under Covid’s insidious presence matter. Just as Black Lives Matter.

It is the miracle of these times. They are not calling us to rise up and state, ‘my life matters more’. They are urging us to claim that other lives matter equally as much. And to do something about the matter.

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20 thoughts on “The Bird of Time”

  1. #alllivesmatter

    The COVID-19 affect – has been catastrophic, and we have no idea when an end will be in sight, but we are also observing that it was a time when the ‘pause button’ was pushed on everything. As the pause button is being lifted, issues and emotions resume and explode, much like a pin will collide with a balloon, race issues will collide with riot-gear toting police in the cities of the world. China continues to ‘absorb’ Hong Kong, hatred and racism resume their default postures. It might look to an untrained observer that nothing has changed. There are strong arguments that it has, strong ones that it hasn’t.

    What has changed is the engagement of a new generation and as much as governments try, they will not change until citizens overthrow them – hopefully in a peaceful manner at the voting booth.

    I was heartened yesterday – in the 24 hours following Stockwell Day’s limply-racist comments, he was swiftly booted from his employ by CBC, by the Telus Board, and by the McMillan law firm. Swift, decisive – and thud, a former leader of a right wing political force – kicked to the curb.

    The times, they are a changing … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90WD_ats6eE

    And this is June – hopefully we’ll avoid black days in July https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPXL3iEVnCM

    M

    Liked by 1 person

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    • Two great songs Mark! And yes, Stockwell Day’s fall was a very welcome and significant event! There is justice. Sometimes, it takes longer than I’d like, but I am grateful his racist comments were so summarily dealt with quickly and decisively!

      for me, The Great Pause has held such joyful possibility, even in the darkness of fear and worry and uncertainty.

      Thanks my friend! ❤

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  6. I don’t know how I missed this one; but as I procrastinate to write, I decided to clean up my emails.
    I so love that your father and then you read to your mother. That is such a beautiful and intimate gift.
    Always such wonderful prose from you.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

    • Thank you Dale — that it is — reading aloud. A beautiful and intimate gift. And.. a little secret… sometimes, I go into my studio because I’m procrastinating about writing… 🙂 I started a writing project awhile ago… and still, I procrastinate. 🙂 Another writer and I have a Friday afternoon writer’s circle — want to join us? It’s to encourage us to write, to stretch our writer’s muscles — since we began at the beginning of May, she’s written 30,000 words in a new project. I am not quite so prolific but I have completed and am editing a short story of 3,000 words. 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

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