Mercury must be retrograde (it isn’t!).  Communications have been miserable.  Technology frustrating.  Hours have been invested into a seemingly simple problem with no resolve.

In the midst of the vexation,  I am standing at the kitchen sipping a glass of water laced with a red cedar spagyric, watching out the window.  The usual suspects are all here – Chestnut-sided and Black-capped Chickadee with their out of town cousin the Mountain Chickadee, Evening Grosbeak and Red-breasted Nuthatch – all taking turns at the seed feeder.  The overgrown rhododendrons,  the water birch and the moss covered ground are busy with Towhee, Junco and Gold-crowned Sparrows, lots of sparrows.  Suddenly a pair, male and female, of Red Crossbill land on the glass patio table.  I catch my breath, not taking my eyes off them.  Crossbill have visited before but rarely.  She flies out of view.  He is there on the glass, with his cross bill picking up bits of this and that, the samara of a big leaf maple tree.  I am struck with the metaphor of their cross bills and the challenge of communications.  Then he turns his head to the side and presses it against the glass and takes a drink of the leftover rainwater that thinly covered the surface of the table.

I burst into tears – a holy moment – before me was perfection.  In that moment, the simplicity of a beautiful little pale red bird drinking water, sustaining himself with the bare little that was available, I was snapped to attention.  Be present, in this moment – for it is holy!

Really, aren’t they all holy moments?  Yes, of course they are.

“…I’ve learned something about times like these.  In times like these, you have to grow big enough inside to hold both the loss and the hope.”     ~ Uncle Mogey, from Strange As This Weather Has Been, Ann Pancake.

This moment did not resolve my communications and still it lifted my heart. It changed my vibration to witness. I am grateful. Mercury is not retrograde, but January 21st it will be – pause for caution and thoughtful consideration. How to proceed?

In gratitude for the medicine of the winged ones.  A’ho!

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations