I believe that guardian angels take many shapes and forms.
I've always known that mine come to me as birds...
From as far back as I can remember I have always been
surrounded by birds... and gifted with their feathers...
little notes from the Universe
just to let me know...
I'm being watched over...
and to remind me to celebrate life...
The Judgement of the Birds ~ Loren Eiseley
"The sun was warm there...and the murmurs of forest life blurred softly away into my sleep.
When I awoke...dimly aware of some commotion and outcry in the clearing...the light was
slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glade was lit like some vast cathedral.
I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of light...and there on the extended
branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak.
The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestlings parents...who flew helplessly
in circles about the clearing. The sleek black monster was indifferent to them. He gulped...
whetted his beak on the dead branch a moment and sat still. Up to that point the little
tragedy had followed the usual pattern. But suddenly...out of all the area of woodland...
a soft sound of complaint began to rise. Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a
dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents.
No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some instinctive common
misery...the bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade filled with their soft rustling
and their cries. They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer.
There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated...that they knew. He was the bird
of death.
And he...the murderer...the black bird at the heart of life...sat on there...glistening
in the common light...formidable...unmoving...unperturbed...untouchable.
The sighing died. It was then I saw the judgement. It was the judgement of
life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never
hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged. For in the midst of protest...they
forgot the violence. There...in that clearing...the crystal note of a song sparrow
lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally...after painful fluttering...another took the
song...and then another...the song passing from one bird to another...doubtfully
at first...as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten. Till suddenly
they took heart and sang from many throats joyously together as birds are
known to sing. They sang because life is sweet and sunlight is beautiful. They
sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten
the raven...for they were the singers of life...and not death."
When Women Were Birds ~ Terry Tempest Williams
"Once upon a time when women were birds...there was the simple
understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal
the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten...
that the world is meant to be celebrated."
