I woke up this morning to one of the cats chittering on the bed, tail flicking, intent on the chickadee winging from screen to screen on the porch outside the bedroom. It happens every spring and I have no idea how they get in, unless it's through the hole the cat's have created for their ease of entering and leaving the porch. You would think that once in the birds would find their way out again.
I am prepared. I grab the bungee cord kept on a hook for just this purpose and secure the screen door to the porch rail. I convince the cat, against her instincts, that she does not want to be out there with us and I begin to talk the bird out the door. Murmuring as if to a child, "It's okay. Don't be afraid. Come this way." Then going still to give her time to think. Just as I begin to wonder if I will have to throw a towel over her she lands on the open space where the door was and she is gone. Up into the huge soaring pine on the edge of the hill.
Don't I fly around like that? Desperate for a way out - blind to how I got here but able to see so clearly where I want to be.
As a child I used to fantasize about these worlds within worlds. This bird on this porch, with me the compassionate and benevolent great being seemed just like me as the bird with some other great being opening the door to safety, and so on and so on. Worlds within worlds. This could keep me occupied for some time, even if it didn't particularly provide comfort. More often than not, I got lost in trying to figure out where the rescue was, why it did not seem to come. I grew into an adult who believed that freedom from love and all those things that become walls, was where safety lay.
Now I believe otherwise. Love is what frees us. Love is the power that opens the door. After loving and being loved well, connection no longer feels like a trap. The door opens, the walls disappear, and I am free to come and go. Holy ground, full of possibility. There really is only love or fear. I choose love, over and over again.
beautiful
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