A Bird Pooped on My Head!

"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly." — Langston Hughes

I was working in my garden the other day - bare hands in the dirt pulling weeds, mind having a conversation that has yet to happen, body humming to Lola Young, " I just want to be me. Is that not allowed?", - when something warm landed on my head. Not warm like a sunbeam, warm like a bird just dropped a deuce on me.

And it wasn't some polite little poop, it was a full-on cosmic dump!

As you can imagine, my shoulders cinched to my ears, and my hands, now tightly fisted and ready to pound away, reflexively shot up open palmed around my head like a shield. I was livid! I was like, "Wtf did that bird eat?", as I stomped into the house, cursing the sky, half laughing, half taking myself way too seriously.

But, as I crossed the threshold of the front doorway flanked by Buddha (Clarity) and Tara (Compassion), something sacred stirred inside and said: Sometimes, the Sacred is messy. Sometimes the messenger looks like a bird, and sometimes the message sounds like shit.
 

Birds Have Always Been Messengers.

Across time and in all traditions and myths, birds have been seen as symbols of spiritual freedom, strength, divine communication, and transition between realms of birth and death.

These realms include the infinite dimensions of emotion enlivened by love and fear - and the earthly stories (and myths) of humans meeting (gods in) these emotions while Dreaming (Oneiros), Desiring (Epithumia), Destroying (Olethros), or in Delirium (Mania). Each realm lives within the guardrails of Destiny (three fates), navigating an odyssey of inevitable Death (Thanatos) and Eternal Life (Athanatos).

No matter the myth, birds carry the voices of our ancestors. They appear as angels, trusted sources in disguise as incarnate guides from God.

And, here I was - awakening into God's Kingdom and crowned not in gold, but in a dollop of sacred guano.  This bird hadn't just bombed me; it offered a blessing: messengers rarely come when or how we expect.

Don't Cling to Meaning ... Let it Land.

As I washed the muck from my scalp, I remembered this Perennial fable: 

Once upon a time ...

There was a bird up North, so caught up in its joy that it forgot to migrate before the frost. When it tried to fly, its wings froze, and it fell into the snow below. As this was happening, a cow was passing below and dropped a heap of dung right on the bird. At first, the bird was uncomfortable, but soon the warmth of the dung thawed its wings. The bird was so happy that it started to tweet, which caught the attention of a nearby cat. The cat freed the bird from the pile of dung and then ate it.

The end. 

What are the morals?

• Not everyone who sh*ts on you is your enemy.

• Not everyone who rescues you from your sh*t is your friend.

• And, if you're warm and safe in your pile of shit ... maybe keep your mouth shut.

Of course, I burst out laughing because that was me - these thoughts and these meanings were filed with angry, negative assumptions! And, I had been so caught up in tweeting - doing, helping, and over-functioning - that I wasn't appreciating the quiet joy and heavenly wealth right under my feet, like, "Hello!!?!" So the sky dropped a deuce on my head, which, I remind you, is a rare occurrence.

Real Wealth is in Letting Go.

I couldn't stay angry or grossed out; doing so would only prolong the stories and emotions of those initial thoughts in ways that overconsumption prolongs a feeling of "less than". If I didn't change my saccharin ways, I was destined to live in victimhood and rage. But something shifted when I passed through the threshold of Compassion:

I was relieved of the tension between my shoulder blades and scapula (the point where wings of freedom are attached), and simultaneously released from feelings of unsafe, humiliated, or whatever desire was clinging to. And, I was released from the destiny of that "conversation that had yet to happen" in my head.

And that's when I felt it: Awe.

I was relieved of the lofty ideas of how things should be, or why this happened, or what this means, which limited me from being in Awe. It wasn't about "Yay! I was Shit on!", or some empty platitude of "What Luck!". It's a complete absence of meaning that allows us to hear the messages of the Universe, and which Love encodes with compassion.

And, when we can be available to witness something so beautiful - something intangible that emanates truth and eternal wisdom without condition - we no longer live unconsciously in doubt; we have the experiences that no longer feel the need to justify our existence.

And that is when we soar, dharmically dumping poop on fallen birds who have forgotten to come home for the winter. 🕊️