Eagle Missing Inaction

I have been missing with inaction lately as it comes to this reflective journal because I have been busy working my way down a path in a storm.  I could not see further than a foot in front of me, and everywhere I stepped was washed out  terrain.   Have you ever thought you were in Atlanta and all of a sudden everyone is speaking a foreign language, nothing looks familiar and you realize you are in Little Havana, Miami, or some such place?  And you know no one in Little Havana and are completely incapable of appropriately expressing your need to get home...excuse me, sir, can you tell me how I got here?  Blank stare and "no comprende."  Your reality suddenly does not exist, and you realize that all of your coping techniques that you thought to be so effective do not work.   All that study, discipline and search for spirituality got you no where.  You are nothing.  If anything, completely stupid.  You are once again lost.  Dark Night of the Soul?  Gee, I didn't intend that, but when do we pencil in "dark night of the soul" on our calendars?  That's the point of a dark night, isn't it?  Sometimes we have things to learn.  We aren't there yet and too tired to go on.  But I know that one step leads to another leads to a brisk walk leads to a run leads to flight. 

One of my favorite Bible verses is Isaiah 40:31.  It says:

 "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagels; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." 

Now I don't know what "waiting upon the Lord" means exactly.  My best guess is waiting on the Spirit to refill, clarify, comfort and direct.  I once read that part of the life cycle of the eagle includes a shedding of feathers, rendering all eagles, at some point, incapable of flight.  During this time other eagles bring food and water to the downed bird until the feathers grow back and the eagle can again fly.  There's no pretense there.  The downed eagle cannot pretend to be all right; he needs help and the instinct of his breed to preserve him. 

Are humans this way?  I think so.  Our breed probably will bring us food and water when we lose our feathers....if they know our feathers are gone.  And I am grateful for friends through whom the Spirit brings me food and water until I can again fly.

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[Brie Dodson]

These words moved me: "I have been busy working my way down a path in a storm. I could not see further than a foot in front of me, and everywhere I stepped was washed out terrain."

For many years I spent a lot of time in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, on land with river frontage on a flood plain. Major floods supposedly came once every forty years or so. In practice, that meant two or even three times a year, in a bad year. One learned to listen for the sound of rising water. It tore at everything in its path, rushing past with a roar: a frightening, wild sound that would not allow sleep. One waited anxiously: how high up the hill would the waters rise? Surely the house would always be safe. Wouldn't it? One year, the flood came almost all the way up the hill we counted on for safety. We knew many others whose homes were destroyed.

The next morning, if there had been sleep at all, one woke dreading the first look outside. Still, one had to look. It was almost a moral obligation to confront that which one did not want to know. The result was always devastation. It took time to learn the full extent of the destruction. Inevitably, the riverfront was reshaped, often drastically - "washed-out terrain" indeed. Aren't our lives that way, sometimes? In the worst floods, land was destroyed, carved away by the torrent, never to return. Other times, the aftermath of destruction laid open new vistas, suddenly bare of trees. They looked strange at first. One never quite got used to them, but there was something new and not entirely bad about the spareness.

Life is like that, it seems to me. It may seem destroyed, then afterward, one slowly perceives new vistas. Sometimes, the new vistas reveal only great loss. What is gone will never return. Other times the vistas are cleaner, simpler than before, and ultimately one finds a certain relief.

One never knows how the flood will turn out. And at the same time, one cannot escape the torrent.