A Stunning Sight

Peace Eagle (Turkey Vulture) Greeting the Morning Sun – Photo: L. Weikel

Looking out both my bedroom and office windows this morning, this was the vision that greeted me. It was a stunning sight.

While I’m feeling a bit of foreboding over what may unfold in Ukraine over the weekend, I have to admit that the appearance of this magnificent bird, wings upraised in the morning sun, felt like a symbol of hope.

Vultures are associated with life and death, those liminal states that mark our passages between one reality and another. They’re also experts on cleaning up the environment: these raptors perform the unenviable job of eating the dead. They clear out the remains of those no longer living, thereby making room for the new to be born.

On a Cusp

It feels like the world as we know it is approaching a cusp, a choice point between what’s gone before and what may or may not be our future. I know with absolute assurance that I’m not the only one feeling the weighty nature of this point in time.

I happen to love vultures and was even taught many years ago by a Metis teacher of ours to call them Peace Eagles instead of vultures. We raised our boys to call vultures Peace Eagles. And yet it wasn’t until this very moment as I sit here writing this post that I’m fully comprehending the message of PEACE I received this morning.

Cleanse and Imagine

I’ll gratefully accept that message. But if I’m honest with myself, deep down in my heart I know there will be treachery and brutality in the near term before any such peace comes to pass.

Ah, but there’s also a reason why the feathers of vulture – and its big brother, Condor – are often used to cleanse the energy fields of people and places, especially before ceremony. Those feathers scoop out and sweep away heavy energies that no longer (or never) served the highest good. They also are said to aid in the release of the souls of the dead and disconnect us from attachments to malignant energies.

Perhaps when we think about Ukraine we can imagine a massive Peace Eagle soaring high above the insanity and cruelty, flapping its powerful wings to disperse the toxicity being inflicted upon it into the ethers.

It’s a thought. It’s a strategy to distract our imaginations away from the horrors of war toward creatively envisioning a future of peace, calm, and freedom instead.