"Brother, I need your help," I wrote in a Facebook email.
"Once again, I gave, he took and it hurts."
My powerful brother arrived at my door on Friday morning, carrying with him the warm body
of a dead Barnyard Owl. "You've brought me my other wing," I cried.
"Now, I can fly!"
Last January, I received word that the Prosperity Hive's death was imminent and
then, that weekend, I was gifted my first, dead Barnyard Owl while at Vista's gem, the
Emerald Village. At that time, another local brother artist led me through a ceremony in which we took the bird's offerings as we sang its spirit back to Source, returning its body to the soil. Since then, I've passed many parts of that owl - talons, feathers and a wing - on. The left wing I offered to an ex-lover's sanctuary in Carlsbad, where I immediately flew to after the Hive died in order to lick my wounds and nurture my depleted soul.
A king, he is unaware of how our most primal woundings play out in these moments, now. To protect his withering sense of self, he isolates himself and refuses to address the pull of his true purpose. Matching my passionate fire, we met in sacred Time, but I wasn't really the one he wanted to meet. It's a painful wound that keeps being re-opened. Yet, he was always spot on in calling me out on how I can move through the world - as though life is meant to be difficult.
So, B. arrives and I gather my sisters around me. Not too ironically, I'd been moving through a week when I was intentionally pushing one of them really hard - using Kali Ma energy to produce a shift in her awareness. I'd spent the past eight plus months working by her side, on her personal passion, helping to birth it into the world. Yes, she also happened to be the ex-girlfriend of said Carlsbad lover. "Why" she wanted to know, "did you engage in a sexual dance with him?" "I don't know," I shared. "It's not me who is deciding my path, or our interconnections. I'm simply listening and responding."
She arrived at my house this past Friday morning, too. I shared with her what was taking place. "Owl is my Spirit guide," she said, following a morning set in motion by hands far greater than ours. K, who created our vibrant home and is leaving San Diego next week, lifted the Owl up and placed it on our makeshift altar. B. sang four Native songs, chanting and "Hey Na"-ing as I rose and swooped with my wings in each cardinal direction. "Don't think I know what I'm doing," he told us. His chest vibrating with song, he concluded the reverie as deep purging racked his gut. He, too, is exorcising his own violent dis-ease - the imbalance of all the time that has come before with forcing a way, taking what isn't ours and disrespecting life.
Before his sisters, he cried for Mama Earth. "Please," he begged, "let me be humble without having to be humbled. Please, be gentle with me." Before his sisters, he cried for protection of his daughter and granddaughter, his son and loved ones. Tears streaming from his eyes, snot hanging from his nose, his pure vulnerability was the ultimate, tell tale sign of a balanced masculinity. It was with honor and privilege that we got to experience it.
Later, we reflected on this deep Masculine wound that we as women hold, feel and touch in our own Feminine bodies. The emotional voids of our men. The physical absences of our fathers. Their continued rejection and denial of us, yes, and of their selves, first and foremost. We miss them. We love them. We want to, once again, feel whole, held and nurtured. This is what we pray for.
