Do They Really Hear Us?

“Not another ritual!” These words echoed in my mind as I accepted the small gift. However, not wanting to be rude, I found myself saying, “Thank you, I really haven’t heard of this before.”

“There’s a card that tells you all about it,” she said.

With as much excitement as I could muster, I opened the card and read the explanation.

Immediately I was touched by the Native American symbolism, which was so eloquently used for this ceremony of releasing negative energy. The package contained a small amount of White Sage, a seashell, and a book of matches. The White Sage was used to represent the earth, the seashell was used to represent water, and the matches used to represent fire. The intention behind this ritual was to combine the four elements of our world, earth, air, fire, and water together, and fan the resulting smoke around an area or object to lift any negative energy up to the light of God for purification.

I loved it! All too often, I had seen rituals performed with little or no thought given to its real meaning. I had eventually concluded that rituals weren’t for me. But this was different. Something struck a deep chord within me (perhaps a past life?) and I couldn’t wait to try it out. In fact, I was getting ready to move into a new house and thought this would be the perfect place to give it a whirl. The only thing missing, according to the instructions, were the feathers, which represent air.

At this point in my life, I drove about 45 minutes one-way to get to work. At least a third of this was through open fields and forest. I remembered that, from time to time, I had seen dead birds on the side of the road and had the thought that I would stop the next time I saw one and take its feathers. Now keep in mind that this was prior to all the New Age shops, which sprang up in the early 1990s where it became easy to purchase such things. Anyway, I would daily watch out for roadkill in hopes that my feathers would arrive in time for me to cleanse the house before we moved in. Days rolled into weeks and weeks rolled into a month. I started to get frantic. It was now within a week of moving into our new home and still no feathers.

The first warm day of spring arrived bringing a congruent sense of inner warmth as I rolled down the windows on my way to work. Desperately and intensely praying for my feathers to be provided, I constantly checked the roadside. Still nothing. My prayers grew in intensity as I asked my angels and guides to help me fulfill this simple request for such a sacred ceremony. Were they listening? Did they hear me? So often in the past, I had seen these dead birds, now I could find them nowhere. Arriving at work, I felt very disappointed that my prayers had not been answered in all of this time.

It was customary for me during the spring, summer, and fall, to walk across the street at lunchtime and meditate next to a small lake. Over the years, I had picked out a favorite spot where I sat each day. It was next to a tree, perfectly shaded, and provided a beautiful view of the lake in front of me. Winding down the short, but slightly overgrown path to my destination, I found the exact place where I had sat year after year. As I sat down, much to my amazement and astonished delight, my eyes landed on eight beautiful feathers all bunched together as if they were a packaged gift just for me. And you know what? They were.