Photo of the Month: February 2023

A reminder of faith

As we round a bend in the year and the winter months begin to curve towards spring, I’m reminded of the significance of faith. This is brought to me by reminiscing on bird medicine, and what it holds for all of us. Birds have been coming up a lot lately for me in uncanny synchronicities: wrens, grouse, ravens, Townsend’s solitaires, varied thrushes. It’s high time I acknowledged what’s been trying to get across.

Faith is like hope and trust melded into one meaning, one emotion. It’s the act of entrusting one’s own vulnerability, confidence, and reliance to the belief that in the end, things are going to be okay. Sometimes faith is attributed to religion, but I think that anyone can put faith out into the universe, no matter their spirituality or beliefs. It’s pure sacrifice: giving up the need to control, to know.

As the last while of winter drags on, things can feel…heavy. Dark. Oppressive. Intense. Not even emotionally or mentally, but in the physical sense too. Where I live, the weather’s been bitingly cold, fiercely dark and cloudy, and moodily temperamental. Not to mention that the world’s come out of an exhausting, debilitating time fraught with fatigue, stress, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and many other volatile emotions for the past few years.

So: faith. I think that it is so necessary that we learn to trust again. Many peoples’ trust has been broken – from families, friends, politicians, governments, world events, traumas – and to repeat an anonymous well-known quote, “trust takes years to build and seconds to break” (and, in many cases, forever to repair). I think many of us are feeling this way right now, no matter our differences. Stuff happens – stuff that really, truly sucks. And lately, too much stuff.

But faith enables us to live on a deeper level and builds integrity, presenting a new narrative to follow: “it’s going to be okay. I’m going to be okay.” It’s a new path, a new way to live.

If we could all take our broken trust, our desperate hope, our despair, and turn it into faith – that is healing. That is reconciliation, catharsis, medicine, cleansing. That is a way to come into a new being this spring. That is a way to emerge from our dens with all the faith and strength we need.

Perhaps this is why birds have been coming up for me lately. As I mention earlier, bird medicine is freedom, flight, and faith. The theme of freedom has been present recently, and flight is the embodiment of being free. How many of us have those dreams where we can fly and it feels like the rest of the world falls away? How many of us have wanted to see the world from an eagle’s eye, a hummingbird’s jittery wings, a raven’s wise experience?

Faith is freedom. When I feel, deep in my bones, that I’ll be okay, nothing else describes the sensation that follows except for freedom. It’s going to be okay. I am going to be okay. I trust; I have hope; I understand the complexities and secrets of the universe, of an enigmatic higher power. I can stand in my power and feel safe.

So this spring, I choose to leave my anxieties behind on the earth and take off into the sky, feeling the air rush over my wings and through my feathers. I choose to fly.

Will you join me?