Our suburban neighborhood has a Cooper’s hawk that breaks
the morning silence with its call. The birds at my feeders know when the raptor
is around, and their songs fall silent. They huddle in bushes. I watch it perch with majesty, master of
skies, until crows chase it off.
The other day on my woods walk, I stopped in my tracks when
I suddenly saw a hawk right in front of me—dead at the base of a tree. So close up, the colors were so distinctive,
the broad bands of grey/white feathers, yellowish legs, and the beak and talons
that had spelled death from above. It was equipped for the top of the food
chain.
I hearken back to the vision of poets like Mary Oliver and
William Stafford. They take the majesty
of nature and display it embraced in death.
They begin with soaring descriptions which plummet into certain demise. What they show is death the great equalizer
which interconnects all life.
How do we look into the eye if death? Bernie Siegel, in his book Love, Medicine
and Miracles, says that we don’t really begin to live until we contemplate
our own death. In fact—meditate regularly
on your death! You are that hawk, living
with great powers to be powerless. Siegel
claims that we really begin to live fully when we reckon with our finitude.
What’s Siegel getting at? When we look into the eye of death--we see more than death. We see what makes our time of ultimate worth. Dare we waste a second of it?
Our life span increases in value as we accept and live with its brevity.
The shortness of life reveals the depth of its meaning. Put simply, turn out the light, sit in the
dark, and then live with the light on. How much more do we value the gift the
necessity of light?
It’s said we live in an age of the tyranny of the urgent. Responding to everything, we gain nothing. The urgency needs to be replaced by what is
necessary to really live. Of course, I
am not talking about ignoring your daily tasks.
Just don’t make a task of life. Live it for the gift that is—and soar.
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