730 NE 11th St.

Gainesville, Fl. 32601

1523

 

HAWK WINGS FOR SHEL

 

While driving on a rural road near Gainesville, Florida my eyes casually gazed at the feathers hanging from my rear view mirror. My thoughts drifted to my fascination with birds and feathers and how many Euro-American’s of various backgrounds identify, to varying degrees, with the Native Americans in the United States. We learned to share the ethos of feathers being a symbol used in ceremony and as decoration in indigenous cultures.

I believe it’s something that came into our soul, when we woke up a bit and realized we were walking on sacred grounds of those early people on this continent.  Many, in our time, respect and honor those first people.

Surprisingly, in that moment, with my thoughts of the feathers, I passed what looked like a dead hawk on the side of the road. I drove 50 yards or so before feeling an impulse to turn around and take a look. In my office I have tail feathers of a red tailed hawk and the wing of another hawk hanging above my desk. They are both from road-kill.

Coming back to this hawk I could see it was recently killed by a car since it’s broken neck had fresh blood where it was hit. The ants were already on it but no maggots had yet emerged. After brushing off the ants and shaking it clean, I cut the wings and the undamaged tail feathers putting them in the car trunk and picked up the body with a canvas shopping bag from my car and carried the body of the hawk away from the roadway. I dug a little burial trench and said a prayer for Hawk then covered it with dirt and leaves right near the long horns of a steer a farmer must have attached to a fence.

As I drove off, with the wings in the car, I reflected again on my affinity for the Native People. They have showed up many times in my meditations, usually male, sometimes wearing a long headdress, sometimes in loincloths with a single feather in his hair, a few times on horseback, sometimes standing looking at me. I ask for messages but their presence alone seems to be the message as if I was with them in some other time or they came from where they are to share their presence with me. I am appreciative.

Like most Americans I haven’t had a whole lot of contact with the American Native People, except when I lived in New Mexico in the early 70s visiting the Pueblos near Santa Fe when they had ceremonial events that allowed observers. I also had the privilege to be invited to two peyote teepee prayer meetings led by Native American Navaho medicine elders. I appreciated the honor to attend these all-through-the-night meetings. Both meetings left a strong impression on me, especially how the elders did prayers that honored the sacredness for all life. Those meetings, when I was 30 years old, were the first times in my life when I felt part of a sacred ceremony. (Although they were as I stated, I had been to many Jewish services, but never felt the sacredness of those two Native American Peyote Services) I am thankful. They opened my heart in a way I never experienced before and enabled me to honor the sacredness in all life.

Very recently, now, forty years later, I’ve had more intimate relationships with the Native American People. My partner, Batina, and her ex-husband, adopted two Native American children 45 years ago. One of these children, Shel, returned to the Lower Brule Sioux Reservation in Southern South Dakota where he was born.

Although he was adopted when he was 9 months old, Shel, like many from the reservation, suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome that remained with him.  He was hoping his life would take on new meaning with a return to his birth place, instead, after four years on the reservation, and resuming his alcoholism with many others there, he was savagely beaten, and his skull crushed on one side. This beating put him into an intensive care unit of a hospital 150 miles from the Reservation.

During the third week of his hospitalization, I went with Batina to the hospital where we spent a week being with Shel. We prayed for him and did healing services with his half-brother Keith, who also returned after many years in the white culture but who had adopted many of the native ways. We all appreciated that Keith was allowed to burn sage over his brother and sing Native chants.  Although Shel was no longer in a coma, he was unable to do any more than move a finger or his eyes, sometimes on command, but usually there was no response—only a stare, sometimes eye movement acknowledgement of his mother.

His compassionate doctor told us it wasn’t uncommon for brain trauma victims to be brought to the hospital from the reservation after alcohol induced fights and car accidents.

The day after I found Hawk, Shel passed from this life at 1:20 a.m. This was the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, a sacred day in Judaism and the birth faith of both Batina and myself. Batina was there with Shel along with a few of his Native siblings who had also returned to their birthplace.

I’m never sure how events in life are connected, but there I was with the Wings of Hawk hanging on a nail, curing in back of my friend’s home, while Batina and Shel’s Native family were all deciding what ceremonies to have for him near the Reservation.  Batina will also arrange services for him in New York with Shel’s three children and his adoptive family.

It was an honor that morning when I hung Hawks Wings to cure. I knew there had to be some connection between me finding the Hawk and Shel. As I held the Wings I thanked the Spirit of Hawk for giving its life for Shel. I hope in this life more insight comes to me not only of this life and world we live in but what is beyond what we see and hear.

The Wings hung from the nail on the side of my friend’s house for a few days then I moved them to hang from the end of a hammock frame where they could get more sun to finish the drying process. The second morning in the sun, I came out to see them and they were gone. It was a shock. The Wings were nowhere in the yard nor were any feathers on the ground if a cat or a varmint had taken them off the string I attached to the hammock.

My mind reeled, disturbed and dumbfounded wondering if someone had come into my friend’s backyard and taken them. It didn’t seem likely since it was a very enclosed space. Then, later that morning, during my meditation, I briefly had the distinct sensation I had wings. This was a first time ever sensation. Obviously there was no answer whether my unconscious had given me the sense of wings, or did it come from energy outside of me. Over my many years of meditation I’ve actually had a number of Native American’s show up in my meditations.

Later in the morning, as I sat on the porch enjoying the sunshine, musing over the disappearance of the Wings and what had occurred during my meditation something extraordinary happened. I don’t know what to call it, but there was a distinct wave of a sensation moving through me, not seen, but felt, with a presence, in front of me, of a Native American Chief telling me he needed the Wings for Shel. I was again shocked trying to hold onto the sensation, but he was gone as fast as he appeared.

I wasn’t sure how to integrate into my mind what had happened and let it go for the time being. But later in the day, after giving it deep thought, I had to reconsider whether someone or some energy could come from another dimension into this one and take the Wings. I know the ancients of many traditions teach that different dimensions exist simultaneously with our material world. I also know that quantum physics and string theory have found this true through numerical formulas. It’s not easy for most of us to totally grasp these concepts being so attached to what our senses tell us. I know what I believe, so I’m going for it, and hope that the Chief and the Wings have made the transition easier for Shel.

 

A few days after hanging the Wings on the side of my friend’s house, I attended a Dances of Universal Peace four-day retreat. The DUP is closely aligned with Sufism, which is a spiritual path that embraces a mystical belief system. I have practiced and studied this way for many years along with other spiritual traditions. Maybe that is why I am able to get my rational thinking mind out of the way and grasp what I believed happened to the Wings.

I pray that I have greater understanding of this world we inhabit.