On the way to the kitchen sink one beautiful San Diego morning,I found a beautiful hummingbird, hovering just under the ceiling. Perhaps he had managed to be lured by the colorful new shoots of the sweetpeas I had planted in my windowboxes - or as I prefer to imagine - he was lured by a powerful mystical instinct. An omen if you will.
Creating Inspiration and Sustainable environements - especially given to the current economic limitations on our home improvement budgets - can sometimes seem like an overwhelming challenge. I mean, sometimes I think my now ex-husband Bo, would have much preferred that I were satisfied with a lazy Sunday afternoon spent painting our front porch, while he basked happily on the couch watching a Chargers game. In his never-to be-fullfilled marital fantasies, I was his very own contented domestic goddess - flitting about in red lingerie, (every hair in place) whose only wish was to hover excitedly over him like that hummingbird, all the while serving up steaming bowls of chili and cornbread.
But alas, I am a woman with a mission bigger than myself, and in a world where we can get easily discouraged by the enormous amount of planetary work to be done - I'll take an omen and run with it anytime.
So, in honor of the beautiful, fragile hummingbird that has since found his escape out the kitchen window and back into the green folds of nature - I bestow you with these findings from none other than our Native American Indians. You know, the FIRST environmentalists, the ones that always had it together with our land, before greed overtook common sense:
THE HUMMINGBIRD
In many traditional cultures of the western world the hummingbird has powerful religious and spiritual significance. In the high Andes of South America, for example, the hummingbird is taken to be a symbol of resurrection. This is because each hummer becomes lifeless and seems to die on cold nights, but it comes back to life again when the miraculous sunrise brings warmth.
In MEDICINE CARDS: THE DISCOVERY OF POWER THROUGH THE WAYS OF ANIMALS, Jamie Sams and David Carson say that, for many people, the hummingbird is the creature that opens the heart.When we assume hummingbird consciousness, our life becomes a wonderland of sensuous delights. We live for beauty, delighting in flowers, aromas, fine mist, and delicate tastes.
When it becomes our totem, the hummingbird teaches us to laugh and enjoy the creation, to appreciate the magic of being alive, and the truth of beauty.
Hummingbirds awaken us to the beauty of the present moment. As they dance the four quarters of embodied exisence, they bring us medicine to solve the riddle of duality. They also awaken us to the medicinal properties of plants.
In ANIMAL SPEAK, Ted Andrews says hummingbirds teach us how to draw the life essence from flowers. "They can teach us how to use flowers to heal and win hearts in love."
Hummingbirds teach us fierce independence. They teach us to fight in a way where no one really gets hurt. They teach us simple courage. Andrews says the twittering, vibrating sounds of the hummingbirds bring us an internal massage that restores health and balance.
Hummingbirds also inspire us to protect the environment and to preserve old traditions that are in danger of being lost. When Native American ways were being destroyed by the expanding Euro-American culture, the Ghost-Shirt religion was established to try to bring back the animals and old ways through dancing. The leader of the dance was a hummingbird.
Certainly hummingbird magic is available to all who live in the New World. There is something inside the soul of all of us that wants to soar through sunbeams, then dance midair in a delicate mist, then take a simple bath on a leaf.
There is something in our souls that wants to hover at beautiful moments in our lives, making them freeze in time. There is something in us that wants to fly backwards and savor once more the beautiful past.
My final conclusion? Hummingbirds may just have more wisdom about what's really go on than we know...
