Oh Raven,
Your wings were closed, yet your heart still soared,
In Spirit you travelled,
The veil so close and yet so far.
Not yet your time.
A greater purpose still to live.
Your call went out, and it was heard.
A screech so loud,
I could not help but hear and answer.
Watched over by the One who knows,
A gentle resurrection, for All to behold.
My days are often filled to the brim, and then something happens to add more in. It’s like starting with a vase that is full of stones, and then adding pebbles to fill the smaller spaces, and then adding sand to fill the even smaller spaces, and then adding water.
It’s extraordinary how much can be fit into just 60 minutes. It’s certainly a talent of mine, but not always one I’m proud of.
Last week was one of those days. I had a beautifully laid plan of 6 hours of self-care and errands, and just enough time between appointments for everything to slot in neatly like the perfect jigsaw puzzle.
But then the happily unexpected happened, and at my first appointment the beauty therapist I was seeing started asking me about essential oils, and I helped her on the spot to order some.
I’d gifted 15 precious minutes to that process, which then meant I was short on time to buy and eat lunch before my next appointment.
But like Moses, I held up my staff of intention and parted the waters of time. The perfect parking spot appeared right outside my favourite café. And I opted to get a salad which I could nibble on as I drove, thus allowing food nourishment and “on time-ness” to co-exist.
I was cutting it really fine, but I was going to arrive at my next appointment right on the minute that it was due to start. That was a great outcome in my morning of warping time.
That is, until I received the Calling.
When we’re freefalling, we can never predict what the next instant will hold. We’re in service to Spirit, moving through our life, but always with our antennas up if we’re given a nudge or a signal to do something unexpected.
After all, the very best of plans are merely that. They are plans, they are not our destiny.
If we start to think of our plans as our destiny, we become brittle and hardened like a rock. Instead, our plans should be as malleable as the texture of the Universe itself, so that we may pivot and pirouette like the most graceful ballerina, changing direction in the middle of a heartbeat as the winds around us change.
This day, when I received the Calling, everything changed.
I was 6 minutes from my next appointment, driving along in an 80 km/hr zone, when I saw a black bird lying in the middle of the road.
It was still fluffy, perhaps only just hit.
I looked on it with sadness, knowing that so many creatures become the collateral damage from our growing roads and development and busyness.
A few thoughts sparred for space in my mind. I decided it was a crow, based on its size and shape, and crows don’t usually get hit on roads. They have such an amazing sense of spatial awareness, that they can gauge the speed of an oncoming car and hop out of the way to avoid any collision. So what happened to this one? What were the circumstances that led to it being hit? How unusual!
I wondered if it was dead. It certainly looked dead. My mind pondered the very remote possibility of it not being dead, and whether the kindest course of action was to allow it to be put out of its suffering? It would only take one car….
Then I thought about my role in this picture. What about other people driving by? They could stop to check on it, it didn’t have to be me. I had an appointment to be at, and I had no spare minutes up my sleeve for a detour. Surely it was ok to just keep driving….
I kept driving while my head was having this lively debate about, “If I go back, I’m sure I’ll just find a dead crow and will have wasted precious minutes and be late for my appointment”, and about this being, “Someone else’s task, not mine”.
But the further I drove, the harder it was to drive. It was as if a rubber band was stretched between us, and I just couldn’t…..couldn’t….go any further.
I reached a roundabout where I was about to enter the main highway and reach my next appointment on time. But that rubber band was now stretched to screeching point, and I just….couldn’t….keep driving.
So I swung my car around, and went back for the crow. There was a double line over this section of road, and cars flying past in both directions. As I watched, I wondered if I would reach it in time, before it met the tyres of another car.
I found a driveway opposite where it was lying, and pulled my car in there. Then I looked….carefully. The crow was on its side, feet sticking out, head on the ground. It was clearly dead, yet only recently so….and I could see that its Spirit was still around its body.
I know the power of this moment of crossing the veil.
Doing wildlife rescue, I’ve experienced this with many animals, and the peace that occurs when an animal can die under its own terms, and have the space to gently leave its body.
I decided that the kindest thing I could do was to move its body off the middle of the road, and put it in the greenery at the side of the road so it could transition in peace.
I waited for a break in the traffic, and ran to the middle of the road and picked it up.
And that’s when the unexpected happened.
As I scooped the crow up in my hands, its head came upright and its mouth opened. One eye was full of blood, but it was bright and alert. It wasn’t dead!
I didn’t have any of my rescue gear with me in my car, so I improvised. I sat the crow on my lap, placed one hand gently on its back so it didn’t flap around in my car, and I drove to the nearest Vet. I’m very fortunate to know the Vets in the area, and there was a clinic only 300 metres from where the crow had been hit.
As I carried it into the Vet clinic, the nurse was walking away from me down a hallway. “I need help!” I cried out to her, and she nodded and told me she was just going to grab a basket to put the bird into. She’d seen me coming.
As I left the bird with her, my final statement was, “It’s a crow….isn’t it?”
It looked like a crow. It was black and glossy, and the right size. Yet, it just didn’t quite feel like a crow. It’s down was so soft, and there was something about its eyes….a crow, but not a crow.
It was that evening when I realised what it was. Not a crow, but a raven.
I feel an incredible and inexplicable bond with this particular bird, and spent the afternoon sending it love and healing and more love (whilst I was face down receiving a massage of my own).
Later that afternoon, I rang the vet clinic. I was stunned! It hadn’t been euthanised. Nothing was broken. It had blood in its eye, no doubt from a collision with a car. It’s now in care with another wildlife carer, and if its eye heals up and its vision is ok, it will be released.
I know I was Called.
That Call was so powerful, I couldn’t ignore it, even though my head gave me all the reasons in the world not to turn back.
This is how Spirit works.
There was nothing in what my eyes had seen that hinted that the Raven was still alive. If there had been, I would have turned back in a heartbeat.
But here, everything was saying it was a dead bird, and there was nothing I could do to turn back time and bring it to life again….yet Something Called on me.
I don’t believe that Something was its own Spirit. It was lying there, caught in a moment in time. That Something was higher, something beyond our individual selves. It had a protective Something watching over it, and I was enlisted to help. Why me? Maybe it’s just as simple as “Because I could hear the call”.
I can’t help but think of my very first psychic experience, where I was driving a little too fast up a blind hill, when Something yelled at me (inside my head) to “STOP!”. It was utterly compelling in the same way that this was, and I jumped on the brakes just in time to avoid hitting a little dog that was in the middle of the road.
It was at that moment that my world cracked open, and I realised that there is more to this Universe than we can see with our physical senses…..something Greater that exists around us, beyond our human and animal selves, guiding and protecting us.
Now, just as Raven has entered my world, so has its medicine.
When an animal comes soaring into your life in a “meant to be” way, check out its spiritual significance. Each animal carries its own “medicine” ie. wisdom, which brings awareness and messages for our life.
Ravens are the guardians of magic and healing, helping us to let go of the past and to travel into other realms, to bring back spiritual wisdom and transformation for ourselves and others.
Thank you, Raven. You are my teacher and my friend.
