20 • September 2015 • UPBEAT TIMES, INC. WORDPLAY: EPIPHANY by Marcia Singer •
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SANTA ROSA, CA. ~ In mid August, I turned seven- ty. I’d been deep in refl ection, in part because my father died at age seventy, and my mother at seventy- one. Two days be- fore my birthday, I was out walking when I noticed a large hawk circling the skies high above me. Captivated,
I
stopped to admire its wildish, soaring beauty. As he swooped down a bit closer, I found myself cata- pulted back to another time, another walk, hawk, and to a breakthrough moment when everything just came together –an epiphany.
I had happily
transcended ordinary time and space, happened into a fi eld of
higher awareness, tuning into a truth that eased my life. That was twenty-four years ago. I’d taken to the hills for a ‘psych hike,‘ seeking answers to troubling ques- tions about caring for my dying par- ents. I wanted to soften my turmoil, fi nd direction. It had become late afternoon, and while I’d been
walking for two hours, no clar- ity was coming. With evidence of dusk approaching, I picked up my pace, mindful that my car was parked a ways away. Just as I was beginning to de- spair, a red-tailed hawk glided by, catching my full attention. Its coming felt portentous. He
sailed, swooped, dipped and glided, moving farther out and then back again, coming in re- markably close to me, again and again.
His fl y-
ing skills were impressive, and he was certainly a master of grace and power. Had he come to give me a personal message?
I
stood there, my attention glued to my feathered emissary. Sever- al more minutes passed, sunset nearing. I be- came even more impatient. Was this hawk offering me a teach- ing, or was I just un-teachable? –Or an incurable romantic?
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I sighed deeply, momen-
tarily letting go of my strug- gle to understand. In the next breath, an unex- pected, intuitive fl ash of realiza- tion fi lled the emptied space of my mind: an epiphany.
I
gasped, “I got it!” The solitary hawk was not actually fl ying alone, nor solely by means of his own wings. He was borne up via a silent, invisible partner –the air, the “wind be-
neath its wings.” I could see it now! My messenger hawk had a dancing partner visible only if you knew how to look. I heard these silent words: “Trust that which you cannot see to sup- port you.” Relief fi lled me. Whatever
decisions I made about my par- ents’ care could serve all con- cerned if I had enough heart, enough faith in fl ying. I could be easily supported with each fl ap of my wings by my Invisi- ble Partner. It was like the Ger- man philosopher Goethe ad- vised when he told us, “Leap,
... continued on page 22 Weird Facts & Fun Trivia -5
In western Cyprus, a mud- plaster structure found at the site of Kissonerga-Skalia ap- pears to have been used as a Bronze Age kiln to dry malt for brewing beer. Archae- ologist Lindy Crewe of the University of Manchester in England and her team exca- vated the nearly 4,000-year- old oven, uncovering ashy deposits containing carbon- ized fi g seeds, mortars and other grinding implements, and juglets. They also found sherds of a large clay pot that they believe was a pithos, a vessel in which a fi re was lit and used as an indirect heat source within the kiln. Malt, the team hy- pothesizes, might have been stored in the juglets while they were in the kiln, and then removed to perform the rest of the brewing process.
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20 • September 2015 • UPBEAT TIMES, INC. The fi rst sign of maturity is the discovery that the volume knob also turns to the left. ~Jerry M. Wright
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