The Spirit of Place and Three Feathers

How do I talk to a little flower? Through it I talk to the Infinite. And what is the Infinite? It is that still small voice that calls up the fairies. Dr. George Washington Carver

We are used to thinking of one another as spirit beings. Many of us see our beloved animals as spirit partners. Fewer may recognize the flowers and stones as spirit beings. Fewer still may know that places, too, have a spirit essence. Just a couple of days ago, I walked into our old Tree of Life space to leave my keys. Luckily, I was alone in the space so I took the time to really feel being there as I knew it would be the last time. I walked into the front half of our sanctuary, which was my first office many years ago, and where the connection with Dick the barber began and the subsequent three grace-filled experiences with the Mother Teresa rosary. [I tell the first story in An Ordinary Life Transformed: Lessons for Everyone from the Bhagavad Gita, pp. 153-4, the second on my blog, The Mother Teresa Rosary: The Next Chapter, and the third on my blog, Gratia Plena.] And I thought about how the space had become a part of our Temple’s first sanctuary all these years later. I stood a long while and offered a deep, sweet, prayer of thanksgiving to the spirit of that place.

Then, I wondered into my old mentoring room and lovingly remembered all the seminarians with whom I’d been blessed to sit. There, too, I laid my heart bare in thanksgiving. And then, finally, I stepped into my classroom. I let my heart feel all the sacred circles that had gathered there, all the dancing, meditation, and profound sharing that had occurred over the years. I remembered having moved there from a much larger space because I was going back to school and needed to shift my focus for the next several years. Yet, having been in the building before, it felt like coming home. I remembered doing my morning meditations there in the middle of all the dirt and debris as it’d been vacant for quite a while before my son, Mitch, painted and the decorating began. Here I stayed the longest praying in thanksgiving. And, finally, as I walked down the stairs, I took one last look back and thanked the collective spirit of the place for having supported me and the Tree of Life Interfaith Temple’s vision and community for so long.

The spirit of place. I am now being led into a new sacred place, nature, and into the wild. No surprise! My next book, Lovers in the Wilderness: Discover Your Path to Mystical Unity with Mantra Prayer, is due out in the fall. And, today, during a long walk in nature, I was gifted with not one, not two, but three feathers. (see below) As I paused and meditated on them, I could suddenly see the Sonic Trilogy of Love right before me. For those of you who may not know, I first conceived of the Trilogy in my dissertation and later it was highlighted in The Call of the Mourning Dove: How Sacred Sound Awakens Mystical Unity. 

In the Trilogy, we as Lovers enter into the Love, sacred sound, to create the conditions for mystical unity with our Beloved God. (see diagram below) In Call of the Mourning Dove, as with my upcoming companion book, Lovers in the Wilderness, the Love is expressed as the sound current of the prayers from across faith traditions. But, it’s important to note that this Love, this sacred sound, is also experienced in many other meditative and prayerful contexts. Christians experience it in centering prayer as the sacred word to which they return again and again. Sufis experience it as they inaudibly chant the name of Allah while spinning. And Shamans, throughout the ages, have entered into unity with their Beloved Great Spirit as they have chanted and danced on the spirit of the rattle and drum.

Three feathers. In Shamanistic practice, all of God’s creation, nature, is imbued with the sacred spirit of place and feathers, gifted from this place, are considered an important omen. In this practice, we too may journey on the spirit of the rattle and drum, the Love, the sacred sound, and come into unity with our Beloved God, the Great Spirit, who now appears to us in the form of our spirit animal helpers and spirit guides. It is a beautiful practice that brings us to that place beyond our understanding again and again. Yes, right now, I’m being called into the spirit of the inner wild by those blessed feathers—to sing and dance from that place where Lover, Love and Beloved merge without distinction to create the conditions for mystical unity with the Great Spirit. It is where I started my spiritual journey in the early 90s and it’s where I am now returning coming full circle.

And what does the spirit of place and three feathers have to do with our opening quote from Dr. George Washington Carver? Well, those of you who know me well know that he is one of my most revered spiritual teachers. [Kindly see The Man Who Talks with the Flowers: The Life Story of Dr. George Washington Carver and you’ll understand.] No one that I know of has embodied the full integration of nature and spirit more than Carver. An African American who lived in the south during the late 1800s and early 1900s, he is best known as a renowned scientist who discovered many uses for the peanut and sweet potato. Fewer know that he attributed all his successes to his daily communion with God which he felt enabled him to see into the spirit of things and bring forth what was possible. To Carver it was all about love—what I would call devotional love not the more common emotional love. It’s why he said, “Anything will reveal its secrets to you if you love it enough.” Peanuts, flowers, and people.

My Shamanism teacher, Sandra Ingerman, compares Carver’s work to the Shaman’s work and, indeed, it is. Bottom line, I’m being led to follow in a similar direction on the spirit of the rattle and drum, to commune more deeply with the Beloved Great Spirit, to see how we too may learn to love enough to see more deeply into the spirit of things.

Journey into the outer wilderness and you will, very likely, find there a portal into your inner wild—that place where mystical unity occurs. The place where, as Native Americans say, the wind talks, the silence speaks and, suddenly, the heart knows.

Dare. You, too, might just call up the fairies.