Authenticity, Death, and Dismemberment: Death

I sit here watching the bald eagle eat its fresh catch of fish. All the cormorants have flown a safe distance away and grouped out on the water where they can safely duck under the surface; all the seagulls have flown off after several harassing the eagle. It is interesting to observe. I can tell when a baldy is flying by, because all the seagulls suddenly scatter. Yet, there isn't a paddle boarder nor kayaker in sight.
I have always thought of baldies as hunters of only fish and otherwise scavengers. On this very beach though, my wife, daughter, and I witnessed one hunting a buffle. We knew it must be a duck not a fish when it finally flew from the water after several dives and landed on a nearby post to eat its catch. Feathers started floating toward the water, feathers it was plucking out of its catch so definitely not a fish!

Watching bald eagles here in Maryland reminds me of growing up with them in Colorado. I am (selfishly) thrilled they are recovered enough that there are populations in both places now.

Sitting watching eagle eat, also reminds me about watching lynx and snowshoe hare hunt and be hunted, respectively. On one particular occasion as I watched, I came to a new, visceral understanding of Death. It was an understanding I had heard rumor of -- that it is as much about the prey offering itself to death, to be eaten, as it is about the hunter hunting and catching the prey.

On this occasion, I saw it in action. I watched the hare skillfully dodge and out-maneuver the lynx over and over, and effortlessly so. As I pondered the process from the vantage point of a very capable hare doing what it knows how to do really, really well, I realized how slim the lynx's chances are of ever capturing prey, even with "luck" or a foible on hare's part. Then it happened.

I witnessed the willingness arise in the hare for life to go on. For its life to be a sacrifice to the greater theme of life -- the Life that runs through the interconnectedness of all beings, of the whole planet. I wondered if this is what was meant by the phrase that I so oft here attributed to native cultures, "today is a good day to die." Perhaps there was some gem and some commonality here.

This leads me to the memory of my first season hunting elk as a teenager. I was on the cusp of becoming a vegetarian because I didn't know how I could willingly kill something. Then time paused. I realized I wasn't going to willingly kill anything -- that would be killing in cold blood. I needed to ask for an offering. The life wasn't mine to take; it was the elk's to offer. I was asking for an offering of life to sustain my life while honoring and recognizing that I, too, would be asked to offer up life for the sustenance of others.

Within half an hour, I fired the first shots from my rifle at an elk. The offering appeared in short order once I recognized the balance and interconnectedness and my role in the dance. The only thing I went home with that season was this lesson. In seasons to come though, I would return home with food as well. Food from a life that had offered itself for the continuation of all life. My family was sure to utilize as much of the animal as we could, and of the two elk who offered their lives to me, I have both hides. One of these two elk hides I will be taking with me on this upcoming journey.

This brings me to the death concept I am referring to as part of my journey. It is this death to which I refer, the death that is an offering of life, an aspect of life, for the sustenance of all life, the overarching theme called Life. There are old ways of being in me, old ways of living, thinking, believing that I am offering up to Death in order to make room for Life.

It's quite like clearing out closets or storage spaces, or dresser drawers, just in a deeper, metaphoric, psychospiritual sort of way. It isn't always as tangible as dropping off bags at Goodwill. The donations usually come in different forms. It is just as clearing and transformative though, if not more so. It is an offering of what no longer fits to make space for whatever does fit, whatever newness is arriving. It is a dance in a liminal space of in-between what was and what is becoming, while offering all of the old life up.
It is a clearing out of everything I would want to have settled, said, offered, shared, cleared up, completed, in place, honored, forgiven before the final death. I am offering all of the old in surrender knowing there is more to come, life in ways I have never known nor likely imagined, and I must busy myself in preparing a space for authenticity to fill. Will the space be big enough? How much room does authenticity take up? My instincts say all of it and more, and make more space, and now more. I also bear in mind, of course, that this busy-ness some days looks like sitting and allowing the old layers to slough off. It isn't all mucking out closets and having important conversations. And it isn't easy. It is necessary just not always easy.

Thus, it is this metaphoric death, the psychospiritual death, to which I am referring in the phrase "authenticity, death, and dismemberment." It is a way of death I see mirrored in the physical, mortal death dance of hunter and prey. I see the pattern play out between bald eagle and fish, between lynx and hare, and I recognize the energetic flow of the offerings from one life to feed another, the ongoing interconnected web of life sustaining life.

Now to tackle dismemberment. . .

Tackle dismemberment . . . hahahaha, that's an image. Wonder how the words will come to describe that one!


Thank you, Bald Eagle, Fish, Buffle, Lynx, Hare, and Elk.