Divine Message Found in Otherworldly Songs
By C. Austin
Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?
--Leonardo DaVinci
At twilight not long ago I watched a flock of birds take wing
against a brilliant scarlet sky as the sun was setting. In
silhouette, their flight took them through and beyond the threading
branches of bare trees. A brief but thrilling vision, I could see
neither where they came from, nor where they went.
The Greek philosopher Plato thought of the mind as a cage. To him,
the birds that flew across the vault of that inner sky represented
thoughts. In the Celtic tradition, indeed throughout the world, birds
represent transcendence, the freedom of the soul or spirit to rise
above and beyond earthly limitations.
The ability of birds to navigate air, land and sea gave them
special prominence in Celtic mythology. From the swans of the
enchanted children of Lir, to the death-eating crows of the Morrigan,
to the robin as Oak King who guarantees the sun's return at winter
solstice, the Otherworld teems with divine messengers.
It is said that the early Irish poets understood the language of
the birds, even the language of Nature herself. From the wind, from
the trees, from the songs of birds came the prophecies, riddles and
tales that earned the poet high esteem in Celtic society.
Today the wind yet blows, the trees still whisper, but where are
our poets? Who will translate the mysterious murmurings of nature for
us, or are we now uniformly deaf to that imaginal world that should be
our inheritance?
I recall a balmy morning last spring in an older garden as I sat on
a sunny bench with my eyes closed, listening to the birds. Screeches,
twitters, birdsong - all blended together in the background around me.
As if in a daytime dream, it occurred to me that it wasn't
background, but varying voices speaking more directly to me than if
someone had been talking straight to my face.
Each voice was different, as if trying to point out one particular
feature of a mystery that was obvious to them and invisible to me.
Together they clustered about singing "look here, look here" at this
unknowable thing.
The birds, like Plato's thoughts, and the messengers of the Celtic
world, mediate the expanse between worlds - between a divine world of
potential and an earthly world of being. The actions that result from
inspired thoughts render the mythological world visible.
These "messengers" draw our attention to what we cannot know by
ourselves - that which is beyond our reach. Like a dream image, they
rarely reveal outright, but they gather around that which is
unconscious within us to caw, hoot and croon, giving us a chance, if
only momentarily, to notice that something is indeed there.
Where do they ceaselessly fly from and where do they roost? You may
know them as that "same old feeling" that rises with your awareness
every few years to distract or torment you before the awareness and
its familiar song blends again into the background of a busy life.
The unfinished or unstarted business that is too deep to stir, that is
inaccessible on one's own - the birds sing of what wants to be known.
It is the work of the poet to translate the wisdom of Nature. We
must become the poets, we must hear what the birds have to say.
| 
