Crow Town

Dear Reader:

A couple of years ago, the 'me' I thought I knew lost 'it.' I cannot tell you what 'it' is, but you know it when you lose 'it.' And if 'it' is the proverbial plot, then I lost most of the main characters as well. Deaths of bodies, deaths in heart and psyche. I may share more about these warm-up events at another time, but for now, I want to tell you about the crows. 

One day, it seemed that I was at the centre of a comprehensible life; the next, a trapdoor opened and I was falling at warp speed toward God-knows-where. Some call this psychological falling a midlife crisis. I call it landing in Crow Town, because counting crows seemed as good a science as any in this grave new world without 'it' anymore.

Picture me as a crone within an ancient grove of yew trees chanting to the circling crows:
 
 "One for sorrow,
         Two for mirth,
              Three for a wedding,
                  And four for death." (cackle, cackle, cackle)

Well, this was not quite how it went. I am not superstitious, but I am also not one to dismiss the ways that Spirit signposts our journeys. When your Rational Guy skips town in midlife, you work with who is left. And for the second time in my life, at a crucial juncture, the Spirit gave me a vision of a crow to contemplate when confidence in my own ability to know much was gone. Then, carrion crows began nesting in the trees at the back of our garden for the first time in six years. Coincidence? Maybe. But this was one of the only places where Spirit and I could meet after the fall, everywhere else was off limits to her as I struggled with anger, disappointment and breathtaking moments of panic. Sitting together watching and listening to these beautiful clever birds, we found a language that did not require much clarity from me: flight patterns, calls and pair bonding; a wing feather left by the door in the morning; a fledgling hiding in the ivy through the night. Due attention was paid, and it helped.

There was nothing overtly portentous in Crow Town, and lest you think me a Cretan or the high priest of the Diggory Druids, it is probably a good time to tell you that I am a clergyperson within a progressive christian fellowship, not that this disqualifies me from Cretan status. I am also gay, have been all my life, and the way of Christ still works for me. But maybe you are anxious as you read about visions of crows and such, especially if you think of them as ill omens. If so, may I suggest that you regard them as I do, with gratefulness, more like a St. Benedict's crow helping me out during a frightening time.

Here is the story of Ben's crow:

Legend has it that a jealous rival in the church poisoned the bread St. Benedict was to be served. Benedict intuited that the bread was lethal, and he asked a wild corvid, with whom he shared his daily bread, to take the poisoned bread and hide it where it would harm no one. The bird seemed upset at first and frightened to carry the lethal loaf, but eventually he took it into his beak when Benedict assured him it would not hurt him. The corvid flew for three hours, hiding the poisoned bread safely away, returning unharmed, as promised, to enjoy a fresh piece of new bread which the holy man had saved for him. 

Reader, I guess we all experience times in life when we have to work intuitively with what we have been given, even when it does not feel rational or familiar. There is plenty of science documenting the ways our subverbal brain remains a powerful survival resource, especially when our cognitive faculties need refreshing. So, it seems that archetypal crows flew into town from subverbia to become my point of connection and a needed benevolence during an existential crisis. It is good to have a shorthand explanation---but the alchemy remains in the counting, bird by bird.

Glad you are there,
P

  

Midway between the journey of our life

     I found myself within a forest dark

          For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

               Ah me! How hard a thing it is to say... 

                                                                              Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto I