Don't Let the Past Badger You

 

 

            Scratching and clawing is never a good start to a new beginning. I mean, maybe for badgers. But it seems that their claws are heading towards something, whereas human claws are chasing away from something, holding onto something, like a concrete weight of the past, or clenching some indigestible truth, or maybe just distressing the Earth beneath without purpose.

            In fact, did you know that badger’s “lower jaw is articulated to the upper by means of a transverse condyle firmly locked into a long cavity of the cranium, so that dislocation of the jaw is all but impossible.

            Talk about one fierce bite.

This enables the badger to maintain its hold with the utmost tenacity, but limits its jaw movement to hinging open and shut, or sliding from side to side without the twisting movement possible for the jaws of most mammals.

           

            Twisting movement. Side to side. Flexibility.

            Funny thing about the jaw, the mandible. Hugh Milne, Visionary Craniosacral Therapist, says that it is the “bone of the visuddha, the throat soul, which represents both expression and absorption” (192). Milne continues to explain that it is the bone most “associated with the individual’s sense of who [s]he is” (192).

            What about that badger? A one-purpose life to the chagrin of honeybees and English archeologists. Apparently, "a lovely manmade mound is just perfect for [badgers], so they're actually attracted to ancient monuments,” including Stonehenge. See, badgers have been digging holes, big holes, such that the professionals are afraid that they are destroying the value of the sites, and quite literally causing safety hazards because they are creating holes so large that the structures could actually collapse. The badger doesn’t stop its path because of the past. Even a really cool past that humans revere.

            Maybe the badger’s job isn’t about being flexible, but teaching humans the same. Things change. We know this, and are still shocked when they do. Pillars of thought and expectations can crumble like a sandcastle on the sand, just ask the Romans or American Homeowners, and we can dig against the tide or we can dig on. Like the badger.

            It’s the movement of our life that trips the script. The “I just got here’s” and the “Where did these come from’s?” that take the wind out of our sails, or the spunk out of our recreating of meaning, one pawful of dirt at a time.

            In animal translation, meaning metaphors or emotional tones an animal may carry, some credit badger with being the representation of a tenacious healer, or a dictator that will suffer no ends to meet with justice or reparation; others say that badger can speak to the need to cultivate a tenacity to fight for your dreams while “aggressively removing the barriers that don’t grow corn” (Sams, Carson, Werneke).

Perhaps badger isn’t a great representation of flexibility, as his jaw is so powerful and straightforward, but he is a great reminder of moving through staleness that prevents growth; of a tenacity we all carry that moves us through, clears the field for the new, clearing a landscape for Self expression.

            How are we ever expecting to be nourished if we simply gnaw on the same piece of deadwood? That powerful jaw and those determined claws are for movement, for moving on. That’s what the badger does. Do you?

Perhaps scratching and clawing is a good way to a new beginning, as long as our claws aren’t collapsing the walls around us, fighting momentum with inertia. Perhaps Longfellow knew it; it’s not that you are happy or unhappy, but further than yesterday. Perhaps that is what we need to unclench our taste for the easy and light, and take hold onto the grit of our growth:

            Life is real! Life is earnest!   

                        And the grave is not its goal;

                        "Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"  

                        Was not spoken of the soul. 

                        Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

                           Is our destined end or way;

                        But to act, that each to-morrow   

                        Finds us farther than to-day.

                                                - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The more disoriented you are, the more you know you are growing,” a coffee compadre told me of his new business, now standing on the molehill of his success. The only movement is forward, remembering that Nature moves in spirals. So as you dig and as you claw, give yourself the space to breathe, to rest, to renegotiate and to turn around, smelling into the moment when you again stand, stretching into the new horizon of you.

                              In Inspiration from and Gratitude to Emily & of course the badger

Soar

Lessons from Papa Shama

Several months ago, I had a Mama Shama Bird teach me the profound, courageous nature of motherhood; the resourceful tenacity of Mother Nature, and how very much I had to learn from winged, four –footed, and slithering ohana.

[Click here for Mama Shama Post]

Not too long ago, the same Mama Shama returned, same spot, same nest reconstructed. Lo and behold she laid another four eggs; four more mouths to feed. Since these parents, made the top shelf of our shoerack their babyroom, I was privy to much of the parenting process. I even watched Papa Shama, fly to a neighboring branch, holding a flailing baby gecko by its neck to be fed to his four young ones; a reminder that even in its infancy, Nature can be cruel; life and death always exist; perhaps that gecko came back with wings.

I watched them grow, these burly birds; they were fed quite often. They were all mouth: grey, flightless, winged beings. Mouth after mouth, day after day, they grew big, football player birds. Then one day, two were gone. I knew these birds would fly sooner than the first batch: they were more vocal, demanded sustenance, determined to grow. Fed so earnestly and so ferociously, they grew and grew from grey to auburn with white speckled wings; speckles dissolving into the one trademark portal of white, encircled upon the shama. 

Mother Knows Best

 Recently I hiked with a friend through the Alakai Swamp Trail. A perfect day for a hike, not too hot, and the rain held off until we safely scampered to the trail’s not too slippery end. My life was dipping and turning and I was grateful for a respite in Mother Nature to get more clarity, a little peace, from the murky journey ahead. We scooted over to the Kalalau lookout afterwards; while walking across the parking lot I noticed  a hen, rounded, hunkered, and awkwardly placed on the asphalt next to a parked car.

            “Is she laying eggs?” I asked Vee.

            Vee shrugged.

            I looked at the hen and tried to telepathically explain to her that this was the stupidest, I mean, not safest place to lay her newborns into the Earth. And yet, she didn’t exactly look like she was laying eggs. I was perplexed and agitated that this hen was so precariously placed and there was nothing I could do about it.

            I remember having a conversation once with a friend about trusting the perfection of life’s greater plan. She had said to me, astutely, that I was a “know it all.” 

            “Are you a perfectionist?” she asked.

            “No,” I replied into the phone as I looked at my disheveled bedroom.

            “Yes, perfectionist isn’t the right word – it’s like you know it all?”

            “Know it all?”

“Well, how can I put this, when you got the job offer, you said no because you didn’t want it to be like the last -"

            “Well, right, I didn’t want to repeat the past –"

            “Right, it's not the past, it's the present, you live on Kaua`i now, not Philadelphia, and you were    probably right, but did you really know?”

            “Huh? But I wouldn’t be able to travel whenever I wanted to –"

“Did you know that? I mean, really know that? What if you could have traveled and had the job, what if it ended up that there was more flexibility, did you know this already? Did you give the Universe a chance? Or did you say No, that won't work?”

            I was silent. It ended up that it was perfect I didn’t chase the mentioned job, but the conversation was well placed. I often summarized a situation before it was allowed to breathe. Wrote it off and moved on to the Next.  I knew what was best.

            As the rain started to pick up again, I looked at this confused Hen Mother and wondered, why she would pick a highly trafficked area to birth her babies, or whatever it was that she was doing. I moved a couple of steps forward, but mindful not to move into her personal field. There was something about the breadth of her wings, about the steady stare in her eyes, something that I was missing.

            I looked closely at her breast and her fully fluffed wings; my eyes fell where feathers and asphalt met, and I saw too many feet moving - at least four chicken feet; two pairs facing each other. Her wings opened to reveal four baby chicks being sheltered by the rain. 

Their mom’s movement left everybody in a cold wet confusion. Mom and babies turned in a few circles, before moving further up the parking lot and resettling into a warm feathered refuge. Mom facing the rain; babies nestled, again unseen, to her breast.

The unveiling was a suspended moment. I had never known that hens did that. Then smack – the beauty of motherhood. The perfection of Nature. The selflessness. The tenderness of that sweet mama hen. I stood there stupefied and schooled. I had no idea.

            My first reaction to nature is often – why are you doing that? 

            Kate: Why is the bee headed toward the ocean waves? It’ll get killed, that silly bee!

            Mother Nature: Because this is where they come to die.

            Kate: Why is that foolish Mina bird so close to the road? Move!

Mother Nature: Because he mated for life, and his mate was run-over, see? He is mourning her, and has nowhere else to go without her.

Kate: Why is that Shama Bird building her nest there? Doesn’t she know that is the worst spot possible? Silly bird

            Mother Nature: Kate, come look. Hear the chirps of her three beautiful newborn babies.

            I had watched the Shama Bird build her nest on the top shelf of our boat shaped shoe rack. What a ludicrous spot, I thought. She often flew out and away whenever we came out the front door. Frightened.

            Seeing that she was determined to birth there, I started a meditation practice with her. I would quietly slip out the door, tip toe past the shoe rack, stop a good four feet away, and breathe from my heart, telling her she was safe and welcome. A few days of doing this and she met my eyes, although still a little frightened, she held my gaze, and beckoned me closer. We shared a moment and I saw the same love and tenderness that I see in the eyes of human mom’s whose children are still belly bound. Each day she let me closer; I was careful never to get too close, be too loud, or too invasive. And one day, just like that, I heard “look closer” and three little beaks, on three wobbly necks screeched their wormy wishes.

            Just like that the babies were born safe and sound. Without my explaining of inadequacies, or inappropriateness of better places and times, Mama Shama, as I call her, knowingly gave birth to three little Shamas and shed a little light on one ignorant human. Who knows the dips and turns of what is best, why things are the way they are.  We are always children of learning, and it seems Mother still knows best.