The Hawks
This is a story that you already know, perhaps better than I do. I will tell it to you anyway:
Once there was a woman, and everywhere she went, there were hawks. Sometimes there were just a few, but often more than she could keep track of.
The way she first became aware of them was this. On a walk one day, the woman felt she must stop beneath a large oak tree, but she did not know why. Feeling foolish, she listened to her heart and she did stop. At that moment, two large hawks left their perches, which were hidden in another tree nearby, and they flew to the branches right above her. They landed there, staring down at her from a few feet away for a long time. This thrilled the woman, for she had always loved hawks and thought that they were beautiful. She had never seen wild hawks so close before; in fact, she had rarely seen them at all. At the same time, she felt uneasy. She wondered what they were doing, and why she had known to stop. Soon she had to get home to her family, so she walked on, leaving the hawks perched in the tree. They watched her go. And after that, her life was never the same.
Hawks perched near her on trees and fences. They lined the roads she drove. They flew in front of her car. They glided in from far away to circle overhead when she went walking. If she didn’t notice one sitting in a tree close by, it would scream at her. If she was in pain or need or conflict, one or more of the birds would appear to her, even over a busy interchange or subdivision. One day some hawks even surrounded her house. This went on for months.
You ask: why her, why hawks? And she did too. You ask: why don’t I write about something that could really happen? And that’s a good question. Listen.
The hawks mystified her. She really couldn’t believe them herself. Sometimes she felt angry at them, sometimes grateful or awed by them. She loved them and their steady presence. And yet, she was constantly surprised that they were there. Surely they would be gone today. But no, there was another one. And another…
Now, this woman was well loved, yet in her heart she was alone. When she was young, she had not felt her own love accepted, or felt the love of those around her, although it was there. Something was wrong, but she did not know what. She was dying slowly, infinitely slowly: surely in a few years she would have been dead. Without love, hearts grow cold with despair and stop.
Then she met someone who taught her love. It took seven years, but she learned the real, overwhelming thing: unselfish and personal, fierce and tender, accepting and respectful. Love was a difficult lesson, and she often could not tell if her struggle was to learn it, or to flee from it.
But finally, she did learn it. Her heart beat warm and strong, it was held in love and was healed. She could feel love in herself, and she could discern it in others, for it was the ground of her being. When she left, she took what she had learned, and she used it.
Do you think I have forgotten the hawks? I have not: they are waiting.
First, she looked around her, and found a mate who knew love, too. They joined their love and it grew, both separately and together. In her contentment, she was still, and discovered that love was an infinite lesson. She felt Love beyond what she had known. It was the same feeling, with a different Teacher: the same lesson she had already learned, only without beginning or ending, unendingly strong. Her heart beat warmer, stronger: it was held in Love and healed further.
Then she took the love and the Love that she had learned, and she and her husband made a child. She bore and nurtured the child, and held it in love as she was held, by her teacher, by her husband, by All. During her busy days she knew joy.
Only she wondered, “How will I share this love of my child with my teacher, whose true child I am? I have changed. And how will I explain to him this Love I have discovered, that he does not know? I have changed.” She had learned much, but she did not know everything about love.
She wondered, she waited, and soon the teacher grew sick and then he died. She did not know this, and he did not tell her: who knows why? Goodbyes are hard, even when love is strong. Bodies grow weak, and death can be difficult, even for true teachers of love.
It was some time until she learned that her teacher was dead. The woman felt shocked and also betrayed by words unsaid, unfinished. She asked questions which no one now alive could answer. Over time, she began to doubt her teacher and the God who took him. She cast both out of her heart, and it broke.
Half of her heart was with her husband and her children (for she now had another). She did not doubt them, for she could touch and feel their love. They warmed and comforted her. But she could not touch or talk with the dead, or with God, and to her their love became unreal. Her trust in them melted away, and with them the ground of her being. The other half of her broken heart began to freeze. And again she began to die, but very slowly.
The wild hawks are circling. They are very close.
As I said, the woman was well loved; and yet again she felt alone. This time she was stronger than she had been long ago. She thought, “Here are my husband and my children, and others whom I love. I will walk forward with them, and make a good life for us all. This lesson at least will be real, and not a lie.” And through the force of her will, made strong from love, she did so for a while. But no woman can walk far when the ground of her being has melted from beneath her feet. No man can love long whose broken heart is slowly freezing. No one can survive without love, or Love. Neither could she.
Finally she could walk no farther, and fell to her knees. She cried out, not believing anyone heard, and said, “I have tried to walk forward alone. I have tried to do what was best for myself and for those I love. But I no longer know what that is. Send me what I need, and I will try to know it and accept it and go on.”
And she got what she asked for. Repeatedly she heard the echo of the echo of Love in her heart. She listened to it, she followed it, and the ground remained firm. Her heart warmed, then filled with tears and anger so strong they almost killed her, but not quite. And even in the midst of grief, her heart beat whole again.
She thought that she could again feel that first remembered love, and God’s also. But she was not so sure this time. Could she see them? No. Could she touch them? No. She had caring all around her, and it was so real. She could hold her child, feel her husband’s touch. She could walk and talk with those she loved. But she needed more.
She longed for God’s Love and for the teacher who had made all love possible for her. She longed to see him. She longed for the tangible. So she prayed, she complained, she implored and she asked for something. She didn’t even know what it was that could help her. Nothing, she supposed. She thought, “What is gone is gone. What is seen can be touched, and what is unseen is beyond our grasp, our eyes.” But then, she had never expected her heart to warm again, either. She had not known if she would live, and she had. So she continued to ask. For something.
Do you hear the hawks calling on the wind? She did. And that’s when she took a walk, and they came to her.
Well, I’ve told you already what it was like. How could she feel alone, with such amazing creatures on every hand? How could she discount them or explain away so many of them? She tried. Many times she would say, “The hawks came to me again. Let me tell you.” And others would listen, and would understand. But she could not. She had a problem.
To see love made manifest was aweing, although it was merely what she had asked for. She recognized love; it was familiar to her. She was not sure what love the hawks came from, or if it mattered. Hawks were the messengers, hawks were the message: fierce, protective, beautiful and far-seeing, they held her in their sight. And over and over, wherever she went, to her they said, “Deny us, and deny your very self. You are well loved, and you are never alone.” She understood this, and yet felt foolish to believe it. And even more foolish not to believe it. She had a problem.
The problem was that she had forgotten that love is an infinite, a limitless lesson. Remember? The hawks did, and refused to behave in a finite fashion. They remained inexplicable and ordinary, soaring on the border of what is seen and unseen. That is how love works, you know—all of It.
By their presence, the hawks comforted and disturbed her. They held out the problem to her again and again, beyond her first lesson in love, and the grief in her heart, to what can’t change, and so it never does: for love, the real overwhelming thing, never changes from teacher to Teacher. It never changes at all. How do you think she learned love in the first place? How do you think her teacher found her, held her, healed her heart? And is that any less a mystery than a hawk? Love can bring alive again those who are dead inside; it can materialize hawks at any time, any place. And it does.
I can’t tell you how the story ends. It is still unfolding. Why, just today was the anniversary of her teacher’s death. The woman mourned: she cried and she prayed. Then she went out for a walk. And as she got to the road the hawks….
Well, they were there. And they were there for her.
And as the wild hawks glided slowly, deliberately to meet her, then stopped with wings motionless on the wind directly overhead, she looked up with tears on her face, and in her heart, and said, “Thank you, thank you.” And slowly in the air, slowly, the hawks bowed to her with piercing grace. Then they turned and flew with speed beyond her sight.
That woman, she was one who was very well loved, and she was never, ever alone. After a while, she collected herself and walked on. Love was, after all, an infinite lesson. She was waiting. There would be more.
