The Osprey Nest

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

        
--John 14: 1-2

The old osprey nest I had been watching for the past few weeks on my morning walks with Sophie finally had some activity.

Mama (I am assuming) sat high atop the tallest branch of the craggy, barren tree guarding her home while papa swooped low to fetch pine needles, sticks and leaves, depositing them neatly into the nest with agile back claws.

I was happy to see the new tenants taking residence and making the home their own. It’s good to see some normalcy, signs of life as usual, these days. It's also important to create home that feels sacred, nurtures the soul, and invites you to settle in and get comfy. My husband and I had been nesting ourselves of late, having closed on a new home by the shore in January. Our decorating was coming along nicely when Covid-19 rudely interrupted us all. Our sweet new retirement dream home was where we would now shelter in place.

Walking on our now familiar trail, Sophie stopped just ahead of me to survey the area. She has her favorite spots to crouch and pee, some ways off the trail like a proper lady. I like to pause so as not to rush her and, wanting to give her privacy, I glanced away. In the distance I spotted our osprey friend soaring high overhead, this time with a long ribbon-like something or other trailing behind him like a kite tail fluttering in the breeze. It was a strange sight to see and I watched trying to discern what he had picked up and whether it would be a welcome addition to the nest when offered to his beloved.

He swooped close to the nest and then circled back toward me. Just then he surprised me by dropping his precarious cargo right onto the bush next to me. It landed like perfectly placed garland on a Christmas tree. 

I wondered if mother, still perched regally atop her branch, had vetoed her mate’s decorating suggestion or if he had made this last minute decision of his own accord. Either way, my osprey friend had bestowed upon me a sacred gift and I am not one to be ungrateful. 

I retrieved the rejected material and determined it to be construction debris from a nearby house now under construction (no, it wasn't toilet paper!). I had been open to receive just about anything gifted to me from “on high” these last few weeks, when we have seemed so bereft of good news. I was desperate for a sign of any kind. This would do just fine.

A divine order patterns all of creation,

from the timeless ocean to the fleeting dew.

Keep your attention on wisdom,

and do not allow yourself to be distracted.

Watch the patterns of creation.

This will enliven your soul and bring you grace and tranquility. 

-- Excerpts from Proverbs: The Wisdom of Solomon, Chapter 3, translated by Rabbi Rami Shapiro

My thoughts had been darker these past few days as we head into the possible peak of this devastating virus that is spreading exponentially leaving thousands dead and so many others fearing we are next. But this adorable osprey couple, this sweet once threatened species, reminded me that we are resilient, that seasons change and new life does arrive, despite and even sometimes, because of hardship. They showed me that working together we can rebuild, and that there’s plenty to go around, so why not share. 

They also reminded me to be grateful for my practical, hardworking husband who, much like the osprey dad, has a deeply ingrained, inspiring work ethic. His decorating sense, however; how shall we say this delicately, osprey mama? With all due respect, all decorating decisions should plainly be left up to me.

Walking home with Sophie I stopped by the dumpster and with a deep sigh of gratitude, reluctantly deposited the lovely gift. No sense holding onto things so tightly anymore.  

Peace.

Fenwick Island, DE

4/2/20

Connie Bowman is an actress, yoga teacher, host of the podcast Happy Healthy You! and author of Back to Happy and children's picture books about overcoming fear, kindness and acceptance. For more about her visit www.conniebowman.com.

Enjoy Reclaiming Joy on Insight Timer: Reclaiming Joy

A couple of video updates on our couple:

Osprey Update 5/2/20:

We had 50-60 mph winds in the storm the other night and the Osprey nest blew from the tree. Mother still sits on the branch next to where her eggs had been incubating. Dad is in another tree not far from her. I watched for a while and they both left to circle the area and landed back home.
This prayer showed up today:

Prayer for People Facing Great Uncertainty
Adapted from the New Zealand Prayer Book

God of the present moment, God who in Jesus stills the storm and soothes the frantic heart; bring hope and courage to all who wait or work in uncertainty.
Bring hope that you will make us all able to deal with whatever lies ahead.
Bring us courage to endure what cannot be avoided, for your will is health and wholeness; you are our God,
and we need you
now and always. Amen.

Osprey Update 5/5/20: 

What I think may be the final one but one never knows…

I had been feeling sad over the loss of our osprey couple’s nest in the recent wind storm.

After watching them for a few weeks, they seemed to be a solid couple, determined to make a home in the once abandoned nest high up in the twisted old tree by the bay. I observed with great curiosity as they added debris; plastic and paper, twigs and practically anything they could find to put their stamp on their nest. 

My husband and I did the research. Ospreys, once a threatened species due to pesticides and other man-made threats, were now thriving in the Chesapeake Bay after years of measures taken to eliminate unhealthy practices. Both male and female build the nest together. They take residence and lay their eggs, typically two to three, in the Spring in whatever nest is available. The mother is usually larger than the father, perhaps noticeably when she is carrying her soon- to-be offspring. According to our research, they can lay eggs anytime from mid April to late May.

I assumed they had laid their eggs and were happily awaiting the birth of their babies.

It appears I was wrong!

After their nest blew down I watched for a few days as mom and dad seemed to grieve their great loss atop their barren perch. Once I spotted the male circling the tree with twigs in his back talons looking for a place in the tree to drop his building materials. They seemed to want to rebuild in place, only higher up.

After a few days I noticed that the couple had not been around. This morning on a walk by their still empty tree, the tide receded, I crossed the land where I normally would not be able and headed toward the tree. There on the ground beneath it I found what had once been our sweet couple’s mansion in the sky. I knew it was huge but laying in a shambles on the ground I could see it had been enormous. They had collected a myriad of items from colored strips of paper, a piece of a plastic carton and wrappers of all sorts and likely many pounds of twigs once intricately woven together to form their impressive but tenuous structure.

It took me a while to sift through the remains, but I am happy to report that there were no traces of eggs or feathers or anything that would lead me to believe that her babies had been born and were either abducted or killed in the fall. Such good news!

Our couple has moved on. Yesterday I thought I heard their now familiar cry, but I am not sure. I miss them but I certainly wish them well in their new home and pray their family thrives and their babies grow healthy and strong and eventually fly away to fulfill their own destinies. 

And then our couple can retire by the beach and happily enjoy their golden years in the sunshine. #ospreyupdate

The Real Work 

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

~~Wendall Berry

Wild Geese

My husband teases me that I say yoga is great for everything. Maybe it's not good for everything, but yoga can prepare us to move through life’s joys and sorrows with ease and grace and to unify our minds, our bodies and our spirits so that we can live happier, healthier lives. 

In many ways joy can be as challenging to contain as grief. The intensity of joy floods the nervous system with exhilarating feel good hormones. Joy can be thrilling, exciting and stimulating. Grief, likewise creates a similarly intense response. Both emotions affect us profoundly; physically, emotionally and spiritually. 

Moving through the asanas (poses), breathing practices, and meditation of a full yoga practice allows us to move stagnant energy from the body and helps us to remember and reunite with our true natures. Our mats can be places to return to again and again to clear out the cobwebs and relieve stored tension in the body.

This week I am recovering from wedding joy. (Yes, recovering from intense joy is a thing!) There is also the letdown after all the planning and the full weekend of festivities and celebrations. It was so much fun, extremely emotional and touching to see family and friends gathered to celebrate the happy couple. It was also exhausting.

I need yoga this week. I feel tired but am also flying high like the wild geese I keep seeing these past few days. There was so much love for this couple, my daughter and her now husband, our sweet new son-in-law. He could barely contain himself when those church doors opened to reveal his bride. Tears flowed from both of them even before her father and I walked her down the aisle. It was stunningly beautiful, sweet and sacred.

Have you noticed all of the wild geese flying overhead lately? I am in love with the geese. A few years back I recorded this, Mary Oliver’s Snow Geese, a poem about joy and it’s fleeting nature. I love this poem because it captures beautifully how transitory this emotion joy really is. Joy often seems like it's gone soon after it arrives. If only sorrow was as short-lived!

For ancient Celtic people wild geese symbolized God. Much like God, geese can be disruptive, surprising and sometimes unexpected, but also quite awesome and beautiful just the same. Like the geese, God sees from a higher vantage point and moves with perfect precision.

Consider the expression “wild goose chase”, meaning to chase after something that is hard to catch. Sounds a lot to me like our souls, our true selves, or God. There are times when God does seem elusive. This can be especially true in times of stress or sorrow. We may look and look but cannot find a trace of God in our lives. When this happens, I need to find something like those miraculous geese to tide me over until I can reconnect with what has been there all along. Yoga always helps. So does prayer, sacred writings, meditation, time with a dear friend, a good long nap…

Why do they fly in a V? I looked it up. It conserves their energy. Each bird flies slightly above the bird in front, resulting in a reduction of wind resistance. The birds take turns being in the front, falling back when they get tired. In this way, the geese can fly for a long time before they need to stop to rest. They know when to fly, how to fly and where to fly. How do they know all of this? Their formations are precise. The sound of the wings flapping as they fly can be deafening if you are close. And their loud bossy honk, their communication with one another, is fascinating to observe as they encourage the slow, slacker geese to fly faster. They are individuals, yet their unity allows them to move through the sky with great power and mighty impressive precision.

A pair of geese will get together to raise a family and, for the most part, will stay together the rest of their lives (up to 25 years), raising new families each year. Geese have very strong affections for others in their group (known as a gaggle). If one bird in the gaggle gets sick, wounded, or shot, a couple of others may drop out of formation and follow the ailing goose down to help and protect him or her. They try to stay with the disabled goose until it dies or is able to fly again, then they catch up with the group or launch out with another formation. 

Geese are social animals who suffer when confined in individual cages. Confinement such as this also can lead to lesions of the sternum and bone fractures, as well as foot injuries from the cage floors. 

My prayer for us is that we can take a lesson from the wild geese and learn to fly together, to take care of one another, to share  leadership and to honk loudly when someone needs a little encouragement to do better. And for those of us lucky enough to find a partner to travel this journey with, may we honor that relationship with deep reverence, remembering to look deeply for the divine spark in the other as well as ourselves.

Joy and sorrow move through the emotional and physical body throughout our lifetime. As I wrote in my book Back to Happy we cannot hold on to joy anymore than the geese can stay forever in the air. They must find fields on which to land. Joy is a gift to be cherished but not clung to. 

Sorrow, although it does pass, can stay with and affect the body in a negative way if we allow it. We can, however, choose otherwise.

Next up on the Happy Healthy You! podcast  we talk about the issues that can land in our tissues after trauma and how to move through the tough times. 

Like the geese, we must keep moving though the seasons of our lives. Practices like yoga can help. To practice with me, visit my yoga page at www.conniebowman.com

Namaste,

Connie

                                          SOMETHING TOLD THE WILD GEESE

                                                            By Rachel Field

Something told the wild geese

It was time to go,

Though the fields lay golden

Something whispered, "snow."

Leaves were green and stirring,

Berries, luster-glossed,

But beneath warm feathers

Something cautioned, "frost."

All the sagging orchards

Steamed with amber spice,

But each wild breast stiffened

At remembered ice.

Something told the wild geese

It was time to fly,

Summer sun was on their wings,

Winter in their cry.

Practicing Gratitude

If the only prayer you ever say in your life is thank you, it will be enough.                Meister Eckhart

Expressing thanks may be one of the simplest ways to feel better, happier and even healthier.

The Thanksgiving holiday began, as the name implies, when the colonists gave thanks for their survival and for a good harvest.  I can only imagine what it was like to have lived through those early days in our country with much loss of life, sickness, hunger and fear. Those colonists didn’t have the research we have today that spouted the many benefits of expressing gratitude, but they did have faith. Their belief in a higher power reminded them that gratitude was an imperative, not an option and so Thanksgiving was born.

There are only two contemporary accounts of the 1621 Thanksgiving: This is Edward Winslow's account, which he wrote in a letter dated December 12, 1621. The complete letter was first published in 1622. 

Our corn [i.e. wheat] did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sown. They came up very well, and blossomed, but the sun parched them in the blossom. Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

Thanksgiving wasn't made an actual holiday until much later. Here's a fun video about the history of the holiday.

This week can be an experiment in practicing gratitude. Will you try it? Maybe you’re already a champion at this expressing of thanks - but me, I need a practice to raise the bar. I must admit, I take people and things for granted A LOT! My life is really pretty comfy and I have been blessed over and over again.  I really should be expressing my gratitude more abundantly. This will be good for me. 

Here’s what I have learned from some of the leading researchers and their studies of gratitude. (They must know, right!)

The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness (depending on the context). In some ways gratitude encompasses all of these meanings. Gratitude is a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives. In the process, people usually recognize that the source of that goodness lies at least partially outside themselves. As a result, gratitude also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals — whether to other people, nature, or a higher power.

In positive psychology research gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.

People feel and express gratitude in many ways. They can apply it to the past (retrieving positive memories and being thankful for elements of childhood or past blessings), the present (not taking good fortune for granted as it comes), and the future (maintaining a hopeful and optimistic attitude). Regardless of the inherent or current level of someone’s gratitude, it’s a quality that individuals can successfully cultivate further.

Two psychologists, Dr. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami, have done much of the research on gratitude. In one study, they asked all participants to write a few sentences each week, focusing on particular topics.

One group wrote about things they were grateful for that had occurred during the week. A second group wrote about daily irritations or things that had displeased them, and the third wrote about events that had affected them (with no emphasis on them being positive or negative). After 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. Surprisingly, they also exercised more and had fewer visits to physicians than those who focused on sources of aggravation.

Another leading researcher in this field, Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, tested the impact of various positive psychology interventions on 411 people, each compared with a control assignment of writing about early memories. When their week’s assignment was to write and personally deliver a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been properly thanked for his or her kindness, participants immediately exhibited a huge increase in happiness scores. This impact was greater than that from any other intervention, with benefits lasting for a month.

Of course, studies such as this one cannot prove cause and effect. But most of the studies published on this topic support an association between gratitude and an individual’s well being.

Other studies have looked at how gratitude can improve relationships. For example, a study of couples found that individuals who took time to express gratitude for their partner not only felt more positive toward the other person but also felt more comfortable expressing concerns about their relationship.

Managers who remember to say “thank you” to people who work for them may find that those employees feel motivated to work harder. Researchers at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania randomly divided university fund-raisers into two groups. One group made phone calls to solicit alumni donations in the same way they always had. The second group — assigned to work on a different day — received a pep talk from the director of annual giving, who told the fund-raisers she was grateful for their efforts. During the following week, the university employees who heard her message of gratitude made 50% more fund-raising calls than those who did not.

There are some notable exceptions to the generally positive results in research on gratitude. One study found that middle-aged divorced women who kept gratitude journals were no more satisfied with their lives than those who did not. Another study found that children and adolescents who wrote and delivered a thank-you letter to someone who made a difference in their lives may have made the other person happier — but did not improve their own well-being. This finding suggests that gratitude is an attainment associated with emotional maturity.

Gratitude is a way for us to appreciate what we have instead of always reaching for something new in the hopes it will make us happier, or thinking we can’t feel satisfied until every physical and material need is met. Gratitude helps us refocus on what we have instead of what we lack. And, although it may feel contrived at first, this mental state grows stronger with use and practice.

Here are some suggestions to cultivate gratitude on a regular basis:

Write a thank-you note. You can make yourself happier and nurture your relationship with another person by writing a thank-you letter expressing your enjoyment and appreciation of that person’s impact on your life. Send it, or better yet, deliver and read it in person if possible.

Make a habit of sending at least one gratitude letter a month. Once in a while, write one to yourself.

Thank someone mentally. No time to write? It may help just to think about someone who has done something nice for you, and mentally thank the individual.

Keep a gratitude journal. Make it a habit to write down or share with a loved one, thoughts about the gifts you’ve received each day.

Count your blessings. Pick a time every week to sit down and write about your blessings — reflecting on what went right or what you are grateful for. Sometimes it helps to pick a number — such as three to five things — that you will identify each week. As you write, be specific and think about the sensations you felt when something good happened to you.

Pray. Anyone can use prayer to cultivate gratitude. 

Meditate. Mindfulness meditation involves focusing on the present moment without judgment. Although people often focus on a word or phrase (such as “peace”), it is also possible to focus on what you’re grateful for (the warmth of the sun, a pleasant sound, etc.).

This week try with me this awesome gratitude experiment. Let it be an exploration into how well we express gratitude in our lives and where there is room for improvement. We are all works in progress after all!

This Thanksgiving week let me just express my gratitude to you. Thank you for caring about what I have to say, for listening to the podcast and joining me in trying to make this world a little happier and healthier. I am grateful for you.

Namaste.

Here is a Simple Gratitude Meditation:

Find a comfortable seat with the spine elongated.

Notice the body and the external sensations, temperature of the air, noises in distance and nearby.

Take some long slow deep breaths through the nose.

Make the exhale longer than the inhale and hold at bottom.

Be grateful for this breath.

Experiencing gratitude connects us with the heart and the present moment.

Inviting sensations of gratitude allows for happiness.

Notice the heartbeat and be grateful for each one.

Bring awareness to the eyes and appreciate the ability to see the beauty of life.

Notice the ears and the sounds that move us and cheer us and motivate us.

Appreciate the mouth and tongue for the ability to taste every amazing flavor that food has to offer.

Feel the breath as it enters the nose that allows for this smooth comforting breath and the ability to experience the aroma of food, freshly folded laundry, the sweetness of a baby.

Check in with the body and notice if there has been a shift as we have moved into a more grateful state.

Observe this state being aware that everything is impermanent and states do change but we can always drop back into this place of gratitude with as little effort as one conscious breath.

Enjoy this moment of gratitude for as long as you wish and then go on about your day.