Bird of Life, Bird of Death, Bird of Amazement

 

 (Scarlet Macaws - photo by University of Texas)

I am in
the north of this continent, not so very far, but far enough that the sun rises
much earlier and sets much later than usual. 
I awoke with a vision of amazement, the Scarlet Macaw of
Mesoamerica.  I cannot think of that bird
without thinking of death, and of loss. 
Reading yesterday in the book, “Seven Names for the Bellbird,” which is
a book about how people value birds in Honduras, I came across a section on the
Scarlet Macaw, the Guara Roja.  The
author found that the Hondurans speak of the Guara in terms of how much loss of
the natural world they have seen.  So the
Guara came to me today, a bird of life and a bird of death and a bird of
amazement.  I so strongly feel that to be
on a journey of amazement I must also set one foot in the door of death.  For this being present to what is, which stuns
me with the finality and infinity of my shared being.  So here I am at the annual gathering of
Unitarian Universalist ministers in Minneapolis, hearing the call to shared
ministry, which today I see as shared being.

Where
do you journey for amazement, and is death a part of this path?