Butterflies, Hummingbirds, Red-Tailed Hawks, and Family: Late-Summer Meditation

As intense heat breaks in our region now, I watch black swallowtail butterflies and bumble bees swarm over the latest blooms of the chaste tree.  They alternate with frenetic, determined hummingbirds, which then fly to the hummingbird feeder on the porch near the tree.

And several days ago, in the middle of an intense, painful conversation with a family member, I look out and see in the redbud tree something I've never seen before so close, perched in a tree at my viewing level: a magnificent red-tailed hawk, its yellow clawlike feet firmly grasping the branch of the Judas tree on which it sits.  Its watching eyes fiercely yellow, piercing . . . .

And then it flies away.

And, since the red-tailed hawk is my native American totem, and the conversation in which I sight the bird ushers in a new period of painful experiences with my family, it's almost as if I was meant to see this reminder right now--a reminder to look far, to see from above, to circle seemingly insoluble problems rather than let them pull me into their destructive vortex.  Particularly when those seemingly insoluble problems are traps deliberately designed to make some of us responsible for our own victimization--a trap those of us who are gay and have fought long for self-esteem have learned through painful hard-won experience to avoid like the plague . . . .

A reminder that, even when those closest to us tell us we don't count and have no valuable insight, God just might see things rather differently . . . .