Humming-bird

 

🅗🅤🅜🅜🅘🅝🅖-🅑🅘🅡🅓

As I sit pondering about life, I see a familiar visitor fluttering outside my living room window. By now it knows it is a window, not a door, but it keeps coming back. I am now thinking it’s a messenger, sent to me with a spiritual purpose and, up to now, I had not been listening.

When I stop and think about the hummingbird, I wonder how it got its name.  I know the act of humming, when executed by humans, is often a subliminal sign of intervention — either to quietly interrupt a conversation as a warning of some sort or a way to indicate no desire to listen. I can now feel both interpretations as the humming-bird is still out there hovering and fluttering trying to tell me a few things I need to hear. I decide it is time to listen.

It causes me to remember an Indigenous elder telling me a story about the hummingbird. At the time my mind was too busy to get into the zone of such abstract thinking; but, he said something about the legend of a Raven transforming a flower into a hummingbird. He gave the hummingbird a message to take to all the flowers, which is why we see them darting quickly from flower to flower and whispering a message of thanks to each flower for its beauty and making our world a better place. 

Remembering this story now and connecting the flower legend to a human metaphor, I am believing the hummingbird was sent here with a purpose. Its humming, beauty and fighting spirit motivates me to do some digging. I see it has now flown away to give me some space to think.

I decide to use the time to research more about the role of the hummingbird in indigenous cultures and legends. In "The Healer Between Heartbeats" they say the hummingbird came from the breath between worlds — too fast to be caught, too gentle to be feared.

Her wings do not fight the wind — they weave through it, stitching together what was torn by time.

Hummingbirds are masters of the small bird world. They are the only birds that can fly both forward and backwards. They can also hover in mid-air, fly sideways and even upside-down. Amazing. Unique. Beautiful.

The elders also believe these special birds carry the voices of those who left too soon. Not to speak for them, but to remind us: love never actually leaves us, it just changes shape and sometimes we need to welcome it differently.

We have all noticed that when a hummingbird visits, she doesn’t stay long. Healing never does. She’s in a hurry to move on after giving us a start — both as in surprise and as in ending something before quickly moving on. A jolt of encouragement to ‘grow’ perhaps?

“Chop chop, keep breathing, keep moving, life’s too short to stop or stall.”  

This is her lightly touching message, softly whispering without bruising, like a peck on the cheek or hand on your shoulder, always helping the flowers grow and saying you are not in this alone, but you have a role to play.

I love the soft, gentle humming of the hummingbird. It’s encouraging, enlightening, jolting, motivating… she links or bridges one heart to another, one delicate moment or frustration to another, like an omen or messenger, saying think fast, forward, back and sideways, upside down and upright, look in, take note and then quickly move forward or move on. 

“ Do not fight the wind, weave through it. You’ve got this!” and off she flies again from “flower to flower”, proudly being the healer between heartbeats.