F is for Falconry

F has told me what he wants for his next birthday. He wants to go and do a half day session on Falconry at a local sanctuary. Now this sounds like a fairly normal and cool thing to do for your birthday. Certainly something I can talk about with the guys at work. I may talk with them about ghosts and dreams but I do not talk with them about drumming, what dreaming means to me and my spirituality in general.

The thing is though, it is the intent behind something that makes it spiritual, that makes it something deeper and meaningful. Washing Up can be an exercise in grounding, or a meditation to take you far away, or a prayer of service and giving back to your family. We can not see the spiritual dimensions to why people do the things they do, we just see what they do. I like this. I like that the whole of life can be one big spiritual event, deeping our connectedness to all that is.

So F is still very new to all this. He has not been finding the visualization aspects of drum journeys easy. He has not found it easy to connect to helpers or totems. He had a sense of a cat once, a big one and one time when we were gathering our totems I saw a cat sat at his feet, a wolf sat by his side and a falcon type bird sat on his shoulder. I didn't see them well. It was a misty glimpse, but they were there.

The Cat we were expecting and Wolf was not much of a surprise as we are a very doggy couple. The Falcon just bore out what I had been saying on the way to the session. As I drive around I see Crows and Magpies, Jackdaws and Seagulls. I see them everywhere, all the time. I never see Hawks of any sort unless F is with me and on the way to that Drumming Session I saw three. F has started to see a lot more of them too as he has begun paying attention, he even saw one coming out of a hedge with a rabbit.

So for him, this birthday trip is not only interesting, cool and fun, it is spiritual. He wants to do this, over anything else, because he wants to connect with his totem and wants to spend time with it. He is doing them honour.

It is important to connect with our totems. if we don't we can lose them. They offer us so much understanding of ourselves, both our strengths and weaknesses. They become like family and as I drive around, seeing them flying past, it makes me feel good. A simple drive to work is a special thing now. And as for my bird feeding at lunch at work....

So here's to Falconry and connecting.