GUEST BLOG - Choose to Fly Like an Eagle
 By KELLIE M. SHANLEY
Life, at times, makes us melancholy: sad and afraid that we may have made wrong choices or incorrect turns as we try to follow our destiny. Disappointment sets in when life is not what we envisioned and we know we can’t go back. We need assurance that the choices we’ve made aren’t heading us toward an oncoming train. So we ask for signs.
Such was the moment for me – 6:30 a.m. on Thursday May 21, to be exact.
It had been a slow two weeks at my new business, Herbs & Things, where I sell organic and natural products such as tea, herbs, soaps and candles. I was questioning that maybe the voice I thought I heard so clearly last year telling me to open the shop may have been wrong. Perhaps I did not hear correctly or, even worse, it was something pretending to be God playing a bad joke on me while I rushed in with arms wide open.
I needed a sign.
When we aren’t consumed with the whys, what ifs, and when, it usually happens. We receive a sign. An experience or an event lets us know that there is something bigger and more profound at work in our lives. Often that sign is an ordinary thing, yet for our time or place it is extraordinary. Unless we take a few moments to stop, look, and observe, we’ll miss it.
I was in the big garden across the road from the house planting vegetables that morning of May 21st. I didn’t need a radio for background music as I was surrounded by nature’s garden. As they flit by, getting ready for their brood, the birds filled my heart with a melody of life. Occasionally I stopped planting to watch the horses graze and the dogs play in the creek, and simply enjoy the serenity around me. It was in that melodic moment, when a call I'd never heard before came from the woods across the pasture. Scanning the area where the sound came from, I could not figure out what it was.
I meandered back to the house, my hoe over my shoulder and watching the dogs run through the tall pasture grass, with my head full of questions. Suddenly I stopped walking and my mind was quieted by a shadow of something big flying over my head.
Shielding my eyes from the morning sun, I looked up to see silently gliding over me—so close I could almost touch it—a bird with a wingspan of six to seven feet.
At first glance, I could not process what kind of bird it was. What kind of hawk has a white tail I wondered? Was it an albino turkey vulture, I questioned, not grasping what I saw. Then the bird turned its head, looked me in the eye. At that moment, my mind grasped the image like a hawk latching on to its prey.
Putting my hand to my heart, I whispered prayerfully, “Oh my God. It’s an eagle!”
I’ve lived in this valley almost 55 years, and I was experiencing a first. In complete awe, I watched the eagle land and perch at the top of a poplar tree behind the house. It visited for about four hours. I was elated and honored to be witness to the beauty.
The eagle is a sign of achieving a higher state of consciousness, I knew. So, was this a sign? I believe it was—a sign only I could read. Seeing that eagle gave me answers to quiet my doubt about Herbs & Things. In that special moment, I got the message.
If I choose to fly like an Eagle, the Eagle will fly with me.
Kellie M. Shanley is the proud and hopeful owner of Herbs & Things, “where good things come in small packages.” (www.coldensherbsandthings.com) She and her husband raise horses and tend the land where Kellie was raised. Follow Kellie on her Blog http://coldensherbsandthings.blogspot.com/ and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HerbsandThings
Sanctuary
By PATRICIA CRISAFULLI
I haven’t seen the place in twenty or more years, but it continues to occupy a place in my imagination. It was an old farm: the house, a little rundown to tell the truth, surrounded by overgrown lilacs and bridal wreath spirea; the barn unused. Yet from the first moment I saw it, peddling by on my bicycle when I was a young teenager, I wanted to live there. Over the years of seeing the old farm, it worked its way into my secret fantasy life, each time hitting a soft spot of longing. Even now, recalling the place that for all I know has been torn down, I feel the same tug.
My real life belies that dream: from northern New York State to New York City to Chicago and then the Chicago suburbs. My life choices have literally been in the opposite direction; not rural, but urban and suburban. So why does the farm fantasy hold any power when the decades of my adult life indicate that it isn’t likely to become a reality?
I suspect that the old farm that I’ve romanticized over the years has more to do with the feeling it evokes than an actual location. Sitting quietly with the image in my mind, I try to recall when I first saw it. The farm had the look of a place that time had passed by. That tells me more about the hunger I had then, and must still harbor now, than it does about an agrarian life. As I contemplate, a realization warms slowly. I longed for a quiet place hidden from the world—a sanctuary.
When I was fourteen and first saw the old farm, I could imagine living in a creaky old farmhouse filled (in my mind) with lovely antiques, where lace curtains billowed in gentle breezes, and I cut fresh flowers out of my garden and set them on my desk where I wrote my books… At forty-nine, that isn’t how my life works, with the exception of having a lovely garden. Then it hits me: There is a reason why the lilac bush outside my office window hides the view. Even after I trimmed it back last weekend, when I sit at my desk I see mostly leaves. The lilac and the ornamental cherry at the corner of my garden literally block out the world. It has never occurred to me that I created in a window what I long to experience in my life—sanctuary.
I don’t know what happened to the old farm. Whether it’s still standing or torn down, it still exists in my mind, giving me a place to retreat when the world presses in too closely.
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