{"id":14017,"date":"2024-10-23T00:00:36","date_gmt":"2024-10-23T04:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\/?p=14017"},"modified":"2024-10-24T22:26:27","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T02:26:27","slug":"the-thing-with-feathers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\/life-lines\/the-thing-with-feathers\/","title":{"rendered":"The thing with feathers"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a beautiful October morning, and I was seated in a jam-packed St. Peter\u2019s Square waiting for Pope Francis to begin Mass on the Feast of the Guardian Angels. As I sat between my husband and son \u2014 surrounded by other pilgrims from our diocese who had joined me on this 12-day trip \u2014 I gasped as a single and perfectly curled white feather drifted with seeming purpose right down in front of me, landing at my feet. I stared at it for a minute before picking it up and clutching it to me as though I\u2019d just been given a precious gemstone. As far as I was concerned, I had.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not one to find meaning in every little thing that happens, but every once in a while, something stops me. This feather certainly did. It felt like it was meant to make me pause, pay attention. And although I don\u2019t often feel my mother\u2019s presence around me \u2014 in the 36 years she\u2019s been gone I can count on one hand the number of times I\u2019ve felt her nearness \u2014 on that day in that gorgeous square, she was there. I tucked the feather in my bag and put it out of my head for the next few hours. But then. Then, then, then! As I walked down the streets of Rome, I spotted another perfect white feather floating right where I put my foot down. And another and another. I\u2019m not talking the run-of-the-mill pigeon feathers that are all over Rome. These were perfectly white, perfectly shaped, perfectly curled, and no one but me seemed to be noticing them. I lost count when it went over 40 in the next few days. Finally, as we stood outside the duomo in Orvieto, a tiny white feather descended, and my husband caught it and handed it to me.<\/p>\n

Right about now, you might be thinking I\u2019ve lost my mind but hear me out. Two of my favorite talented spiritual women writers \u2014 Emily Dickinson and St. Hildegard of Bingen \u2014 had profound things to say about feathers. Dickinson wrote<\/a>: \u201cHope is the thing with feathers. That perches in the soul. And sings the tune without the words. And never stops – at all.\u201d And Hildegard famously said: \u201cI am but a feather on the breath of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both women remind us that these delicate, fragile, seemingly insignificant natural wonders have something powerful to teach us about trust and surrender, hope and joy. To be a feather on the \u201cbreath of God\u201d is to be carried to places we haven\u2019t intended to go but trust in God\u2019s reasons. The tune we sing without words is that deep communication that happens when we let go of the rote prayers that are as familiar to us as our own name and enter into an interior conversation with God in a way that can be all at once beautiful and scary, energizing and paralyzing.<\/p>\n

As I tossed all of this around in my heart and soul as we pounded the cobblestone streets of Italy to pray before the remains of saints, we came to St. Mary Major, where our wise Rome guide, Jan, talked to us about the relics housed there: wood believed to be part of the manger in Bethlehem, and relics of St. Matthew and St. Jerome. One of our pilgrims looked at him skeptically and said, \u201cBut how do they know that?\u201d Jan went on to say that they do research and can date objects. The he posed a question: \u201cAt a certain point, the rest is what? Faith.\u201d He added: \u201cFaith is a decision; you make a decision to believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like that feather falling from the sky, Jan\u2019s words pulled me up short. I took out my iPhone and jotted them down so I wouldn\u2019t forget. Yes, \u201chope is the thing with feathers,\u201d but faith is the thing that gives those wings the power to soar.<\/p>\n

This column originally appeared in the October 24, 2024, issue of The Evangelist.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a beautiful October morning, and I was seated in a jam-packed St. Peter\u2019s Square waiting for Pope Francis to begin Mass on the Feast of the Guardian Angels. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14018,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[797,276,314,10,101,13,384],"class_list":["post-14017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-lines","tag-emily-dickinson","tag-hildegard","tag-hope","tag-italy","tag-life-lines","tag-pilgrimage","tag-poetry"],"yoast_head":"\nThe thing with feathers – Not Strictly Spiritual<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sometimes when we least expect it a thing of beauty drops from the sky and calls us back to ourselves. 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