About five years ago, I fell deeply and madly in love. She had the blackest, biggest eyes you could imagine, highlighted with the steely blue-black head feathers and sideburns. She was and is such a beauty. Elegant and graceful, Clara was everything I wanted to be.

I first came to know her through an article in the newspaper that noted that City Hall had been declared home base by two peregrine falcons. Promptly dubbed Clara and José by the community, I became one of the Fourth Street Garage gang. We traded stories and information about the two, always with our binoculars aimed at the tower or toward the skies.

Clara’s very first eggs, three in number, were watched by us addicts on the Falcon Cam until they hatched. Then, if we weren’t on the Cam, we were at the Garage. Watching Clara and José as they took those wee, fluffy ones to full juvenile status was an experience of awe as well as an affair of the heart.

Although they call the peregrine falcon a bird of prey, I have come to see them as simply intensely individualized Spirit in action. I so wanted that “intensely me” approach to my life. Thus, Clara became my mentor in the second year while on Garage assignment. I call it ‘assignment’ because it became a divine appointment for me.

I watched Clara, for example, do fly-abouts. She would leave the tower ledge, fly high, find a thermal and ride. She floated, she soared, she flapped, she used her feathers to manipulate loft … oh, God, she was so very, uncompromisingly beautiful. I sensed that sometimes she did that just for herself, to experience her joy and her freedom. At other times, she seemed to be giving a lesson to the kids, staying close to the tower, riding a thermal, floating in circles above them, climbing, then, moving her feathers ever so slightly to turn.

Clara has lost three mates…the most beloved, José, seemingly killed by human installations. However, Clara has her mission and she carries onward with mate number four.

I think it is Clara’s aloneness as well as her interdependence that captures my attention. It is also her sheer elegance and freedom in the air. It is through observing her that I have been witness to the very things I wanted to learn…grace in my expression of Spirit, freedom to soar, and being fully connected to all that is around me.

My lessons continue with Clara. This year…new lessons and, with eggs about to hatch, new kids on the ledge!!

I went to a convention for five days in a land of cold where there were icy blue skies and snow-covered mountain peaks. It was invigorating—cold sunshine and visible breath. I basked in that chill because it was Winter at her most attractive.

Coming home was, as always, a return to my touchstone. Disembarking from the plane, the soft warmth embraced me and I was full of the usual anticipation to greet my family of humans and my family of cats. I knew the humans would hug me but was uncertain if the cats would hiss or purr!

The change in climate between the locations was less about the change in temperature, however, than the change process itself. When I left San José, we were still sitting in the bare branch part of a California winter; when I returned, there were little leaf-lets on the trees, there were also flowers on other trees, the poppies were opening and, everywhere I looked, there was birthing going on. The landscape was taking on that lushness that seems to be part of Spring.

On my morning strolls, I marveled at the newness, the freshness, and the abundance. As my eyes appreciated, my thoughts took the turn that they take every Spring. Why do I keep forgetting, I asked myself, what Nature is showing me so dramatically. That is, when I am feeling that Divine discontent, I need that same incubation period, that time of desolation or, perhaps, that seeming immobility prior to the re-birth that I see in Nature?

During that incubation time, I have discovered that I must continue my spiritual practices mindfully and regularly. The fact that absolutely nothing seems to be happening is simply an appearance. Beneath the observable, there is the on-going work of building my spiritual muscle, of becoming more conscious, of recognizing and celebrating Grace in my life.

At the right and perfect time, I leave the plateau of stasis just like Winter transforms into Spring. I am delighted that I had that few days away; now, I can embrace the winter that is occurring within.