The shadow of the peace symbol in the reflection of the rainbow showed up in my laundry yesterday. It lasted about two minutes, but I had my phone in my pocket and click, I caught it.
Since the Paris attacks, my life has been full of synchronicities. Jam-packed.
The hummingbirds alone.
Obviously the hummingbirds are asking for my help. They want to get their message heard. I’m still contemplating their message.
Surely these magical creatures are coming to remind me that there is always possibility in the world, always hope, no matter how bad things get in the outer world. After all, the outer world is created out of our stories.
I keep returning to “A Windstorm in Bubbleland,” the Mr. Rogers opera that Eva and I watch, in which Hildegarde Hummingbird is a Cassandra figure. It’s her job to warn the people that their world is about to end. A windstorm is coming to Bubbleland, but no one believes her. They don’t want to.
The end of the world begins and only Hildegarde can stop it. In a truly operatic moment, she nearly succeeds. In the end, she needs the help of the people in Bubbleland. When they flap their wings together, the wind is defeated and Bubbleland is saved.
Throughout the opera, Hildegarde reminds the people that she isn’t saving their bubbles, she is saving them.
When I wrote last week’s blog four hummingbirds had come. Then there were five. I hadn’t opened the envelope with the picture of the fifth one on it when I began this blog.
Ha, just opened it and there’s not a single hummingbird in the literature, which is a request for money from the Nature Conservancy — but there is
a beautiful hummingbird sticker!!
Six!
Eve Neuhaus 
These continuing visitations are pregnant with encouraging significance!! Everyone knows about the Nahuatl tradition embodied on the Mexican flag, in which the Eagle helped a wandering people find their homeland. Much less known north of the border is that their western neighbors, the Purepecha or Tarascan nation, a more peaceful people, also came to their present homeland as wandering migrants, and their guide was the Hummingbird, who was thanked by the Purepecha people’s choice of Tzintzuntzan, the Place of the Hummingbirds, as their capital and spiritual center. Closer to here, the Tohono O’odham of Arizona and Sonora recognize Hummingbird as the one who found what was needed for life when it had deserted them. A man was so angry at how a dust devil terrorized his daughter that he chased the wind away. All wind deserted the people’s homeland, meaning that rain clouds had no way to get there. As the people increasingly despaired at the deepening drought, Hummingbird, refusing to give in to discouragement, went in search of the saving winds that could bring the water, found them hiding at the Ocean, and lured them back with saving clouds. A book that might be timely for you is “Parable of the Hummingbird,” by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, sharing a Quechuan story from the Andes and adjacent rain forest about how hummingbird’s refusal to give in to discouragement saved the day when a catastrophic fire threatened all life. Again and again, peoples of the New World (where hummingbirds are at home) recognize in the hummingbird a guide, a finder, and a provider, whose refusal to become discouraged against overwhelming odds can save the day and answer the call of the Life Force of which they are blessed with such an enthusiastic manifestation. I don’t know EXACTLY what the hummingbirds are telling you, but you are in a relation of reciprocity with them helping them as they help you, and I predict that the consequences of this, for you and for a circle as wide as the blessings can reach, will be hugely beneficial!!
Thank you so much, Eric!
Since you posted your blog, I too have been having hummingbird encounters. Wednesday, I attended Orchestra Novo’s Many Voices of Maria Jette, soprano. One of her songs was Die verschwiegene Nachtigall or The Discrete Nightingale. On Saturday night, she sang a French folk tune, Rossingnolet du bois or Little Nightingale.