Today a miracle was announced to the world:

looking hopeful and en-lightened for the future

The biggest hero(ine) in my life, as she is in Obama’s and so many other admirerers, is Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who has been released from house arrest, at last! This noble woman has suffered so much in the name of democracy, an ideal she knows is worth fighting for, indeed, even dying for if need be. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 (the same year I got married!) she has been incarcerated in either prison or confined to her compound in Rangoon, Burma (the name she uses for Myanmar, although the military dictatorship, newly camoflaged as the “elected government” as of a few days ago, is nestled between Thailand, China, and Bangladesh, even the extreme eastern Himalayas. Her freedom was presaged to me by an unusual sign:

many have awaited this auspicious day, her freedom!

I was walking along our beautiful Atlantic beach here in St. Augustine the other day, and saw a sight gave me a wicked case of wonderment even since it happened. From a distance, I thought I was spying a very unusual person, because its shape was far too large for any sea bird, the colors were all different from the shores critters I’ve usually seen: birds of all sorts, huge sea turtles and big land ones in the dunes, and sometimes, even a carcass of decades-long turle, a dolphin,  huge jellyfish that looks like a round space capsules.

what was this strange sight?

the interconnectedness of All: portrayed by eqyptian goddess Nut

No, what I was seeing was strange enough to make me slow my pace down and … sneak up on it. There were no other people on this beach, Anantastia State Park, a sanctuary for wildlife and dunes that runs about 3 miles along the shoreline of the town of St. Augustine Beach. Slowly, in a walking crawl, I approached the unusual creature, and finally recognized it as—no! it couldn’t be–this was too weird, unheard of! for this creature — but what I saw was a gigantic, wings spread, head in profile when not nudging the detritus of the beach in pursuit of something– an elegantly enormous American Bald Eagle! Unmistakeable, its white head and dark body with its golden feet and claws was exactly the same creature as we’d seen living so profusely among the rock cliffs of Western canyons and riverways, when my consort Carter and I canoe out West.

Here it was — an unmistakeable land-loving bald eagle on the very windy, very salty, very un-land-y Atlantic Ocean beach. This encounter, this very unusual occurence of a land eagle picnicing on a lone ocean beach, made me stop dead in my tracks. And take note. And watch. And remember. And … slowly the eagle noticed me, and picked itself up and flew off another twenty or thirty feet down the beach, then into the surf, as it hopscotched ahead of me for quite some time. I slowly walked, not wanting to scare it. I wanted to savor this moment for as long as I could. Until finally it flew off, back toward the nearby inland nest in a tall pine that I just happened to know its location, having been in awe of this great flying beast and its family that lives there, for as long as those of us who know of its nest, high above a miles-distant creek, called Moultrie.

For days I thought about this sight. And thought, like all of life as I’ve come to know it, that all events are interlinked. Nature duplicates what humanity does; humanity replicates what nature does. Chaos rules, but surprises always keep the balance of good vs. evil in check. And, as with nature’s majesty so significantly demonstrated by this great bird’s visit on the beach, and letting me get so very close to it … I knew in me bones that something GOOD was afoot in the annals of human behavior on earth because of this auspicious omen.

Days passed, and I wondered was going to happen, to measure up to the intensity of my encounter with the eage. And then there it was! This morning I awoke to see the New York Times (which I only get on Sundays) with its front cover of the smooth-browed Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s smiling face atop her red metal rails, which have kept her prisoner in her own home for most of the past 15 years, not even allowing her the freedom to travel to England to see her dying-from-cancer husband, Michael Aris. In 1999 she’d not been given the assurance of being allowed back in to her beloved Burma if she chose to leave. So she didn’t.

that same elated feeling of exuberance i had when i was watching the bald eagle, feeling so privileged to be there, at that moment, seeing and being One with a phenomenon of nature that few so seldom experience, all of a sudden it made sense.

When I saw that Aung San Suu Kyi had been released, following the previous days’ succes of the replacement of a psuedo-democratically elected new government for the uniformed military junta of previous decades — I knew that the bald eagle I’d seen was a sign of Aug San Shuu Ky’s imminent release. The eagle, this majestic bird of immense power and perseverence, is a sign that if we are patience enough, and willing to endure all hardships to make change happen — success will be ours, as it has been for the Democratic Queen of Burma. Capturing the world’s Big Heart it one of great successes of this marvelous woman of high ideals we know as Aung San Suu Kyi.

Welcome back to your family’s arms, sweet lady. Wear this flower in your hair, too, from me and all who honor and respect you for being You.

the many-petalled lotus of the awakened One

in the Light, with much love, lordflea, your pal