The Cardinal Rule: Endurance

I've always loved cardinals. They are one of the few birds that stay north the winter time. When the landscape is gray and white, the bright red color of the male is stunning and exotic and always takes my breath away. At my home in the Catskill Mountains, we have had a gorgeous pair hanging around our home for a couple of years.

Last February, the male started to feel his mating mojo and began a very curious ritual. He would sit in the bushes by the kitchen window and fly into the window, over and over again, banging his beak into the glass. Amazed that he was not completely hurting himself, my husband told me Mr. Cardinal may be seeing his own reflection in the glass, and, thinking it was another male, was simply defending his woman and his little piece of the world. Every morning we would awaken to the thumping of his beak into the kitchen window. It was loud! As time went by his little ritual expanded to include flinging himself into the window by our bed and then, even more creatively, the rear view mirrors on not only my car, but our next door neighbors. This bird was crazy!

Well past mating season, and babies fledging, he is still engaged in his daily rounds. But now, when I hear the thumping on the window, I am oddly comforted. Somewhere over the last months, the bird morphed from being a symbol of crazy confrontation and destructive willfulness, to becoming a symbol of endurance, and therein the power of perseverance. Rather than seeing his bizarre behavior as a mad response to competition with attack, I began to see this ritual as Mr. Cardinal meeting himself, over and over again, with perseverance, determination and patience. He went from wacko warrior to Spiritual Warrior. Yes, the beat, beat, beat of his beak reminds me of the beat of my own Inner Amazon Warrior.

Physically, I understand endurance. The "no pain no gain" theory. But I'm talking about a much larger sense of endurance. The spiritual quality of endurance. When I stumble and disconnect from my own sense of endurance, I can become mighty impatient and confrontational, mostly with myself

If we view life as something to willfully confront, to control and manipulate, then we are like my Crazy Cardinal, banging into a perceived illusion of competition and attack. When we accept our life as it is, we awaken endurance, and begin to use this new found sense of determination to strengthen our self-respect and self-love. We become like my Warrior Cardinal, perpetually coming back to Self, meeting ourselves where we are, with perseverance and loving patience. It from this place of self honoring that we can begin to make the choices needed to change our lives. This is how we transcend our limitations.

Endurance is enhanced by a deep sense of gratitude for Life, for the gift of your Life and for the gift of being You. Yes, gratitude... and patience.