“Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows” -Matthew 10:29–31
The Moon was Void of Course all day when Mercury entered Gemini, so I decided to take my own advice about such things and plan to not plan anything. In true Void of Course fashion, even that plan didn’t work out like I th0ught it would.
***
Mercury has entered Gemini, one of the Signs that it rules. Admittedly, Mercury is not the sexiest planet out there. It doesn’t portend the deep undercurrents that the Uranus-Pluto square does. It doesn’t promise the shocks and jolts that The Cardinal Grand Cross does. It doesn’t breathe the chill wind of mortality that Saturn so often does. But without Mercury, you’d have no way to appreciate the larger patterns and messages that Life in the Universe has for you, and without it you’d be approximately as smart as a stump.
***
I was standing in my backyard paying attention to the wildlife (which in Brooklyn, for the most part, means “watching stray cats and being on the lookout for rats”) when I noticed that one particular sparrow was paying special attention to me. Sparrows are so common that normally we don’t notice them, and for that matter they don’t seem to notice us. They live among us and beside us, and carry on with their business the same way we do with ours. There are easy to ignore, and I imagine we are fairly easy for them to ignore too. Yet nonetheless this one Sparrow in particular seemed to be paying attention to me.
The sparrows were all flitting about doing sparrow things, and yet this one particular sparrow kept going out of her way to look at me a little more closely than the others. Any decent shaman could point out that there was a message in this for me somehow. And any decent shaman would probably point out that it was not my job to wrench meaning from the encounter. My job was to shut up and listen.
So: I shut up and I listened. And then after a bit, I went and got a piece of bread. Lunch was on me! As a result of this one sparrow’s curiosity, she and her entire… family? Flock? Cohort?… were the recipients of a free meal.
Well, not “free” exactly. It was earned by the patience and bravery of one sparrow in particular. And by watching and paying attention, the other sparrows benefited from it. And in return, I am now pretty much the sparrow equivalent of a Rock Star in my neighborhood.
***
Mercury will past swiftly through Gemini (as Mercury tends to do), leaving on the 28th. In that time, you’ll have some opportunities to do the things that Mercury helps you do best. You’ll be able to see the larger patterns of life by noticing the tiny details from which they arise. Mercury rules logic, and Mercury in Gemini has that going for it, plus the ability to note all the small things in life that The Big Things are made of.
They say that “the devil is in the details,” but I’m pretty sure that if you pay attention, you’ll find The Divine in there somewhere too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xli52WQdrWE
***
If I was telepathic, I would be able to send a message to this one particular sparrow, thanking her. “I’m going to get a blog entry out of you,” I would say. This of course would make absolutely zero sense to a sparrow. And if I were capable of reading the sparrow’s thoughts, I very much doubt they would make a lot of sense to me either. And, you know what? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
***
So, in these times of confusion and panic and vague worries, take the time to stop and to listen and to use your head. Invite the Universe to have a conversation with your logic circuits. There’s bound to be some useful data in there somewhere.
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