"The thing always happens that you really believe in and belief in a thing makes it happen."

-Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect.
 
A Lunar Month after Tommy died, our Navajo friend came to visit Lynn while I snored in the lazy chair. She says she was awake. I believe her. After so many beautiful miracles in our lives, how could it be otherwise?
 
As I remember Lynn's telling of Tommy's visit: 
 
I was lying on my back but felt like I was sitting up. My eyes were wide open. I remember because I had just awakened from a terrible nightmare about snakes. Every time I tried to shut them, I would again, see snakes. Tommy appeared at my left side and smiled. His pepper and salt tipped hair reflected the moon light coming in the big window facing the lake. He smiled and I remembered what a handsome man Tommy was. He asked without moving his lips, "What is it that you fear?" Losing Marley.  "That which you fear will come."  
 
His left hand then appeared to take my left arm, lifting it, turning it, wrist up. His hand floated above my arm, about six inches, not touching. With my arm suspended, Tommy extended the index finger on his right hand and pointed at my wrist. His fingernail was long and pointed, the same as I remembered seeing it in his casket.  All of a sudden, Tommy stopped. "I'll be right back", he said, "I have to go see my father and my brother for a moment." 
 
No sooner had Tommy disappeared than he was back, his hand above my arm, still smiling.  A thin line of blood appeared and moved up my arm as he moved his fingernail. He wasn't touching me but it felt like he was. The cut stopped about three inches long. I remember no pain and no fear.  
 
With his other hand he began pulling me forward until my arm was in front of a large Diamond-back Rattle-Snake. 
 
I was deathly afraid of snakes. If I saw a snake, my legs went to rubber. Any kind of snake sent me crazy with fear. Tommy 'picked up' the snake and placed its fangs into the cut on my wrist.  I couldn't scream. I couldn't move. I was frozen but trusted Tommy. The snake pulsed as its venom coursed into my veins.  Tommy watched the snake then looked at me and said,"Take his power."  
 
The next thing I knew daylight was shining through the window and our birds were singing.  I had fallen back to sleep, the best sleep I can remember, ever. As I woke up to the new day, I knew, something was different.
 
As the sun was setting over the lake, Lynn found her husband vaulting rocks at a huge brown snake floating almost motionless in the swift moving water. Stop, Marley. Lynn looked at the snake for a moment, nodded and smiled. I told the snake, in my mind, that if he wouldn't hurt us, we wouldn't hurt him. Don't throw any more rocks at snakes, sweetheart.
 
The next day as Lynn walked down again to the rocks, waiting for her husband to arrive for sunset, she froze, a hiss at her feet. The same huge, brown snake lay prone, flattened into the sand, Lynn's foot two inches from his mouth. You told me you wouldn't hurt me. And Lynn walked on, unafraid. The snake moved on into the tall reeds.
 
I don't throw rocks at snakes any more.
 
Gifts and miracles.
 
Six weeks to the day after Tommy Yazzie was killed, Lynn woke up to the howling of a puppy. The mournful crying was coming from our still unfinished house and there, on top of a mountain of rock not yet placed in walls, sat a Blue Healer pup. Blue, from the mixture of pepper and salt tipped hair, a white "T" across its chest. Lynn climbed the rock-pile to sooth the puppy. It whimpered and stepped into her lap.
 
It had a royal blue collar around its neck. 
 
The day before we flew Tommy's body to Northern Arizona, Tommy's wife asked Lynn to buy a shirt for his burial, royal blue, his favorite color.
 
We buried Tommy Yazzie in Northern Arizona and named the Blue Healer after my best friend. Tommy, my best friend, and the man who brought a gift to my wife after he was dead: the Power of the Snake.
 
So many beautiful miracles in our lives.
 
This Monday's story started a few days ago when a wild Cooper's Hawk decided to park on top of our Dove Cathedral. The native bird-bird-of-prey has been showing up every day, looking for an easy meal. Sixty doves. Two parrots. Well built cages. 
 
This morning though, the Hawk almost took some raw meat from my hand. The powerfully beautiful bird is not at all afraid of us. Weird, but par of the course for the Porters. 
 
The Power of the Hawk can awaken our own personal powers of vision and can inspire creative purpose in our lives.
 
Thinking about the Hawk, I looked back over the years since Tommy's passing. 
 
So many beautiful miracles in our lives: 
 
Vincent, the Girl Squirrel, raised from the day she was born, umbilical cord still attached. Tommy, the Blue Healer. Maya, the wild Inca Dove, a tiny ball of feathers grown into a friend who lived in our home and rested on our shoulders. The injured and wild, White Wing dove who now lives with his Turtle-Dove neighbors in the Dove Cathedral. Powder, the White German Shepherd who was going to be put down because trainers thought him worthless. George, the Old One, rescued from death and who won't die. Melvin, the abandoned puppy by the river, the Pack's Protector. And now, Gary, the Cooper Hawk. Messages and Gifts from all our animal friends. 
 
So many beautiful miracles in our lives.
 
The Power of the Snake, Tommy's special gift to Lynn, is the power of transformation, of death and rebirth. The humble snake.
 
The perspective of humility affords a generous view. It allows me to see so many things that might go unnoticed, like the love of a good woman, like six children, like five incredible men who married my daughters, like the wonderful woman who married our son, like ten point four grandbabies and counting, like the understanding of a dear friend, like the joy of dance, like the sacred vaults of music, like another sunset.
 
I wonder if the snake sees with the eyes of the hawk.
 
I wonder at so many beautiful miracles in our lives.