Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book, Leaving Church, writes, “I . . . learned to recognize the shrill call of a red-tailed hawk who hunted the fields around my house. . . . To see her fold her wings and stoop, falling through the air like a lightning bolt on her prey, was to wonder if Jesus did not see something more like that than ‘something like a dove’ when the heavens split open at his baptism. “[1]
Inspired by Taylor, and by Northeastern North American native spirituality, these stoles imagine the spirit as an eagle, a bird revered in many native traditions. These stoles use Inuit, Tlingit, and Haida images, all tribes from Alaska and northeast Canada. They are white, but with significant red and black motifs of eagles. Some have crosses, some present the spirit, in eagle form.
“On Eagles’ Wings” is probably one of the most known hymns, throughout the American church, by Michael Joncas. It rephrases Psalm 91 and juxtaposes the support and uplift of the Spirit with the danger. As does Taylor, who ends her chapter saying “as I emerged from under the safety of one pair of wings, I was ready to climb onto the back of another. I was even ready to be gripped in her claws, if that is what it took to be carried aloft.”[2]
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And He will raise you up on eagles’ wings,
bear you on the breath of dawn
make you to shine like the sun and hold you in the palm of His hand.
[1] Taylor, Barbara Brown, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, ©2006, Harper Collins, p.179.
[2] Ibid.