What a Dead Possum Taught Me About Prosperity (yes, really)

The most important data doesn’t come from strategy or spreadsheets. It comes from the shimmer of something you almost ignored.

“This vigor that hugs the world—it is warm, it is moistening, it is firm, it is greening.”
—Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard called it viriditas—greening power. A sacred vitality that pulses through all of life. She saw this wild, creative force everywhere, urging us to stay “wet and green and juicy.”

Not just in body, but in spirit. In the way we move through our lives and our work.

To dry out—emotionally, imaginatively, spiritually—is to forget that life is alive. That it’s speaking to us constantly, in every small and ordinary way.

She once wrote to bishops and abbots, warning that they were becoming brittle and lifeless in their rigid pursuit of doctrine.

Her remedy was clear: Get outside. Listen differently. Stay close to what grows.

That’s where I begin, too—in life and in business.

Omen Days & Liminal Knowing

Every year, between the Winter Solstice and the turning of the calendar, I step into a quiet ritual: the collecting of omens for the year ahead. These are the Omen Days—a window of time to tune in, to ask, to receive.

Twelve days. Twelve omens. I listen for symbols, synchronicities, and subtle messages—one for each month to come. Not predictions, but invitations. Threads to weave into the fabric of the future. I capture them to return to each month as a guide, a trail marker of what to listen for and pay attention to in the weeks ahead.

This year, the message for March was clear: increase your capacity for abundance.

At first, I imagined all of the fun things—riches, ease, beauty, joy, gifts. But the reminder that came was not a bouquet or a bonus check. It was a bald eagle, standing sentry beside something most of us would rather turn away from.

 

The Eagle and the Carrion

She was magnificent. Regal. She flew up from the side of the road into the trees. I turned the car around to go back and commune with her.

At first, I thrilled at the sight—eagle as messenger, eagle as power.

But then I saw what she had been after: carrion. A possum’s remains, half-buried at the edge of the road.

My civilized mind recoiled. Surely abundance looks… cleaner than this?

But in that moment, I remembered: true abundance is not polite. It’s not curated. It’s life, whole and unedited. Life that feeds on what has come before. Life that includes death. Life that regenerates.

It brought to mind Richard Rohr’s words:

“To let the moment teach us, we must allow ourselves to be at least slightly stunned by it… toward a subtle experience of wonder.”

The eagle stunned me—how could she not? She was gorgeous and commanding, perched not even ten yards away. She was the embodiment of abundance. Not because of her proximity to death, but because of her comfort in it. Her presence reminded me that abundance is found even in what we try to avoid.

She interrupted my assumptions about what abundance should look like. She asked me to widen my lens. To see possibility not just in the pristine, but in the places I’ve been conditioned to dismiss.

Rohr teaches that we tend to meet new moments with predictable responses: mistrust, cynicism, fear, judgment. But when we drop those defenses—even briefly—something else slips through. Wonder. Reverence. Awe.

That’s what the eagle offered me: a reminder that the sacred doesn’t just visit the mountaintop. It appears in the compost heap, the detour, the roadside remains.

Compost and Creation

More and more people are stepping away from extractive systems—leaving platforms like Meta, walking out of corporate spaces, and naming a desire for something more human, more alive.

But departure alone isn’t transformation.

We carry our conditioning with us: the glorification of overwork, the obsession with metrics, the belief that growth must be relentless and fast.

We say we want freedom, but often rebuild the same cages in new containers.

I see it happening on Substack, too—a platform born from simplicity and soul now slowly bending to compete, to perform, to keep pace.

I remember when Instagram felt revolutionary, too—until it didn’t.

The pattern isn’t in the platform. It’s in us.

Abundance doesn’t live in the shiny and new. It lives in what we’re willing to compost—old habits, unquestioned assumptions, the remnants of burnout we’ve been too busy to tend.

The question isn’t how do we escape the algorithm?

The real questions are: 

• What are we deliberately growing?

• How are we choosing to show up—for our audiences and ourselves?

• What will we carry forward—not as baggage, but as nourishment?

 

A Closing Reflection

This March, the message was clear: expand your capacity for abundance.

The eagle showed me how.

Not through grandeur, but through groundedness. Not in polished perfection, but in presence—with what is real, raw, and overlooked.

She reminded me that abundance doesn’t arrive wrapped in glitter. It shows up in the unexpected. In what we’re willing to witness, tend, and learn from—even when it feels inconvenient or unlovely.

Abundance is already here.

It’s circling overhead.

It’s woven into the roadside remains.

It lives in the places we’re willing to meet with reverence instead of resistance.

Not everything needs to be rebranded or rebuilt.

Some things just need to be seen differently.

And so we listen—

Not to escape the noise, but to remember the deeper song beneath it.