Sarah Goldsmith , I found your story to be very well-written and moving. I was especially moved by your account of what people suffer because of war. Your response to my response is equally spot on. Thank you.
“ I don’t believe that anyone supports the idea that a white feather means cowardice.” — Sarah
Sadly, from personal experience I can tell you that this is not exactly true. In the years since Google has become the dominant way people get information I have been called a coward countless times because of my name. It never happened before the age of Google.
Every time I have asked someone why they would call me a coward the response was always the same; “I googled it and found out that ‘white feather’ means cowardice.”
If you google ‘white feather’ or ‘white feather symbolism,’ the link to the Order of the White Feather always comes up at or very near the top of the search results page. So, so many people, when they google something, will click on whatever is at the top and immediately believe whatever is there without ever questioning it or digging deeper for more information. To me, this has become blatantly evident by the significantly large number of people who I have come into contact with who unquestioningly believe that ‘white feather’ means cowardice — and, of course, I have come into contact with a large number of these people because of my name.
The Order of the White Feather’s perversion of white feather symbolism is slowly becoming the accepted norm thanks to Google and how people use Google. I was compelled to respond to your story to help show that there is much, much more to white feather symbolism than the very short history of one group of British war supporters. White feather symbolism goes back several thousands of years and no one will ever know that if they never go beyond the first page of Google search results.
I’m sorry if I came across as being defensive in my response. I’ve been defending my name for decades and that has become synonymous with defending the symbolism of white feathers. I’ve grown quite weary of trying to inform others of the true long history of white feather symbolism. To fight Google is futile.
When I first saw the writing prompt, ‘a single feather,’ my first inclination was to write my own personal history of my name. But there simply is no way to condense that story down to where it would be short enough for acceptance into The Weekly Knob. Even radically condensed it would still be a 50 to 70 minute read. On Medium a story that long would never get read.
So instead I wrote my story, Feather Mojo, and was somehow able to condense it down to just an 8 minute read (still too long to garner many reads but short enough to be accepted). Curiously, my story also involves the horrific barbarism of war. Sadly, feather symbolism and war have a long shared history. To me, white feathers symbolize the end of all war and the evolutionary movement into a greater spiritual consciousness where all humans are united through one-ness rather than divided through mental perceptions of separateness. White feathers are a symbol of that ideal towards which all human spiritual traditions have pointed.
It is no accident that white doves, with all their white feathers, are a symbol of peace. And it is no accident that I was given the name White Feather for this current life has been for me a fervent quest for peace.
