Once upon a time, during a rare 70-degree week in North Texas, I ran (drove?) errands with the windows down. I love holding my hand out the window, fingers spread eagle, and letting the air glide over my fingers; I always imagine I’m encountering a snippet of some secret message on its way to a mysterious intended recipient.
This time, however, I didn’t let my hand dangle. Instead, eyes straight ahead, hands wrapped ‘round the wheel, I focused on traffic, trying to beat every red light; I was in a hurry; I was doing that stuff of which there is always so much doing to do.
Suddenly, I hit the brakes- what was once yellow had turned red and I had no choice but to submit. I came to myself a little, felt the smooth steering wheel under my fingers; then, the wind decided to smack me, gently, through the open window, so that I started and looked out.
The first thing I noticed was that I was suddenly, unexpectedly, communing with every car in my vicinity— we were all stuck at a red light, suspended, together. To my right was a grass-colored minivan with a slightly disheveled looking mom at the wheel and three scrappy happy kids bouncing and talking in the back seat. To my left, two men in tuxes comfortably chatted. Three cars up, a couple was having what looked to be a heated conversation. I glanced at the light. Still tomato-red.
Then the sky invited me to witness its evening show; like food coloring dripped into milk then dabbed with alcohol swabs, various hues emerged, shot out, and melded— yellow to orange, swish! arctic-sky, cerulean, pop!
As I watched, I noticed that against that backdrop sat a lone black bird on a telephone wire, high above the baby oaks flanking the roadway. It struck me that while everything around me was either in motion or groaning with inertia, this bird was sitting, completely at rest. He had nowhere to be, except where he was.
Suddenly my need to be somewhere, stat, didn’t matter. The very nature of the little bird’s repose challenged all those things which made my reality true: the notion that I ought to “get this done, or else…”, the sense that I was one wrong move away from utter chaos, my enslavement to the clock on my dashboard.
“Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction,” the knob said to Alice.
I stared at the bird, nay, felt him, and a little Alice-in-Wonderland-esque doorway ripped into the fabric of my universe. I was invited to see an “Upside Down,” a world where all that mattered was what was— the grass and the trees and the sky and the wind. A place, here but not, whose only rule was to be fully alive.
This whole experience occurred a year or so ago, but I carry it within me. It helps me answer the question, “What really matters?” about nearly everything.
Could this offer a little something for everyone… maybe?
I really hate empty platitudes. I get sick of some of my fellow privileged whities (including myself) saying things about life being what you make it, just try harder and have hope; or, remember, tomorrow’s a new day.
Easy for you to say, I think.
But what about a child stuck in an abusive home?
What about the prisoner who’s been thrown in the “hole” indeterminently? Or the one sitting on death row?
What about the 20-year-old entering hospice?
How’s about the farmers oceans away, waiting for rain that never comes?
And the teens, captured by warlords, then turned into killers?
When I hold something, like my whole bird experience— my bird-oscope— which helps me see something more, I’m prone to ask, “This might help me, but would it be good for any person, anywhere, who’s experiencing anything?”
God knows, in these days especially, we all need a taste of something good.
Does seeing (or at least knowing), through the natural world, that your reality’s not all there is offer a taste of something sweet for the one who has only ever tasted bitter?
Is this bird-shaped prescription for practicing presence available to anyone anywhere? I’m not sure… but maybe?
Jesus, the birds, and universal suffering…
Human suffering is the reason Jesus’ words at the end of Matthew 6 have always bugged me (and even sometimes pissed me off).
Jesus noticed the birds too (and so did Anne Lamott, but I digress), and he used their effortless existence to teach a lesson— they don’t worry, and they have everything they need, because God provides it for them; in the same way, you shouldn’t worry either.
Usually when I read this story, I have this conversation with it: Honestly Jesus, if that is your lesson, it sucks; it’s just not true. People ARE suffering, right now, as we speak, worry be damned. Thousands upon thousands of people are legitimately asking the question, “What are we to eat?” on a daily basis.
Today, though, when I read it, again, because I was thinking about birds and remembered that Jesus did too, I wondered, Is the issue that I am trapping Jesus in my own reality, imagining there can’t be anything more to life than the hopeless suffering I see?
There are some snippets of universal wisdom in Matthew 6 that I usually glance over, like, “You can’t add a single day to your life by worrying.”
I see, too, how Jesus noted the birds’ everyday lives; that they operate by their own set of rules— they aren’t busy worrying about the future and having enough later because they exist in the realm of what is now (though as a caveat, my youngest child reminded me birds still have things they have to be on the lookout for, like predators).
Jesus’ concluding thought is that if you live in God’s kingdom, you have everything you need. God’s kingdom and the birds’ seem kind of alike in this scenario, right? I wonder what this says about my bird-oscope?
So where does all of this leave us?
At the very least, this is an invitation to taste something different, mysterious, and thought-provoking, and to notice those little gateways to other realms when they open up— and either take them or at least peer in. To practice this, we will have to pause what we’re doing and thinking every now and then so we can actually see when we look and listen when we hear. In this era dominated by social media that’s a leaky faucet incessantly dripping legit bad news, I would call this medicine.