THE WISDOM OF BIRDS

Snowy Egret

Like my late father, I find birds to be endlessly fascinating.  At some level, I suppose, we are all like Daedalus and Icarus, harboring a latent desire for wings that will liberate us from the narrow confines of the world's labyrinth.  At another level, however, I simply feel a personal connection with many birds, especially the large birds with whom one can establish and maintain eye contact.  With these birds, I always sense a kind of mutual empathy, a mutual awareness that, for better or worse, we will need each other for the journey ahead.  Maybe it's a mutual respect for each other's solitude, coupled with  a  recognition that even solitaries are interdependent in the greater scheme of things.

Whatever the case, I have been spending a great deal of time in recent weeks observing the abundant bird life that inhabits this part of coastal South Carolina.  A few photos of my friends are set forth below, together with some relevant observations by writers who have discovered the wisdom and metaphorical values of birds.

Great White Egret

With an eye made quiet by the power

of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

we see into the life of things.

Wordsworth

Great Blue Heron

I am looking at a great blue heron who is building a nest in the pine tree next to my father's home.  Every once in a while she stretches her long neck and points her head toward the heavens, and I feel the stretch in my throat.  She stands immobile for long periods staring into the eastern horizon and then floats to the canal below for some food.  I have seen this heron mother for years in the same pine tree.  Winter is her season to nest.  She stands like a blue-gray guardian of the past, not seeming to take notice of the flow of traffic on the highway . . . 

This great heron reminds me that storying is a kind of root medicine, a way for us to enter our depths and derive nourishment from the fruitful darkness.  For her life to succeed, this big mother heron needs her old pine tree and her dark inland water.  She needs continuity, heights, and depths for her life to be complete.  It is this way with tellings, with stories, with myths, with prayer, prophecy, and song.  They call forth the firmness of the tree and the yielding deep water in moments of transmitted inspiration.

Joan Haliflax
The Fruitful Darkness 

Great White Egret

                                        Birds make great sky-circles

                                        of their freedom.

                                        How do they learn it?

                                        They fall, and falling, 

                                        they're given wings.

                                                    Rumi

Great White Egret

I studied the bird, deeply impressed that she seemed to know instinctively that in stillness is healing.  I had been learning that too, learning that stillness can be a prayer that transforms us.

Sue Monk Kidd
When the Heart Waits

Great White Egret Egret

                                               Birdsong brings relief

                                               to my longing.

                                               I am just as ecstatic as they are,

                                               but with nothing to say!

                                               Please, universal soul, practice

                                               some song, or something, through me!

                                                                            Rumi

Great Blue Heron