Skip to main content

What Will You Miss?

A couple of years ago on an early spring afternoon (not that we really feel spring as a distinct season in Florida), I was driving home, listening to an NPR program about  assisted suicide in Switzerland, where its legality permits euthanasia clinics.  The reporter followed an elderly woman who had made a dying appointment (and carried it through).  One question she was asked sent me into freeze-mode so the entire rest of the program became a blur and I focused on my response. When she asked the question, "what will you miss most?"  I was surprised by the answer that jetted forth without hesitation:

Birds.

Then of course I did my usual thing and cried.  (Don't tell my endocrinologist. She'll write another prescription for Effexor, and I'll have to throw it away again).

Turning onto the road leading to my development, a road lined with glorious ficus and banyon trees that get annual county mandated "hurricane haircuts,"  I thought, "this is a truth I had not expected."
A stream of my life's significant bird encounters gracefully moved like a wave before me, and I welcomed them all:

  • My first bird, Charlie, half moon parrot, sitting on my shoulder.  He was removed from my life when my allergies became unmanageable, leaving a gaping wound I never quite closed until I acquired a parrot when I was 49.
  • My being circled by a flock of almost celebratory male peacocks at the Lowry Zoo in Tampa
  • My rescued crow, Melinda, dancing up and down in her cage when I opened the front door (dont' fret -- as soon as she could feed herself and fly, she returned to the skis)
  • A family of trees full of welcoming crows outside Blarney Castle in Ireland
  • The many ducks I have rescued as a volunteer.  The one who lay dying in my car while I drove with my left hand and Reiki'd her heart with my right all the way to the vet's office
  • My macaw, Baby, seeing a tear fall, licking it, and whispering to me, "It's OK.  It's OK."
Now sometimes when I'm in a particularly stirring and poignant moment, a moment to which written description would never do justice, I deliberately stop and freeze and tell myself, "This moment you will remember."

Because what I have learned is that the deepest love defies capture by description whether by words or paint brush.  The deepest love cannot be reproduced or named.  It originates within through that spark that connects us to a greater force.  When people ask what my religion is, how can I explain?
This love that comes through the natural world is a manifestation of that great Spirit, and that is my religion.


Take a mental inventory.  If you were to leave the earth tomorrow, what would you miss?
What emerges for you?  Close your  eyes, shake of your stress, and get ready for Divine surprise.


 Please share.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ingrid the Ghost Comes Back to Visit

I would like to show you where I used to live. I don’t live anymore in the sense of physical life as you understand it but I live in another dimension that gives me some flexibility of movement. From here I can gently re-enter the earth plane, almost like a whisper, tugging at my mom until she is still enough to sense me.  I share this not for her but for all of you who seemed to know so much about me from my mom’s words and pictures. I read the good words you wrote when I left and was touched because I was not a famous dog or a winner or a champion of any sort, just a deeply loved girl who had the luck to land in the right home. I want to show you the best parts of my life, which means where I lived because my home was my life. Take a look around the room - the living room, the kitchen, the family room –all those flaws you see in the walls and ceiling are really welcoming caves where my spirit has settled. I’m in every crack in the wall, every fold of fabric, every scra...
Post a Comment
Read more

God’s Covenant With Animals: Stewardship, Not Rule

What is our human responsibility to the earth and its non-human inhabitants?  Traditional Biblical scholars would say one of master-servant and ecologists would say one of caretaker.  However, using either frame, neither movement has responded in full view of the evidence presented throughout the Bible that God clearly included animals in covenantal relationships. With Biblical scholars neglecting  the sanctity of animals and secular environmentalists neglecting God.  A closer look at the Old Testament reveals that God designed humankind’s role in relation to the animals as one of stewardship rather than domination .  Traditionally religious people often cite  Scripure justify  a master/servant relationship between humans and animals  rather than one of partnership, but  deeper investigation invites us to see texts rich with references, both literal and figurative, to the partnership between humankind and the animal world.  From Gen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Living with an Old Dog: Every Moment a Blessing

This morning I thought my old girl, Ingrid, had died, and I was stunned as I tried to lift her head and leg and they just fell, heavy, onto the bed. I didn't even see her breathing. It felt as if there was no life in her body at all. I surrounded her with my body, thinking she was gone, calling her name.....and then she moved. :-'(. I thought, "this is the way I want you to leave," peacefully, without drama. Maybe she was practicing. I cried much of the morning. But she's still here....a blessing. She turned 14 last week and quietly enjoyed a small birthday party attended by her two housemate dogs and three other dog friends.  She was subdued but enjoyed enough birthday treats to the point of vomiting them up onto the couch at midnight.   She can no longer climb into the bed and anxiously paced back and forth along the foot board until I lifted all 50 pounds of her and she curled up and slept till morning.  On occasion I would awaken in the middle of the...
Post a Comment
Read more