An indigo bunting was perched on one of our fallen tree limbs last week. He was eating seeds off a wilting tuft of dandelion. The brilliant blue caught my eye immediately and for a moment, I assumed the dogs had dragged something out of the house and left in snagged on a branch. But then, he moved.
It is so clichéd to say something is “jewel-like.” But I am the proud owner of a Kashmir
sapphire, one of the rarest sapphires anymore due to the Kashmiri conflict, and
this little bird was the exact color of that stone. But he, unlike the stone was alive. And beautiful. I simply stood there, transfixed. (And my crazy little labranard pup was
actually asleep on the couch for which I profoundly give thanks to God, as she
would have scared that blue bird away in less than a heartbeat.)
We have all heard of the “bluebird of happiness;” this
legend occurs in several forms in cultures around the world. (I remember I went
through a phase when I thought it was funny to repeat the lyric “may the
bluebird of happiness fly up your nose.”
Heavens, I was obnoxious as a child.)
It is, of course, just a myth. But is it? Because this little, blue bird made me so
incredibly happy! And in that moment
when my heart lightened up and my soul sang I found a miracle.
I think humans have lost the ability to see “signs and
wonders” all around us. We look for
miracles of truly biblical proportions, when sometimes the miracle is tiny and
close at hand.
A miracle is defined as “something that happens by divine
intervention.” I choose to think that my
little blue bird was a sign from God. A
sign that God is ever present in the world, and especially with ME! (And with you, too. But that bird was for me, and don’t any of
you try to lure him away.)
We look for earth-shattering miracles in our
generation. We want the full out
Hollywood spectacle: earthquakes, lightning, return from the dead, angels,
parting of waters, epic floods, impossible healing, walking on water, loaves
and fishes kind of stuff. How ridiculous
are we? We claim to be so sophisticated,
and yet we cannot see the small subtle ways that God breaks into our everyday
existence. Perhaps is it because of our
claimed sophistication that we are unable to see Sophia – Wisdom - in our midst.
The ancient peoples were much closer in their responses to
God than we like to credit them. They
saw the Divine in every single thing, like trees, rocks, fire, water,
lightning; and they felt God’s presence in the everyday tasks of gathering,
hunting, farming, washing, sleeping, and
tending the fires. And the closer the “pagan”
(country) people were to the Divine in their daily life, the easier it was for
them to stretch their minds when the Christians came in and explained that it
was really all one God they were worshipping in many different forms.
When they saw something special and unusual, they knew it to
be a sign of the divine, and symbol of God’s immanent Presence right in their
midst. And they knew with a deep
conviction that they were not alone.
Today we might think it odd to offer up a prayer for the
computer, to ask God for help drawing a syringe of a drug, to bless the
chalkboard or the boardroom. We get too
busy to see God in the interactions of daily life. Do we give thanks when an ill-timed headache
goes away right before an important event?
When we are touched byt an unexpected encounter, call or email from
someone important to us? When we see
something in nature that reminds us of a loved one? When an experience leaves us feeling just a
little more in touch with the Divine?
My bunting may or may not return. For all I know he is winging his way on to
parts unknown, completely oblivious to the fact that God used him to break into
my life at a moment when I needed a sign that God was truly with me.
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