The Indigo Bunting of Happiness

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.

Spring has always been a time of new beginnings. The garden catalogs come out. Flowers and trees begin to bloom, baby animals and birds are everywhere of new beginnings. We make all kinds of promises about what we will do with our yards, and we really mean it.

This last few weeks our yard has really taken off, and not in a good way! With Gregg sick and Mike and Kate busy with school, the yard has become overgrown with weeds. Bright yellow dandelions compete with deep purple and white violets, lavender phlox, and chickweed blossoms resulting in a riot of color.

Last week I stepped outside to fill a bird feeder and was immediately struck by a sight that filled me with wonder and amazement. The entire front yard was filled with butterflies – hundreds of them! They floated and landed everywhere – on the bird feeder, on the house, even on me.

Entranced, I looked over at my neighbors’ yards, but on their beautiful expanses of perfect green there was not a single butterfly to be seen. Suddenly it dawned on me; they were attracted by the flowers everywhere. They had chosen our yard because of the weeds!

Our spirits are often like my front yard – overgrown with weeds, a tangled confusion of beauty and unsightliness, of joy and sorrow. We compare ourselves to the “perfect” people in our lives and beat ourselves up because we can’t be more like them. We long to get our lives and souls under control, to tame them, to bring them to some sense of what God wants them to be.

And yet, who are we to say what God wants? Throughout the Bible God uses unexpected people in unexpected ways to fulfill His plans. People whose lives and spirits were less than perfect, people who some might have said had no business being close to God. Jacob, Rahab, Moses, Peter, Mary Magdalene, Paul – all were flawed. And yet God chose them.

Just like the butterflies chose what in my eyes was simply an overgrown, under-mowed lawn. To me it was ugly but to them it was beautiful and full of life. And that’s the way it is with God. He sees the part of us that is beautiful, true and full of life, and if we let Him, He uses it in this world to further His Kingdom.

Our job is as followers of The Way (Jesus's way!) is to take the news of this amazing love to the streets, to the people who need to hear it most: those who feel as if their very spirits have been crushed by weeds and poisoned by the negativity that the world spreads.  Our job is to tell them, to convince them, that God's radical and extravagant love has chosen THEM, and their spirits, to change this world.

I wish you a spring of radical renewal, spiritual rebirth, and new beginnings  And may the garden of your spirit be filled with butterflies!