I rarely take our dog, Finn, for evening walks. Our usual routine is to go in the morning, when the scents are still fresh for him to explore and the air is crisp, even in high summer. But yesterday evening, he was giving me such sad eyes that I finally relented and took him out for a twilit stroll.
It was pleasant enough, but my mind was busy. I had been puzzling over this essay for hours leading up to the walk. Like I said last week, sometimes I know roughly where the week is going to take me, but the theme of my essays is more often a mystery, even to me, right up until I write them.
This week, my inspiration was blank. An empty thought-bubble.
All the way around on our walk, I considered the theme of this week. Death, and inspiration, and the burning away of what does not serve so that the new things can grow. Memorial Day and Pentecost. The holy fire, the mystery. I wasn’t sure there was more I could say on the subject from my own limited view.
When we rounded the last corner and came back to our own yard, I let Finn off the leash, and he bounded straight over to the greenhouse, ears alert, hackles raised.
Unusual.
I followed him over there, and inside the greenhouse was a beautiful local bird with a most unusual and highly unromantic name: the red-breasted sapsucker.
This little speckled woodpecker-type bird has a dark body and a bold red head, and we often see them running along the upright trunks of deciduous trees where they leave neat rows of holes like alien punctuation in the bark. But I had never seen one in the greenhouse, despite trapped birds being a not-uncommon occurrence for us.
Unfortunately, unlike the songbirds who get trapped in our greenhouse and wise up enough to land on the ground and run out on their own, this poor thing was fluttering itself—hard—into the glass, bashing helplessly. My usual tactics of walking along the outside of the greenhouse to steer the bird outside with my presence were to no avail.
So, I called in the cavalry: my husband.
While I tittered and schemed and ran inside the house to get a towel, trying to think of all kinds of ways I could trap or convince the bird to leave, I came back outside to find that my husband had calmly walked into the greenhouse and—gently but firmly—plucked the frightened bird up, holding its wings pinned. Then, he slowly and carefully carried it out.
The little thing squeaked and stabbed with its beak, but within moments the hands that held it had opened, letting it flutter away into the nearest tree. Free again.
I don’t know why I ever worry about what I’ll say in these posts, because I’m surrounded by stories like this one, every day. Images like living metaphors, playing out in real time.
The mystery of the fire of the Spirit, the fire that burns but does not destroy, is that while we’re being held by the Hands, our wings pinned to our sides, it feels like death.
We flail and squawk and stab and worry, but ultimately we don’t know the truth: that the Hands we fight against are carrying us to freedom. That Someone knows the way out better than we do, and will see that we make it safely.
We, little flame-headed creatures with passion but no wisdom, must be carried to safety, because we cannot do it on our own. Pinned wings, dangling feet…our own power is not enough to save us.
In the fire, all feels lost.
Until the Hands open, and away we fly.
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😭♥️ Beautiful words.