The rise and the fall.

mombaby birdfly

Life is a miracle.

We are reminded of that particularly during this time of year.  It is a time of starting over.  When new life is born.  When plants rise up, out of the ground.  When blooms launch from the green of stems.  It is a time, when mothers feed their babies.  When shells break open and feathers appear.

There is much learning now, and growth, and newness to this world.

It isn’t so much new, though, as it is recycled.  Everything is simply beginning again.

Where leaves once dropped to the ground from the highest highs, and rotting vegetables fell to the soil below.  It all absorbs, and all takes form, in some way or another.

The design of this, the order of it …. is extraordinary, and incredible.  The end of one season, readies the world for the coming of the next, over and over and over again.

What appears to have died, is not dead at all. It simply goes into the cycle of things, only to take shape somewhere else.  The rotting zucchini plant is absorbed by the soil, the worm finds the nutrients, and the bird eats the worm.  In a thousand different ways, to a thousand different things.   It is all unified.  Everything is connected.

Today, I found that one of our chickens was killed by, most likely an owl.  You wouldn’t think that losing a chicken would be such a hard thing to take.  But I will tell you…. we had to wash the pasty butts of two baby chickens…. and she was one of them.  Yep.  You get to know a chicken… sometimes more than you’d like.  And that is why I feel so sad.  Our little Louise.

But that is what this cycle of life does.  It all comes and goes.  Again and again.

A few moments ago, I watched out over our bird feeders.  I saw a Momma sparrow fly up to the feeder, retrieve a couple of seeds, drop back to the ground, and feed  her two little baby sparrows.  They were plenty capable of flying on their own.  They got there in the first place.  But they were not quite ready to navigate Feeder-Grand-Central.  Mom did it for them.

A miracle to watch. A miracle to discover.

Some of us view life as nothing but ordinary. It is just our existence.   There is nothing special about it.  We simply exist, and then we don’t.

In part, it is true.  We do… simply exist. But that in ITSELF, is completely sensational and marvelous.  For our human bodies to function, as they do… with absolutely no help from us…. is incredible.   And that fact that there are millions, up on millions of us humans… all right here, right now… on this big ball, spinning wildly through space.  And not one of us falls off.  Astounding.

But we have the life force in us.  Each of us. We can acknowledge this moment as a miracle if we choose to.  It is precious.  It is profound.  It is amusingly alarming.  If we choose to see it that way.

As Buzz Lightyear, so aptly put it:  “This isn’t flying.  This is falling with style.”

Yes.  Yes indeed.  So today… you don’t necessarily have to fly.  Just fall with style.  You.  You miracle, you.

 

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” ― C.S. Lewis

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” ― Albert Einstein