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We try to make sense of our lives. It’s what we humans do. In the face of the unexpected, we often say “Oh, there must be a reason that happened. One day we’ll know why.” Some explain it as God’s plan, others as a universal law, and so many of us just believe it to be true without thinking why. In the depths of the most sorrowful or seemingly tragic situations, we look for meaning to balance things out. If something horrifically unfair has occurred, how can there not be an ultimate reason for it?
When I stepped away from the work-a-day world of K-12 education, I was 28.5 years toward a 30 year pension. Something tragically and horrifically unfair had happened and while I did have a choice to keep working, it would have been at great cost to my sanity. Within a little more than a year, I quit my job, left a big chunk of pension on the table, sold my house, fit my life into a small storage unit, and began living in my retrofitted RAV4. All wondrous and beneficial things to have emerged from my so-called tragedy. But, were these the reasons why the bad thing happened, the explanation for it all? Not quite.
The other day I found out why the terrible no-good thing at work had happened. Read on…you know, if you believe in that kind of thing.
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Living in a horse barn, no matter how rustically renovated, presents a different type of living. You know how your house creaks at night? Magnify that by a horse barn’s worth. Critters getting inside? Yep – the sounds of scuffle and scurry are a definite in a large barn. And birds? Well, there’s a reason they call them barn swallows. It’s not every day that a bird gets in the barn here, but since I’ve arrived it’s happened three times.
The first time, the bird made it’s way out with the help of our resident monk.
The second time, I was alone with the bird and tried every which way to coax it out. I talked to it. I meditated right next to it, trying to will it to trust me. I put out a bowl of water. And then I tried to capture it in my hands. Oh – the squiggles I felt deep under my skin. I would get so close, the bird would be still, but as soon as I got my hands close enough, it would flap around and my nerves would jerk me back. On and on this went until I finally gave up with the realization that my gutsy-ness only went so far. As we are pretty much off the beaten track here at the center and don’t get very many drop-ins, it was a downright miracle when a yogi showed up out of the blue just to say hi about an hour later. He had the bird in hand within about two minutes and off it flew.
The third time a bird got in the barn revealed to me on a deep, biological level why we must do all we can to protect the life of other beings. This bird. Oh my god, this bird. It got trapped in the barn in the middle of a very hot day and it just didn’t appear very smart. I loved it straight away. It stayed up so high, and then it would just flutter about, bumping into things. I tried all my old tricks. I talked to it. I spent quality time with it. Finally, it was getting late and I didn’t want to bother anyone else. What to do? At dusk I watched her perch on the uppermost sill. She stared out the window at the rush of evening birds and to me it sounded as though they were calling for their friend. Throughout the night I would wake and go out in the hall to see her, forlorn and forgotten, shrinking and ragged. By the next morning, she was hiding in the eaves, her back to the world and running out of time.
Not much later that morning I went to the hardware store and bought two nets on poles. When I returned, I attached one to a very long piece of wood with duct tape. A friend happened to stop by at that time, and together we were able to sort of corral the bird between the nets. She was “caught” but she wasn’t going into either net. Somehow and after some time, we managed to use the nets to get her low enough that I could take her in my hands. My friend held the nets while I got a scarf, and with more courage than I thought I had, and after several tries, I gently collected her in my hands and took her outside.
It happened so fast. When I opened my hands it was as though my heart, my beating, human heart, flew off with her – she went so far, so fast, and I could feel myself fly with her. And, in that split moment, tethered by a thread of I don’t know what, the bird’s joy became a part of me, and I felt that almost nothing I had ever done had mattered quite as much.
Yesterday I thought I saw the bird as I was walking back from the pond. She was dancing in the air around me, doing a funny back and forth thing, chirping away. I’m sure it couldn’t have been her. But, either way, she didn’t return the piece of my heart that had soared away with her. And you know, I’m more than Okay with that.
It’s the perfect trade for learning how to protect a life. And the best reason for anything happening at all, tragical or otherwise.
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