Consider the Birds

Read Luke 12:24.

I just returned from a busy trip to the Iberian peninsula. To see Roman ruins--and remains of even earlier times--amazes and astounds, and the fact I was there for Holy Week absolutely took my breath away. It truly was an amazing spiritual experience. Yet, as a part of a tour group, meeting deadlines, eating strange food, communicating in languages where to say I'm rusty is a major brag--I've never really been competent in Spanish and speak no Portuguese---Anyway, spiritual or not, staying on program wasn't as easy as here at home. 

One thing helped, though. The morning before I left, I was surprised to have some free time. Instead of using it for the last minute things on the endless list, I accepted the gift and went to a small lake near my home. There I watched a swan and some sandpipers and lots of other birds. I remembered a friend of mine--the one who told me a bird I had been watching and photographing was a sandpiper. She loved birds, and she stood at my kitchen window once and named something like 18 birds, lots of kinds I'd never heard of! And she was identifying them under my pear tree, eating the old pears and the seed I'd put out in her honor. Knowing her, I came to know birds, at least a little. Actually, I still don't know them, but I see them. They're everywhere. And as I sat there in the car, meditating when I had no time or energy for meditation, I realized that God is like the birds. He's always around him, though before OA I wasn't aware of him much. And I made the jump to the thought that God is like the birds, there whether I'm aware or not. 

That knowledge stood up well to the tumult of travel. In tense times, when I was tired, as we drove along, I saw the birds. And each time I thought, "God is here." His peace and serenity came with me, flew over me, pecked at the seeds and insects a few feet from my own feet. And I found myself photographing birds as well as roman ruins, earnestly seeking the storks and snapping the wren at the little cafe in Puerto Lapice. Pigeons fretted with me when the guide was late in taking us to our appointed entry into Alhambra. God was there. 

God is always with us. We just need to trigger our recognition until the recognition becomes as constant as the birds all about.