Blue Herons

Last night.

Neal & I go up to the chicken coop together to close it. The coop is on the hillside of the Sparkill gap; as we climb, we gaze out over the slope of our tiny glacial valley into the twilight of the western sky.

The language of astronomy is a subtle one; it touches something deep in the soul that can't be expressed in mere words. Venus and a new crescent moon are shining partners in that poetry. A faint, almost intangible pink infuses the atmosphere, steeping in the deeper blues of evening.

As we watch, an astonishment of great blue herons suddenly flies+- into sight. Their huge wingspans and stately, measured progress render them unmistakable.

Four! Migrating great blue herons. Jehosaphat.

These creatures of the North American continent exceed geography; somehow the elegance of their lines, the curvature of their necks, the languid and perfectly stylized rhythm of their flight, make them look like creatures of the ancient Nile, come alive from an Egyptian fresco.

It’s calm. It’s breathtaking. All of it proceeds in that peculiar new quiet that the lessening of traffic has brought us.

Life has slowed down in physically measurable ticks. The act of social distancing has given us back time—for perhaps the first time since we were children, we hesitate.

We stop.

We actually take the time to see ourselves and where we are.

We’re not racing to the next appointment, the next money-making event or money-spending event.

We’re just here, in this small yet magnificently expansive and inexpressibly beautiful moment of now.

Others are breathing equally deep this moment of pause. Perhaps, just perhaps, scales are falling from our eyes and we’re beginning to see ourselves as a little bit human again, instead of performing monkeys for the technology and "value" systems that have been thrust upon us by our modern institutions.

Ideas can infect us and ruin us just as completely as diseases can. Usually, we don't see this; we humans love nothing more than being corrupted by our own dogmas. Yet nature doesn't know such things, or breathe them: no cash changes hands as blue herons fly. No man makes sound to guide them.

The prevailing dialog is that the pandemic has arrived, and we’ve lost our way. But I'm not so sure about that. Perhaps our way was lost long before this, and we’re finding it again. To be able to refocus life within the present, to re-discover each other as human beings? No other force could have given us this gift. To see each other and to care. We didn't have enough time for much of that before; and now it turns out that’s the only thing we should have made time for.

Love has the opportunity to be born again in this moment. It comes on the wings of birds at twilight; it shines down on us from satellites and planets. It’s in the native plants just showing their tips above the cool ground of spring; it’s in the awakening branches dressing themselves in their first green of the year. Into all of these creatures and events, life flows in from that secret, silent, sacred place that feeds all Being.

This is not a conceit or a romance – it’s simple enough, if I see it, to be true:

Love is already here in Being itself. This gift is freely given.

All I need to do is listen carefully—intimately—within me and respond to its call.

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.