I remember: It was the last full day of Spring, just last year, and as I awakened before
the daylight began to glow I noticed out the window flashes of distant lightning behind the clouds. So I thought I’d better get up and out the door for my morning walk lest the conditions become less favorable.
As I began walking I looked up to see that the sky was indeed mostly overcast with
cloudiness but the flashes had dissipated, no lightning to be seen now. But I also noticed
something else. The usual announcers of the day had yet to speak; no birds were giving witness to the day. It seemed strange, walking in silence. I listened intently. Then I heard it, distantly, the first chirp, just one. Someone had begun to speak up. I wondered if others would join in.
I walked on…and began to hear the others start to speak up, one calling to another, the
gift of their particular call welling up within them, then without. They can’t help themselves, I thought. These birds, it’s who they are, it’s what they do. Every day. They don’t complain about it, don’t meet to decide who will “say” what or where, don’t worry if others have said it. They just do who they are, and it becomes a celebration, a cacophony of joy, a chorus of giddiness. If there’s disorder about, they reorder it. If there’s chaos, they calm it. If there’s doubt, they assure it that all is well, that God still is and cares, an affirmation that one more day of glory awaits us.
It’s almost other-worldy, being awake so early to join in as a silent partner to what one of
the first days of creation could have sounded like. There is a timelessness in that, a kind of suspension of disbelief that enables the hearer to wonder if The Beginning might have begun like that early morning.
In a way, it was a beginning, a new beginning. Because every day is a gift, a blank slate, a
bare palette, an unwritten opera, blank pages waiting for the stroke of a pen. What will you do with it?
So, maybe you just go ahead and take a walk, see what you hear. Then begin…again.
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