My life has not had a rubicon, a singular moment when who-I-was fell past and who-I-am became forever present.
I’ve thought it has; if asked, my instinct would have been to tell you, before this morning, that, yes, there has been – there must have been – such a precise time or experience in my 22,212 days of being, that I am sure I have crossed a particular biographical then-to-here bridge from which I have never returned. Upon reflection, however, I know that I can identify no solitary and unique transition or point of personal pivot. Without much effort, I can think of many days that have served as critical cruxes in the trajectory of this thing I call my life.
Take today, for example. Easter. The fourth day of Passover in the year 2020. The second Sunday of April during the pandemic named COVID-19. A quiet morning in northern Arizona when the birds announce the arrival of spring despite the unseasonal temperature.
They sound so confident, the birds do. The thermometer reads 40 degrees Fahrenheit and yet the birds sing as if it is seventy. They don’t wear winter jackets or extra layers of clothing. The feathered friends rise with the daylight, they bound from tree to ground to tree, they chatter as if everything is normal. And although I cannot speak their language, I can recognize their refrain. It is a time, they are babbling. It is spring. It is a new day.
Wake up!
“Yes,” I reply, “yes, yes, I am awake.”
Except I am not awake, not really. I am not awake because I begin today with the weight from yesterday. My feet touch the floor with the painful reminder of pandemic. My eyes are blinded by the memory of suffering, of uncertainty. I barely hear the swallows’ song because of the inertia of expectation.
Wake up! the wrens holler. Arise! the robins persist.
Sure, the morning ballads are not necessarily for me. They are for mates, for their flock, their fleet, their throng. They are not all arias of joy. There are messages being shared in the jabbering and clattering. There is avian communication. What do the birds know about human happiness and tragedy? They don’t exist to make me smile, aren’t interested in whether I stay in bed or step outside to enjoy their choral concert. They are programmed to engage in the annual ritual of renewal: spring. They are only concerned about one thing: this morning. Today.
The birds know nothing but the importance of experiencing rebirth.
And therein, of course, lies the meaning within their melody.
When I do well, when I live the moments of my days with an awareness of my place, my positioning in space, the potential for me, little-old-simple-me, to make a difference for you, you-who-I-don’t-always-understand-or-know-how-to-help-and-feel-connected-to, when I stop worrying and wondering if I’ve learned the right morales and messages from my years on this planet, when I realize that religion, rites of the seasons, remembrances of real or confabulated rubicons in the arc of my passage in this form called the human body, when I stop thinking and do more being – that’s when I feel the presence of God, that’s when I enjoy the morning song of spring, that’s when I experience the essence of life, of love, and of simple, subtle, and sweet goodliness.
The warbler’s song has always been for me. Just as my song has always been for you.
Let us listen together. Let us sing as one.