God talks to me through the birds. I know that sounds crazy. Only a loony man like Francis of Assisi could ever believe such a foolish thing, right? But is is true. I am aware of the birds around me at all times because birds have meaning, and when I need to see certain signs from God to center and redirect my life and spiritual awareness, God puts certain birds in my way, hoping that I will see them and interpret their meaning correctly.
This morning at QT I saw three different kinds of bird. First I saw a robin while eating my QT pumpkin spice doughnut. Then a blue jay on the ground hopped out from behind the corner of the building. Then a pair of blackbirds flew down to watch the jay hunting through the grass.
Robins are traditionally the bird of spring-time, the harbinger of the end of winter. As a boy in Iowa, it was always a relief after the long cold winter to see the first robin of spring. But it means more than that. Robins are reliable. They leave for the winter to parts south and always return to bring hope for relief from our troubles. You can depend on robins to provide that service. The robin I saw this morning, I saw in early December. Winter is just beginning. But Texas is a place where robins spend the winter. God is telling me through the robin that my troubles are ending, easing into a metaphorical Spring and Summer. And like the robin, God is asking me to continue being reliable for my family and everyone else who looks to me for signs of hope, candle flames in the darkness, and a return to spring. How’s that for bird-brained thinking?
Blue Jays are bullies and thieves. If you have ever watched birds go about bird-business, and ever specifically watched blue jays do their jobs, then you already know they are bully birds. A blue jay will arrive at the bird feeder and drive off the sparrows, finches, and chickadees. They use their superior size to dominate the other birds, eating their fill before allowing the smaller birds their chance. They are aggressive enough to land on your picnic table and snatch a McDonald’s French fry or six if you are not close enough to swat them. And it was a blue jay that got me three times on the top of my head with her claws, diving at me like a dive bomber, when I was ten and didn’t realize that her chick had fallen out of her nest and sat shivering next to the sidewalk where I was walking.
Seeing the bird this morning was a reminder that there will be more aggressive folks on the sidewalk of life ahead of me that I will have to avoid. But this blue jay did nothing but hunt the grass for himself. He did not bother any other bird. So relief from the aggression of others is at least possible.
And black birds are the most common sorts of birds to see. But when you say, “black birds” what do you really mean? Grackles, creeks, common grackles, starlings, magpies, and redwing blackbirds are all black birds, even though they couldn’t be more varied and different from each other. The black birds I saw this morning were common grackles, which, of course, aren’t even truly black. They have iridescent blue-green feathers on their heads that can reflect sunlight with neon blazes of color. Black birds tend to be scavengers, trash-snatchers of the highest order that live on whatever they find. So they really feel that all business is their business. No trash bin left unattended, or bug that a blue jay scared up and then ignored, is beneath their notice.
So God is telling me to appreciate all those around me. I should notice and record their many unique beauties and skills and useful utilities.
There was good reason that Francis of Assisi preached to the birds. They are always watching, always listening, and, if studied carefully, always telling us about God’s will.
I saw a woman and her two kids getting breakfast at QT this morning. The kids, a boy and a girl, were both wearing jackets and pajama pants. They were both cute, and happy, and speaking Korean to each other. And I realized after smiling at them with my goofy old coot grin, that I am not prejudiced in any way when it comes to other people. They were Asian. I notice details. But that was an afterthought. It really wouldn’t have mattered if they were black, white, purple, brown, or yellow. (Though I have to admit I might’ve been slightly more fascinated by purple.) Not being prejudiced is a precious thing. It comes from a lifetime of working with kids of all kinds, and learning to love them while you’re trying to teach them to also have no prejudices.
Catch a Falling Star 
An Unexpected Gift
This post is a movie review for Thor : Ragnarok , though I don’t really plan on talking about the movie very much. It was an excellent comic book movie in the same tongue-in-cheek comedy tradition as Guardians of the Galaxy. It made me laugh and made me cheer. It was the best of that kind of movie. But it wasn’t the most important thing that happened that night.
You see, I spent the weekend in the hospital thinking I had suffered a heart attack during the Thanksgiving holiday. I thought I was facing surgery at the very least. I knew I might have had an appointment to play chess with the Grim Reaper. It is a lot to worry about and drain all the fun out of life.
Well, one of the things that happened that day, Tuesday, my first full day out of the hospital and, hopefully, out of the woods over heart attacks, was that I received my new replacement bank card because my old one had a worn out, malfunctioning chip in it. So, I took my three kids to the movie at the cheapest place we could find. I tried to run my bank card for the payment, and it was summarily declined. I had activated it previously during the day, and there was plenty of money in the account compared to the price, but it just wouldn’t take. So I had to call Wells Fargo to find out whatever the new reason was for them to hate me. It turned out that it had already been activated, but a glitch had caused it to decline the charge. While I was talking to the girl from the Wells Fargo help desk, the lady who had gotten her and her husband’s tickets right before us put four tickets to the movie in my hand.
The middle-aged black couple had lingered by the ticket stand before going in to their movie just long enough to see a sad-looking old man with raggedy author’s beard and long Gandalf hair get turned down by the cheap-cinema ticket-taking teenager because the old coot’s one and only bank card was declined. They were moved to take matters into their own hands and paid for our tickets themselves.
That, you see, was the gift from my title. Not so much that we got our movie tickets for free, but that the world still works that way. There are still good people with empathetic and golden hearts willing to step in and do things to make the world a little bit better place. The gift they gave me was the reassurance that, as bad and black as the world full of fascists that we have come to live in has become, it still has goodness and fellow feeling in it. People are still moved to pay things forward and make good on the promise to “love one another”. I did not have a chance to thank them properly. I was on the phone with Wells Fargo girl when it happened. The only thing that couple got out of their good deed was thank-yous from my children and the knowledge that they had done something wonderful. I plan to pay it forward as soon as I have the opportunity. Not out of guilt or obligation, but because I need to be able to feel that feeling too at some point.
I do have one further gift to offer the world.
After we got home from the movie, I opened an email that contained the cover proof for my novel, Magical Miss Morgan. Soon I will have that in print also if I can keep Page Publishing from messing it up at the last moments before printing. It is a novel about what a good teacher is and does. It is the second best thing I have ever written.
Sometimes the gifts that you most desperately need come in unexpected fashion.
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Filed under commentary, compassion, happiness, healing, humor, illness, movie review, NOVEL WRITING, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as gifts of love, goodness in people, paying it forward, Thor Ragnarok