A Blessing of Birds Redux

There were so many blessings from Friends General Conference Gathering that I may never post about them all.  The most important was the opportunity to see my life in the Light: those things I need more of, the things I need less of, my areas of struggle and of joy and nourishment. Among the things in the "more of" column were birds, walking, and meditation. In a word, mindfulness. I've had a big drift towards mindlessness, particularly as I tried to muster the energy to get through the school year. "Pace yourself" is great advice that I spectacularly ignored this year, and so there's quite a bit of sludge to clear out: lack of resilience, disconnection, anxiety, incipient depression and impending chaos. Ooh, seeing that all in print in one sentence is a bit alarming! Well, better to be aware of the edge of the cliff before I've stepped off. Much less messy that way.

I have the intention of retraining myself in these three weeks before I am back to work full time, and daily meditation and walking are priorities, which bring me back to birds. Birds, those feathered bits of common and uncommon beauty, are my connection to the Divine in nature. In the rose garden I saw a pair of either cooper's or sharp-shinned hawks through the trees, spotted robins and a black phoebe, heard a red-breasted nuthatch, and watched an as-yet unidentified sparrow hunt for bugs beside the path. The best was yet to come, though.

I came home, moved the drying rack to the laundry room porch, and was hanging up the wash when into the morning glories swooped a pair of hooded orioles. 

Sadly, I had no camera in hand, but here's a picture of a male hooded oriole I got from Google image search. You'll have to imagine him next to the blue-violet blossoms:

picture courtesy of James Ownby, copyright 2008. Check out his site, he's awesome!
A blessing of birds, indeed.