birds.

Lately, I’ve had this fascination with birds.  When I can, I sometimes just sit outside and listen to them.  They are always singing, always rejoicing.  I think this fascination is due to the fact that, for me, birds are symbolic of freedom and beauty.  When they are flying, they are fluid, rhythmic, and wonderful- they are beautiful.  They aren’t bound by the things that I am bound by- things like ground and worry; maybe gravity is a better word for it.  I think that I am drawn to birds right now because I feel bound by the gravity of choices, decisions, sin, and confusion.  I feel bound to myself and to fear.  Birds are everything that I think I want to be in this moment.  I mean, what else do they have to do besides be themselves?  It is hard to be you when you don’t know who you is.  And, frankly, right now I don’t.  Teacher?  Musician?  Pastor?  Missionary?  All of the above?  I don’t know.

Discarded trash has a thing in common with birds- it flies.  Well, sort of.  Really litter only blows with the direction of the wind.  They say that God is like the wind and if you are seeking Him and caught up in Him, then you will be just as unpredictably directed as the trash.  But what about when the wind blows trash into the corner of a building?  How do you follow when there is no direction?  Where do you turn when you’re only turning in circles?  Maybe this is the point.

We follow God even when there is no rhyme or seeming reason to our movement.

One of my favorite scenes in a movie is from American Beauty.  In it, Ricky is showing Jane, the character played by Thora Birch, a film that he made of bags blowing in circles in the wind.  They are dancing.  It is beautiful.  Likewise, we follow the Spirit, even if he pushes us into a corner and the only thing we can do is move in circles, even when we feel like we are going nowhere.  All we can do is dance.  We become ballerina bags.  We are beautiful, and when others see beauty, they’ve seen God.