Flying
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by Martha Campbell
And Jesus said, "Look at the birds...learn a lesson..." -Matthew 6
A friend recently told me a story of something that happened to him this past June when he had driven north to the family summer home in Maine for a few days of R and R. The house, situated on an inland lake, was built some 20 years ago and he described it as spacious, airy, and filled with light, plants and immense windows. Often in the summer, the family members leave all the doors open, and my friend returned from a walk on the beach one day to find a hummingbird trapped in the living room, beating vainly on a glass pane trying to escape. Jim gently approached the frightened bird and removed it from the window in his cupped hands. He walked slowly and carefully to the porch, where he sat gently in a chair, and opened his hands. The bird rested there paralyzed and shivering, for five minutes. It must have been exhausted. Then it began to move slightly and with a sudden burst of energy, off it flew.
The image of that caught little bird has come to me more than once as an analogy of the human tendency to willfully and stubbornly find one's way through difficult situations. Focused on "one way through," there is a tendency to become exhausted with effort to make work this seemingly apparent but totally impossible solution to the dilemma. Slowly, in the face of such insurmountable obstacles, human limitation and powerlessness wakes us up to a new reality. Situations such as this, far from being failure, are really the means to freedom. We open to the truth and to the gift of simply being in the present moment which in a mysterious way becomes the "gentle hand" that lifts our wounded and stunned consciousness into the very freedom we had been seeking.
Exhaustion and weariness, the result of endless effort, have the potential to bring us to the present moment. Dwelling in the present moment, we allow an awareness of the reality of "what is" to take hold. This awareness invites us to open to the Divine Presence even in the midst of -perhaps even because of-such humbling circumstances. We learn the freedom of surrender. In that very moment of surrender, like the little bird, the poverty of a stunned awareness and the openness of the present moment lift us into the reality of freedom.
Walter Burghardt, SJ describes contemplation as "a long, loving look at the real." Even resistance is material for contemplative awareness, and embracing resistance has the capacity to open us to another possibility, even in the struggle. In openness to receiving "what is," it becomes possible to experience the struggle in a non-attached way and to accept the present moment as the gift that it truly is. Now "looking at the real" yields to welcoming it as well, just as it is. No struggle. No blame. Accepting the gift of struggle in the present moment, and resting in an attitude of non-attached openness, awakens one to the comforting hands of a Presence that restores calmness and equilibrium. There strength is gathered and an ability to move on results. This life-giving process is repeated over and over again through endlessly creative life scenarios.
Stunned, frightened, exhausted, it takes time to recognize the possibility of expansiveness and to adjust to the spacious freedom that is already given. It is in this seeming state of failure that break-through to the present graced moment becomes possible. Like that stunned little bird, the possibility of freedom lies in letting go, allowing the present moment to caress and calm. Beyond the struggle there is the possibility of new life awaiting those who are willing to begin again. With a sudden burst of energy, we learn to fly.
© 2008 The Shalem Institute.