The Bird Feeder

The Hermitage

March 28, 2019

The Lord provides some strange places for me to do my meditations.

Because I can’t reach my toes anymore I have a pedicure about once a month. I tried using podiatrists, but since I don’t have diabetes, none were really interested in helping -- unless I had something fascinating to make money on -- like an ingrown toenail. So I use the local nail spa.

Me, feel like an outsider? Took me as long to get over that as it did for me to stop feeling self-conscious about carrying my man-bag from Duluth Trading.

(Side bar - men, if you haven’t had a pedicure, you really need to. It’s a great feeling and a wonderful way to relax.)

Anyway, back to my meditation. While Sam (actually an Asian girl -- with a name I can’t pronounce) was trimming, massaging and pounding my legs, I drifted off into memory land.

This time it was about an experience that actually happened a few days earlier.

I have a bird feeder in my backyard. I can see it from inside from my dining room table, but, when the weather’s nice I like to sit on my veranda to do my morning meditations, watching the birds feed.

(Side bar on the veranda - I recently told a friend that every self-respecting Southern home has to have a veranda….right? Well, mine happens to be a 10x12 roofed concrete porch just large enough for my grill and a couple of lawn chairs. But, by golly, the Hermitage has a veranda.)

Back to the story at hand...Almost every day I’ll have dozens of birds feeding. I have at least four varieties of finches, at least three varieties of hummingbirds, some titmice, cardinals, an occasional dove and two squirrels. I haven’t been getting as many cardinals as I’d like, so I recently added a feeder that has a specially designed perch to make it squirrel proof. (Don’t worry...I spread seed on the ground for the squirrels and the doves so they’re well taken care of.) It is quite heavy but the pole seemed to be handling it. Until one of those microbursts blew through and not just toppled the pole, but actually used the top of the new feeder as a sail and sent it several feet away, crashing to the ground.

My backyard is native Texas ranch land...rocks, invasive grasses, rocks, weeds, and more rocks. (Except for the little space I’ve carved out for a container garden in memory of Andrea, Chloe and Molly.) What that means is, if I’m going to navigate around it I need both of my ‘sticks’ which leaves me exactly zero hands with which to do anything. So I had to wait until the next day when Stephanie (my daughter-in-law) came over, set it upright again, and repaired it as best she could.

The new feeder was hung from a tree. The birds didn’t seem to mind that the original feeders were now a little worse for wear. They were once again doing their job.

This has been a long way around Murphy’s Barn to set the stage for the meditation, but, finally, here it is.

Reflections

As I pondered why the memory had come up (the event itself was really no big deal) it seemed like I heard that ‘still small voice’ say, “Sort of a metaphor of your life isn’t it?"

I really think I'm doing good work (feeding lots of birds in this case) and I get ambitious...decide to take it just one step further...can’t leave well enough alone...gotta make it ‘perfect.’ Then “an evil wind” comes blowing through and smashes everything to smithereens, leaving me helpless, feeling like a pile of worthless *%@#.

But, somehow or another, I get through the storm. Everything’s a little worse for wear, but nobody seems to notice it or give a damn about the event but me.

Can’t you hear that Voice? (and is that a chuckle I hear?)

“Get over yourself! You’re not the center of the universe!”

Epilogue

There was more to this meditation. For a while -- since I’m naturally optimistic -- I pondered "how do I recover from pity party episodes like this?" I always seem to come back to solid ground eventually. What does God do to help me do that?

Well, let’s leave Alice to chase that rabbit another day. As important as that is, there seemed to be something more that kept intruding into my meditation, so I think I’ll continue that thread in the next post.

Till then….

Thanks for joining me on my Sacred Journey.