Loving a Small Bird

The smallest tragedies often escape our attention. Usually, actually. They are the tragedies that take place underfoot and along the fence line, where other lives – not human, but no less valuable – are hurt or lost. A beetle is crushed by a foot, say, or a squirrel falls from a branch.  

I thought about this yesterday as I took my early morning walk. Sailing down Rusholme’s steep hill, I saw something flutter against the hard concrete curb and crossed over to investigate. It was a pretty little finch, breathing hard. She folded into herself and looked at me.

She looked young. Perhaps she was learning to fly. I stooped closer, to help her off of the street and into the grass. In her panic, she flapped her wings as hard as she could. And fell over.  Her right wing was broken.

Cupping my hands, I caught her with all the gentleness I could manage. She grew quiet in that warm, soft place, resting her head against my fingers. I could feel her smooth, still beak and her warm, beating heart.

I hoped she could feel my love. For those few moments, as I carried her to a shallow, grass-lined depression under a crab apple tree, we were one. One.

This experience may not be exactly what neuroscientists ascribe to mirror neurons – the brain wiring that prompts human beings to tear up when the person across from them begins crying – but I felt her anxiety and pain intensely. And I prayed.

I prayed for the finch and her mate, and any hatchlings that might have been orphaned.

I prayed for my friend whose house fire had altered her view of the world and her place in it.

I prayed for my friend with end-stage kidney disease, and for my friends with cancer.

A never-ending line of needs queued up then, peopled by my loved ones and neighbors, colleagues and the guy I passed a moment later. I thought of all the people waiting for breakfast down the hill at the Café on Vine, and of the children and parents crying for each other at the U.S.-Mexican border.

Life is beautiful, yes. But it’s also brutal.

We can’t ameliorate one another’s despair. But when we remember we are truly one – one with all creation, every single bit of it – we behave with gentleness and compassion.

We love.

And we pray that in our own hour of need, others will behave with love toward us.