For The Birds

For the Birds My whole life, I searched for a nest to call my own or share with my true family be them blood or not, be our songs the same or not. I’ve been flying around, longing for a place to belong. A safe place to land. Not knowing I belonged just because I am already here. Sometimes I’m still getting my head around that. I’ve been talking about it with my therapist (God bless therapists) and realized that I have spent a majority of my life in near-constant fight or flight mode. I won’t go into the details right now because frankly we do not have nearly enough time, but let’s just say that this bird didn’t like to fight unless it was between me and my own mind, so I flew and flew and flew away from myself, away from my fears, and somehow therefore away from my comforts, away from my truths, away from joy, and away from God and who I know Them to be (and yes, that “Them” was intentional). And my wings are tired. I’d like to rest for a while. So along with this rest, I've been in what I like to call “Phase 2” of my blooming, my becoming, my rebirth. “Phase 1” happened in my mid-late twenties, then I paused for a while because I was like “that’s enough healing for now!” A side note: It wasn’t. But this phase has me wanting to gain strength so that when I’m ready to fly again, I might realize I’ve already been doing it for a while. And then I might go a little higher than I understand my limits to be. I'm learning to tend to the little bird inside me. To help it grow strong, to nourish it, to remind it that it is already brave. That it was born to fly, to make a home among nature, and see things in a unique way. There’s a little bird inside all of us. Our softness and tenderness to it will help it grow, and help it know that it has always belonged in the family of things. In this rest and healing, I've been reading a lot. About inner child work, codependency, how to love, how creation is an act of giving back to The Creator, how to feel the fear and do it all anyway, and a lot of other things, but nearly everything I’ve read has been pointing to: trusting in the divinity of The Universe, and the timing of it all, and letting go of the need to try to control everything else. I can’t be God. I can only be me. And it all sounds pretty easy, but it’s not! But regardless of how hard it is or isn’t, I've been trying to trust. I’ve been trying to get in touch with my spirituality, with higher power, with whomever God is to me. And a lot of all that brought me here: to Simplicity. And maybe that’s a big part of some of the answers to the one hundred thousand million questions I have on this path: Simplicity. Over the course of my life, large spans of time have been me dedicating myself to overcomplicating my life because I either did not know who I was or did not know how to heal or even get my mind to a place of wanting to begin. And, yeah, sure, a lot of outside factors beyond myself were big contributors to my trauma, but ultimately it was up to me to begin to repair the damage. And the most fun and also the worst part about healing is that it is on-going, and constant, until I will take my last breaths. I know my wings will continue to carry me, but I might always remember my wounds. God has always been the wind lifting me into flight, even when I thought that everything was a tornado in the night. Even when I thought God was that destruction. It was hard for me to realize so much of the damage was still caused by me, or if it wasn’t, I hardly wanted to be a part of the volunteer or clean up crew or search and rescue team… So all of this is in gratitude for the simple and miraculous things and for Simplicity Church and for healing and for God’s creation and for the birds. Thank you, God, for everything. I kinda hope this goes without saying by now, but just in case. Thank you for the things seen and unseen. The miracles that we may not be paying attention to, the miracles we may not recognize as miracles. For the rivers and oceans and storms of Your love, for how it flows and replenishes and lights up the dark when we can hardly see. For your remarkable and splendid and awe-inspiring creations–us all included. I am grateful for this life and I wouldn’t want to be anyone else anymore. Thank you for that too. Thank you, Simplicity Church for already answering so many of my prayers that have been trapped in my head. For helping show me that God shows up. And people too. For making me cry and laugh and think. Thank you for instantly making me feel as though the hummingbird of my soul belongs. From the minute I first buzzed in, to this very moment. And I’m sure beyond. Thank you for being colorful, kind, honest, for being rooted, and for becoming a favorite tree where I can rest. I am rejuvenated for more of my journey every time I stop by. Thank you for places and spaces that welcome everyone. Every. One. And for hearts that expand to love other hearts they don’t even know. Thank you, the generosity of a smile. And the life-savingness of a hug or a compliment, or of giving some money to our family who is living unhoused, or speaking up in opposition of injustices, or the sheer power and love of acknowledging everyone’s humanity. Thank you to the magnitude of celebrating all the different and holy and good ways there are to be a bird or to be a person or to be a soul in a body. Thank you, birds, every one and every kind. Both the ones that fly with their wings and us, the ones that fly in our minds. Thank you birds, for your symphonies in the mornings in the Spring. Thank you for the hope you always bring. A first robin sighting after the many cold nights of winter. Thank you for misplacing your feathers so that I can find something lucky and beautiful on the sidewalk. And thank you branches, nests, trees, forests, sky, Antarctica, and wherever else for housing all the birds. The larks, the cardinals, the bluebirds, the sparrow, the hummingbird, the flamingo, the penguin, the dove, the robin, the ostrich, the finch, the chicken, the eagle, the pigeon, us, and all the rest above. Thank you, the simple ways of being– in tune with ourselves, with nature, with God, with truth, with love. Thank you that joy can be simple too. And because joy can be found in many places and because joy is not made to be a crumb, here are some thank you’s for the following, which I find all both wrapped in simplicity and the miraculous: Coffee in the mornings. Getting the gift of another morning. Meals shared with loved ones. All things shared with loved ones. How it feels to be barefoot in the greenest grass. The color green. Every shade of it feels lucky to me. Laughter. Joy, unleashed! Cloud-watching. Finger-painting. Making anything with hands or heart or imagination. Watching kids laugh and play in sprinklers and remembering myself doing the same. Still wanting to do the same every single time I see a sprinkler. Thinking about keeping a swimsuit and towel and a change in dry clothes in my car just in case. Remembering to return to my younger self over and over again so they can remind me how I should be living. For water and for always wanting to return to it. For my last name being Waters. Sometimes my name was the closest thing I knew to feeling home. For the baptism of each day. For the stars at night, seemingly so small, yet they are so large all at once. The stars and us are alike in that way. Thank you to a hundred-year old cabin in Colorado and the windows there that perfectly frame the bright big dipper in August, and how it feels to listen to the whisper and twinkle of the aspens on its porch. Thank you for each hummingbird that chooses to fly close enough to my head that I can pretend I’m a flower or the sweetness of nectar for just a moment. Where I see deer and birds of all sorts and antelope and bears and mountains and glorious sunsets and pines taller than any of us, and the Rio Grande rushing or easing along, making its way how it always does. I meet God there every time. Thank you, the river, the return, the peace Thank you, a prayer, or thousands of them, and for prayer backed by actual action, and for a deep breath, or a thousand of them, and for any and every refusal of shame. Thank you for how my brain operates now compared to when it did when I didn’t have the courage or will power to give medication or trying a loving shot. Thank you for the minds and hands of the scientists who made those meds. Thank you healers and spiritual and brave ones who paved the way and have taught me, through one way or another, how to to begin to heal, and thank you for all the sweet, sweet time I have spent healing so far. Thank you for the moment of miraculous that a few years ago, I woke up one day and didn’t want to die anymore. Thank you for all healing, not just my own. Sometimes by medicine and medical intervention, sometimes by sheer grit, sometimes by grief, sometimes by time or talking it out, sometimes by thousands of tiny miracles or the smallest of joys. I hope each of us and beyond can undo our trauma and stitch up our heartaches. We have never been broken beyond repair if we choose and if we trust. Thank you for that tenderness, that softness, that renewal, that grace. Thank you for the grace of sparrows murmurating across wheat fields–art in the purest and most spontaneous form. Thank you for art in all ways, always. Thank you especially when art is made to survive. Thank you for any mechanism or magic or mantras or meditations that hold together our survival. Thank you for any survival that may eventually turn into gratitude. Thank you Mother Nature for giving and giving and giving. Thank you for being art too. Thank you for providing for us even during our greediness. I’m sorry for the destruction we have caused you. Thank you for your kindness to us anyways. We will work together to take better care of you. We must. Thank you for all your beauty and all the resources we tend to take for granted. Thank you for all oceans, all islands, all country, all gardens, all plants, all greens, all colors, all creatures, all critters, and every single bud, bloom, and flower, even if people call them weeds. Thank you to any way we green thumb our own growing. And thank you to the trust when I feel that the things meant for me will find me (though I need to put myself in places where they can find me in the first place, which we are working on). And thank you for the hope that those things meant for me will stay long enough for me to at least be able to write a poem about them. Thank you, The Kindness of some words. The intention and love wound up in many of them. And for the fact that poems are rarely actually words on a page. They are moments. They are movements. They are people. They are the wild and gorgeous earth and they are the pain and grief that comes with living here. And they are the joy beyond and even in or alongside the grief. And they’re the moon and the sunrise and the fawn and the olive branch and the beating and bleeding heart. They are the reminder that God is in everything, especially especially love. And Love, besides being poetry… besides being God… when we get down to it: love is always a verb and when we get down to it even more: Love always, and belonging too, is forever for the birds.