Lessons from a Strange Bird -by Rebekah Shardy
Weird.
That’s what I thought as I watched a finch swing from the hummingbird feeder, chattering as it tried to sip nectar. Honey, you don’t belong there!
But the strange incident was comforting. I, too, am weird. I show up where I don’t fit. As a child, deemed too smart. Too sensitive. Too much substantial steak when human society has a bigger appetite for insubstantial sizzle. So, I prefer the company of trees and animals to most too-conventional humans.
I trudged alone to elementary school against the winter gales of Ohio. Head down, I imagined the urban streets as rivers. Elaborate tales of adventure in wild places spun a place of safety in my mind and warmth in my heart. Sixty years later, I recalled and wrote about that rich sense of apartness:
This woman I know grows old, respectful of weathered trees, quiet amidst chatter, clocks gone silent, calendars blank. She remembers struggling the snowy way to school; the way her stories shielded her face from the wind.
Imagination and creativity stayed in step with me.
I graduated from feeling alone to feeling All-One, a being connected to everything and everyone, an empathetic activist. Among other things, I organized and led a writing program for women who had been incarcerated, and survivors of domestic violence and addiction, women who felt abandoned and misunderstood. I helped them craft life-stories as paths of deliverance, and to educate the community so it might embrace those deemed ‘different.’ I told each woman in my free program, “You are more than your experience. You are sacred mystery.”
For decades, I have hiked alone in Nature, taking my spiritual cues from clouds, stones, and found feathers. From the finch insistent on being a hummingbird, I take another lesson. Biology – whether gender, disability, or age – is not destiny. We are more than what we appear to others.
The woman in the wheelchair may travel the Universe in astral planes. The muscled construction worker may be ‘gender fluid’ when he gets home from work. The heart of a 101-year-old may burn with the passion of a teen-ager.
Nature enjoys breaking norms. Whether it’s a lion who adopts an antelope calf, or gay penguins, we find thousands of ‘exceptions to the rule’ in so-called natural order.
Chaos Theory continues its merry way. It’s one way we change and evolve.
Brave tiny winged one, thank you for reminding me that we are more than tidy labels. We are what we think we are. What we aspire to be. What others may not yet understand.
And just maybe that makes us more than a humorous anecdote in someone’s day like my story of a sugar-hungering finch. Could our drab sparrow life conceal a spirit like the phoenix that dies to rise on fiery wings? My odd bird knows a secret perhaps: weirdness is where the sweetness hides.
Rebekah is a poet, playwright and author. Her professional work spans geriatric social work, community organizing, corporate director, and public speaking. She lives in Loveland, Colorado
