Tiny bird. Big perspective.

"When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement..." - Mary Oliver

Year ago, my sister gave me this piece of outdoor art - it’s a sculpture really, made of ginkgo leaves crafted out of a metal, all bending towards one another and around, creating a sphere that is entirely open in the center with lots of gaps between ginkgo leaves. It hangs in the corner of my back patio.

This year, a precious little house wren has made her nest inside it. I went away for a week, and when I returned, a nest had been built all across the bottom of it, and as I tried to get closer, to confirm what I was seeing, out between two sculpted ginkgo leaves flew the mama wren. She landed on a tree nearby and I slowly and quietly backed inside until she came back. I’ve been home three days and now she’s getting used to me sitting out there, and so she stays, and if the breeze is just right, giving the sculpture a good angle to my line of sight, I can see her tiny brown body and her even tinier eyes, resting on that nest with all she’s got. Still. On guard. And somehow beautiful.

She probably doesn’t weigh an ounce. And she couldn’t be more than three inches or so, beak to tail. But I somehow think she might be a manifestation of Shakespeare’s “though she be but little, she is fierce.”

I could watch her all day. And here is, I think, why - there is no machine, no tech, no modern day advancement, that makes her do what she does, or that could make her stop. What she’s doing is primal - building an architectural miracle with grass and tiny sticks, laying her eggs in it, and then sitting on those eggs until they hatch, unless, of course, she senses danger and then she flits away faster than you can almost grasp, directing all attention away from her nest’s cargo.

I am amazed by this. That this tiny being knows exactly what to do, and how to do it, and she has done so with such confidence and grace that she has 50-year-old human me tiptoeing around the sliding patio doors and shooing my 48 lb boxer mix away from said doors so we won’t disturb her. She’s disrupting me in the best possible way - forcing me to acknowledge that something wilder and bigger and more enduring than me is happening, something humans did not create and have not managed (yet) to destroy.

She’s perspective. She’s a reminder that there are things so much bigger than us at work in the world. So much beyond the blinders of busy and stress and anxiety.

I mean y’all, look, I get it. The dumpster fire is real and there is so much we wish were different. So much that so many are working, praying and advocating to make different. So much that seems hopeless. So much beyond our control, or, at least, it feels that way. So much evil set loose and seemingly winning the day.

But I cannot help but have hope in a world where the rich and powerful are confident of their winning at everything, where so many beloveds are cast aside, and where violence and hate are common MO - and yet, still, this little whisper of a creature is engaged in the very hopeful act of making sure her babies greet the world safe and whole.

And I want for all of us what her little eggs have - safety and security and what is clearly some sacrificial and abundant love (just work with me on the anthropomorphism, ok?).

My point is this - there are still breathtaking sunsets. And gorgeous moonrises. And mama wrens shepherding their littles into the world. And, if we’re very lucky, the hands of those we love near. And not a single bit of it should or can be taken for granted. And also it should be exactly what keeps us focused on putting out the dumpster fire and making some room for merciful healing.