It Looks Like Winter

Even though it's five degrees outdoors right now, the sun is shining. It feels like winter, but winter is being eroded by the sun, drop by drop.

Birds are arriving from the south, silently and invisibly. Suddenly, there's a robin despite the dusting of snow last night. Next week, the bluebirds arrive. The week after that, the great blue herons. And the last week of March, the phoebes.

The practice of meditation erodes our bad habits, bit by bit, as we bring mindfulness into our daily lives. We zip our lips instead of zinging off an opinion, and we speak up, truthfully and helpfully in all heartfulness, when we need to.

It looks like winter outdoors, but the heart of spring is arriving drop by drop.



Photo by scubadive67

The Phoe-Be Song

A phoebe wags its tail as it sits on the back of a lawn chair. This perch gives it a birds-eye view of insects flying around two feet above the yard. It zooms out, seems to snap at thin air, returns to the lawn chair, and swallows. Mosquitoes? Blackflies?

The phoebe never comes to the bird feeders. It builds its nest in an eave of the house (hopefully not near the bedroom window), and sings its raucous "phoe-be" song as if it has laryngitis.

Two chickadees have taken up residence in a bluebird house near the vegetable garden. They flit back and forth to the entrance, apparently feeding babies. Sometimes one of them sits on the wire fence and sings its melodic "phoeeeeee---beeeeeeee" song, dropping half a step between "phoeeee" and "beeeee."


Two birds singing a very similar song--one unpleasant, one very pleasant.
There's no need to wish the unpleasant away nor to desire more of the pleasant. Birds simply sing their songs, and mindfulness simply listens.