There was a meeting at church last night, and it being a perfect summer evening, the nearest door was propped open for the cooling ocean air to breeze in.
“Oh! It’s a little bird!” Fluttering suddenly above our heads.
“It’s a finch, here, let me, that’s what canes are for.” A house finch. Female, and by the looks of it a juvenile–a young one out exploring a bit and now lost from its flock and it didn’t know its way back to where it belonged.
That’s what houses of worship are for, right? Finding God’s place in our world. A little bit of God had been brought to us.
I stood up and walked to the other side of the room. I knew I didn’t need to be threatening from its point of view, I didn’t need to get any too close; just hold my piece of wood up a bit (it would make a great perch if it didn’t come with a human attached) and the movement near it would get it to change its direction.
It did. But the room had a raised ceiling at the interior, not too high, with a lower edge all around and wall sconces along that ledge up there; it needed to come down and go around before it could go out.
It grabbed onto the popcorn-ceiling-type stuff above a sconce. There was an “Oooh!” around the room marveling at its ability to hold onto the seemingly impossible.
C’mon little one, I thought, you’ve lost your flock, you don’t want flocked walls, you want blue sky and the berries on that bush over there to eat. That’s how the males get such red heads in your family.
We danced a little dance: Alice over there stood and raised her arms and it flew back towards me, I raised my cane (my folks can tell you that’s nothing new) and it zigzagged back and away–out the door of the room just so, straight across the hall and outside to the great blue sky waiting for it. So perfectly and so fast that it took me a moment to take it in that no, it hadn’t gone down the hall and lost to who knows where, it was home. Free.