blue heron, white egret

There is a white egret that lives down at the creek that we can see from the new office. At least there was. Rob named him Fernando, but like a great ship or explorer he may have sailed down south now. I am not sure if he was a snowy or a great egret. It was amazing watching him, though, always at a distance, such a bright pure white. There are gulls that sometimes sit at the creek too...and are also white, and sometimes seeing them, you'd think it might be Fernando, but weren't quite sure. But when you saw him, you knew. He was so brilliant and I could just make out the curve of his long neck. It reminds me of how CS Lewis describes hearing the voice of God in Till We Have Faces,

A god's voice...is not to be mistaken. It may well be that by trickery of priests men have sometimes taken a mortal's voice for a god's. But it will not work the other way. No one who hears a god's voice takes it for a mortals.

I am one of those people who asks God things and then waits with my brow furrowed until I think I can hear an answer. I usually think of some cool answer myself and then spend a fruitless amount of time trying to convince myself that God might have been part of that too. I am trying to stop doing that, because I do know that when God wants me to know something, he lets me know.





Last night I went walking on the trail behind our house. I have been very into Pilates for the last month, but I can only do it every other day to let my muscles heal. So I went for a walk because the fall air was lovely and I had to do something to make up for the hot fudge sunday at lunch at McDonalds. There is a crosswalk at the end of our road and the path crosses the street and then winds around a little pond. I stood waiting at the corner to cross, watching the SUV behind me. He stopped and honked and waved me on and just as I turned my head to cross the road, a Great Blue Heron landed on the bank of the pond in front of me. Herons are remarkably graceful. Even more the the Pilates instructor on my video. It was like his body and wings were water that had lifted from the pond. Like a swimmer treading water, moving in slow, smooth and perfect motion. I got across the street somehow and carefully moved around the pond watching him. I stopped directly across from and watched what I never thought I would see. He did what he was designed for and caught a fish. I could see it flapping and silvery in the his beak.

I walked on for a while and enjoyed the remaining patches of color in the understories. Some bright Maples and Beeches are still looking lovely. I ran a little bit and tried to walk remembering to hold in my stomach. When I got back to the pond a father and son were there fishing. The heron stood beside them, perhaps to rub it in that he had caught a fish and they had not. The boy watched him for a while and then cast his line over near the bird and scared him. On purpose. His father appeared to scold him, but then walked toward the heron himself, the bird cautiously stepped away, and the father took his spot at the pond. I guess to try to catch a fish. I felt like the guardian of the bird. Not that he needed it. He could have flown any time he wanted to, but I wonder why we have this tendency, as humans, to take advantage, to display our dominance, over something as amazing and awe-inspiring and "just minding it's own business" as a Great Blue Heron. Perhaps because it truly is better at fishing and more lovely than any dancer. But it is still so vulnerable compared to our fishing lines and SUVs.

I have had the hardest time this election season deciding who to vote for, whether I could stand to vote at all, and it might simply depend on which side of the bed I roll out of tomorrow. My mom told me that I need to decide what issues are important to me and then follow my consience. These two birds are important... I'd vote for someone that wouldn't shove them over to take the better fishing spot. Just not sure who that is.

So how does the voice of God come into this? I didn't have an outline for this post, and it's amazing how a writing takes a shape I wasn't expecting. But it ties together because his voice is our source. It called us, the earth, and every creature into existence and to being exactly what he wanted it to be. May he continue to do that everyday. Because his creation, all that he touches and shapes, is real, there is no mistaking it for anything else. The cell phone tower may look like a tree for a moment, but there is no mistaking a brilliant golden maple. There is no mistaking that our creator knows what he is doing.