Thursday, July 10, 2008

From Blessings to Blessed


2006 was an 84-hummingbird year. 2007 brought 119 hummingbirds. I was enamored, awed, captivated, inspired by them. They were little miracles, and they said something to me about my own soul--sometimes visible, a miracle, sometimes not. As I wrote those two summers in my sunroom, with the windows open on three sides and the cool green of the river birch tree illumining the eastern wall, I stopped and added a note with a number in my journal each time a flashing green, ruby-throated hummingbird hovered by the petunias, the bee balm, the wildflowers just outside my window.

This morning, early, I was out, and saw the empty hummingbird feeder and the spot where the bee balm grew in years past, and realized I've seen only three hummingbirds this year. The pattern of my day is much different now--I work in an office miles from my home for most of the week. Life has drawn me out of the sunroom, with its sacral, precious peace.

But something else has changed, too. Today I can feel the same wonder looking at a mosquito that I felt last year being blessed by the visit of a hummingbird. I can feel the pulse of gentle harmony in traffic. I can marvel at God in and between and through the letters, where I once thought I had to wait for something to arise in the space.

Moving beyond a tallying of blessings, maybe we discover that everything, everything is a gift and that counting is impossible because to count is to divide. We can bask in the whole knowing of our blessedness today. A tender sigh of Thanks with every exhale would not be too much.

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