DocM
|
Real Life Analogy #2 - The Bird
When I returned home from this vacation, my wife left the garage doors open. We have a pretty standard garage, with two electronic doors, and off to the side, a small window pane opening to the backyard. I came home from work to find the garage door open to the outside. Inside, I saw a frantic bird - looked like a blackbird by the small window. I tried to open both garage doors, to encourage it to leave, but it wouldn't. It couldn't "see" any ecape but the closed window. Again, and again, it kept flying at the closed window.
I tried to get its attention without scaring the bird, and move it toward the open garage door. No dice. Again, and again, it would hurl itself at the relatively small window. The window was stuck and would not open. It could only see the window at that light and was in fear or denial about the obvious route to freedom less than 12 feet away.
My five year old son was concerned and in wonder about the frantic bird. He watched me working to get its attention. Nothing was working. Finally, I found two old pool nets on long poles, and gently as I could, I put the bird between the two nets.
At a certain point, the bird became calm, relaxed, and as I opened the nets out just outside of the garage, it hopped out, and then flew away.
I was struck by the analogy of this bird and "stuck" people or souls, who can't see a way out. Either in the afterlife realms of consciousness or here, in the physical. The image of the bird crashing itself into the stuck small window in the garage, and refusing out of either fear or just the lack of perception to acknowledge the wide open garage doors, made me think about people. How many of us wear the blinders of belief systems that make us try ineffectively like that bird to find another path (even a path that is right next to us, that we couldn't see?) I again thought of this site, Bruce and retrievals. I'm still mulling over the "coincidence" of this episode, and the full meaning to me.
Matthew
|