Nightly Gathering
Open Thread Post 43
About the heron I saw yesterday, there is one more thing I meant to say. Timing is everything. Years ago I know I used to get really frustrated if I got stuck behind a slow car, caught at too many red lights, etc. etc. I'm not saying I never do anymore, but probably not as often. I remember reading about the various people who were not at the WTC when it collapsed because of several inconveniences that had kept several of them from being on time or in place. It wasn't their time.
I learned to relax more and think, “I'm supposed to be right where I am, for whatever reason.”
I could have chosen earlier or later to take that walk yesterday, and I have about 6 or 7 different places I take my walks. (I could have seen a different heron on one of the other choices.)
I saw the heron, stopped to take the pictures, and walked to a certain point and turned around. On my way back, approaching the area with that little pond where the heron was, an old man had stopped and was just staring at “probably the heron” I surmised from my vantage point. You can kind of tell there are trees extending from the pond. It wasn't possible for me to see the pond from my direction.
He started walking the closer I got to him and we smiled and said hello as we passed. Then I got to that area and looked and surprisingly did NOT see the heron. I thought, “What the heck was he looking at?”
But there, another 20 yards further out in the field now, was that heron, totally blended in with the environment. If I had walked later and arrived at the pond when he did, I guarantee I would not have noticed it.
It made me feel happy to see it, right? Me equating it with Morgan somehow now? I wouldn't have known I had missed seeing the heron if I hadn't seen it, but I guess it is just interesting to me, the things or people that are put into our path or field of vision in an obvious way.
Feel free to use the Open Thread to tell your own story or any thoughts you have.
Beautiful and so true. I think that's why I NEED to get out and walk or hike daily. Isn't it interesting that the timing of and seeing that heron, has now brought any of us reading that reflection into peace instead of chaos!
Look at this beautiful essay that was in one of my devotionals this morning! A Heron mentioned again!
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
~Wendell Berry “The Peace of Wild Things”