Standing Rapt in Awe

Recently, I was standing in the backyard bidding the day adieu, watching hues of soft pink and creamsicle orange take over the warm blue sky. I heard them before I saw them, a noisy chattering of starlings. They flew in low and fast, directly above my head, landing in a mostly bare red maple at the edge of my fence. The glorious cacophony of their impromptu gathering left me breathless. In all the years lived here, practicing my ritual of saying goodnight to Mother Earth, never had I experienced starlings, quite literally, at my back door. 

I held my breath, watching them, listening to them speak in language known only to them. They were still, yet aflutter, their collective energy an invisible and palpable force moving through the stark limbs of that red maple like a wave. To most people this moment would just appear to be birds in a tree and go largely unnoticed. To me, this was poetry, this was a gift from the Universe, this was a moment to savor, a moment to etch into the deepest part of my hippocampus to recall when my eyesight, and the rest of me, someday, begins to fade.

Maybe I romanticize these seemingly mundane moments too much, but I don't care. Living in the present moment and being grateful for every opportunity to fully experience and embrace this temporary, temporal existence has changed my life in every way for the better. Perhaps Einstein said it best...

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."

In the milliseconds before those starlings vacated that red maple it was quiet and calm, and then in unison, like a shot, they ascended back into the twilight sky, their noisy chattering fading into the distance like the setting sun.