Mid-morning, as I walked down the driveway I spotted this Robin’s egg. When I’d been out earlier I’d noticed the birdsong was different, almost like a warning. The birds were hidden in some of the larger leafy trees and although I’d looked I couldn’t see them. Now this sign that perhaps something had happened to the mother bird’s baby. Silence now was curious. The day was lovely but windy. Had the egg been blown away? Had the mother left her nest for only a moment and come back to find an egg, with an emerging babe? Had a larger bird or a squirrel taken the baby? What didn’t I know? See? Observe?
Like so many things in life, this story may not have a definitive conclusion. There might not be a happy ending. Information I needed to construct a story I could settle on wasn’t available. I do this repeatedly when I don’t have information. Facts are unavailable and my need to have order or answer a question, thought or concern invites me to create answers. Sometimes this works out fine. I can’t fix the story for the robin and her little bird so I create a story I can settle on. If the day is extraordinary the story may become the same. If the day is stormy, my story may lead to an unhappy ending.
I can’t manufacture a story here because the broken egg leads me to nothing. There is too much missing for me to fill in the blanks to my satisfaction. This story is a minor part of my day. It might be the story the robin carries for weeks. So it goes with the stories I hear, construct, share, intuit. Although it’s easy to say that not everything ties up into a pretty package, most of life is messy. Ambivalence is more of life than not. Much of it is in the background and not so hard to mange. Sometimes it takes the stage and won’t go away.
Some stories stay with us as invited parts of our journey. Others are more like the guest who is planted on your couch at 3:00 a.m. They don’t leave for reasons we don’t understand or like. What are the lessons? What have I not understood? What is missing?
SpiritnSoul 