Breath…

 

I am mowing the lawn.  I glance ahead and see a mouse lying in the grass.  Still.  The mouse has died, so I dig a hole among the garden flowers and bury the little creature.  I wonder what happened since there are no visible signs of trauma on the tiny furry body.  When I finish mowing I take a walk.

It is obvious that something is terribly wrong.  She is struggling to breathe, her tiny beak opening and closing as she gasps for breath.  She is in the middle of the sidewalk, her tiny body covered with grey feathers and her tail a brilliant yellow.  There is a hint of down on her belly and I wonder if she is too young to be out of the nest.  Looking closer I realize her wings are fully formed, she may be young but I believe that something else is wrong.

I pick her up in my hand and she does not resist.  I cannot leave her here in the sun without protection so I take her home.  We try to give her water and she shudders.  We place her in a mailing box with a bottle cap of water.  Periodically her body shakes then she goes back to panting.  There is clearly something very wrong with her.  Did she fly into a window?  Did she fall from the nest onto the hard concrete?  There are no signs of blood or damage to her body so we rule out blaming the cat.

We sit in vigil with her on our patio hoping that she will recover.  After an hour or so she moves around a bit, then falls sidewise, wings flapping, with one more desperate try at life.  Suddenly she lies still as we watch the life leave her tiny body.  It’s just a bird you say?  No, it is a fellow creature with whom we shared the most intimate moment we all carry within us.  Our death.

Although we are sad that this little bird did not live beyond whatever had happened to it, we are grateful that we could at least be present at her leaving.  There is something sacred about the moment when the breath of life leaves a living creature.  All living things share this one thing in common, to hold onto life as long as possible, and just as they are born, all living things will die.

Philosophers, theologians, dreamers and other kinds of artists have wrestled with the questions surrounding life and death.  The ancient religions teach what Lebanese-American poet Kahlil Gibran wrote in his wonderful book The Prophet, that “life and death are one, just as the river and the sea are one.”

“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?”

I wonder where our collective discomfort and fear of death come from?  Perhaps the random acts of violence and accidents that happen to so many every day drive us to ask, why? in a desperate attempt to make sense of it all.  Why did this happen?  Why did it happen to her and not someone else?  What is the meaning of all of this?  What happens after we die?

At the very least one knows that without having experienced light the concept of darkness makes no sense.  If one has not touched hot water and knows only cold, the word “hot” remains an unreachable concept.

I am here reminded of the principle of Yin and Yang.  All things exist as inseparable and contradictory opposites. Light and dark.  Hot and cold. Night and Day. Pain and Pleasure. Joy and Sorrow.  Female and Male. Old and Young. I understand that this Yin Yang principle dates from the 3rd. century BC or earlier.  It is a fundamental concept in Chinese philosophy and culture.

The two opposites of Yin and Yang attract and complement each other, and at their core, each has an element of the other.  Neither is superior to the other, they are in perfect balance. This is what some religions call Heaven, some Nirvana, and still others Awakening!  I prefer awakening.

The black field has a white dot, and the white field a black dot, reminding us that no matter how lovely and good our life is there is, there will be times of darkness; and no matter how desperate and dark the situation, it is never totally without hope!  The result is unity, and I believe encompasses the reality of life in all its forms.

It is we, with our ego-driven primitive drive to survive at the cost of any and all others, that causes the breakdown of a system that I believe is God, and transcends all the teachings of man and religion.  Her name is nature, and she is wisdom.  Just Janis and…