Day Of Sighs

I drove to work, almost able to see the miasma of lies and evil hanging like summer fog in the air through which I moved. Natural beauty almost always lifts me out of myself and helps me forget the ugliness within and without, but yesterday, I could feel it affecting me, entering my spirit’s lungs, sickening me.

Arriving at my office and parking in my usual spot beneath the tree, I did not want to leave the shelter of my vehicle, did not want to cross that parking lot, did not want to enter that building where profit is king and spiritual realities are, at best, sneer-fodder. I wanted to turn around and go back home, home where I can convince myself that the world of degenerate men does not exist, home where I am safe not just from the cruel vapidity of the workaday world, but also safe from the dark things inside myself being tempted to rise to the surface. That danger is always there, and it grows in proportion to the amount of time I am forced to spend with people whose meat and drink are lies and material comfort and sleepwalking through appetites and vice.

But I did not return home. I sprinkled crackers on the ground for my crows and headed towards mine own Isengard.

As I neared the building, there was movement on the ground. A robin was — what? Escorting? Herding? Shepherding? — a young fledgling robin near the curb. The young one’s right wing seemed injured, as it listed downward, almost trailing the asphalt. It had what looked like a bug or a grub in its beak. The adult robin saw me and flew up into one of the small ornamental trees nearby. The young one stopped before the curb, looking up at it as if it were El Capitan. I stopped so that I could watch, and to provide the little thing with some breathing room.

It hopped side to side, looking, considering. With one strong effort, it leaped up onto the curb, then tottered across the mulch and beneath the burning bush under the tree in which its mama sat and watched.

I lifted my hand and said some words to the little bird, then continued on to my office.

But later, inside, I thought about the little bird. What was the nature of my prayer? Was it just the latest manifestation of my tendency to be sentimental and maudlin? Did it make any difference? Was I falling into the mindset that God wants all His creatures to be happy and safe and mellow all the time, and that any discomfort or defeat is de facto displeasing to Him? And if this is not true, did my prayer for the little bird displease Him…was I trying to be more loving than the One Who created that bird? Does the little bird think about his injury, or does he merely accept it, live with it, endure it, then rejoin the others down in the quiet soil?

Sitting at my desk, I thought about the odds of the baby robin surviving. All these little lives, so quickly appearing and disappearing. Does it matter? Do I? Then I caught myself. I sounded like every college freshman at his first kegger.

Then I thought about statues being toppled in once-beautiful cities. I thought of the fear in the eyes of those around me. I thought of riots brought about by knees on necks, and the moronic solution of knees on asphalt in front of howling mobs.  I thought of the realities of trying to stay in the workforce at my age and with my other, perhaps disqualifying personal demographic data. In the quiet hum of the office before my coworkers arrive, I can hear the baying of jackals and the brimstone cackling of hyenas out there in the world, the world I must drive through to return home.

It feels as if there is a high curb in front of me, and my wing is dragging. It is a day of sighs.

~ S.K. Orr