Retro post from Dec. 31, 2011: A Bird In the Hand

My mind has been restless for a few days.  Old uncertainty and fear have been trying to steal my joy, and I have had to make a conscious effort to relax.  I feel like a bird in a cage.  Much of the time I am content to perch and sing, to eat the food and drink the water that is given to me, and to tuck my head under my wing each night as I sleep safely.  Every once in awhile, though, the confines of my cage feel like a trap instead of a haven.  Then I throw myself against the bars, beating my wings in a frenzy, trying to escape it.  All memeory of safety and tranquility are lost  in my desperation to get out.

What makes me afraid?  It is when I glimpse the sky through an open window that my cage feels so small.  When a sweet breeze blows through the room carrying the fragrance of trees and meadows, my heart longs to be free, to explore the wild world, to see what lies beyond the threshold of my master's door.

I came to my master as an egg.  When I was born, my mother and father placed me in his hands.  I grew and perched on his fingers.  I ate seeds from the palm of his hand.  He taught me to sing.  It was from his shoulder that I attempted my first flight, more falling than flying.  He delighted in me, and I thrived under his care.

When I had grown into my feathers, my master presented me with something new.  It was another bird, a male, different from me.  I cocked my head as I inspected him.  He was handsome and young.  His song was sweet.  I hopped onto my master's finger, and the boy followed me.  Together we ate seeds from the master's hand.

I had grown up in captivity.  Though I had seen other birds and even fluttered around my master's house in their company, I had never met one who was the same species as myself.  I was a rare hybrid with strange qualities.  I had inherited my father's showiness and pride, but it was tempered with my mother's faithfulness to the master's voice.  As a result I became a bird who would fly forth in great showy displays, then return to the master's hand.  I thought the boy might be the same kind of bird as me.  I watched him sing and fly with the other birds as I sang my own song.  I met him in the master's hand when we went there to eat seeds and sing for him.  I even tried to teach the boy some of my songs.  He tried them, but he never grew to love them as I did, so I continued to sing alone.  Still we would meet in the master's hand, and there was no other bird whose song sounded as sweet to me as his.