A bird's voice for which the sun rises.
Dear friends,
This morning I opened my eyes early, and while I lay in bed waiting for my body to get me moving, I had an experience so moving in its simplicity and every-day-ness that I cannot resist sharing it with you.
Between darkness and light, my awakening thoughts spun together quickly, like a solidifying candy floss. But just before they pulled me completely from the fullness of the dream world into the barrenness and illusion of waking life, something happened: I heard outside, somewhere in the trees and bushes near the open window, a cautious and hesitant 'psiiee-wiet'.
That sound, utterly banal in a musical and melodic sense, had something singular about it. As certain as a rock standing with its feet in the earth, I could say this morning: this sound was a beginning. This little bird—a small bird, as I imagined it—was the first to sing today. After a few moments, it was followed, in rapid succession and surprisingly fast increasing in multitude and volume, by other bird voices. It was as if the first bird had broken a dam behind which a mounting urge to make sound had accumulated, now overflowing into the shared space. I knew for sure: there was a beginning to this abundance, and today, I was privileged to witness that beginning.
My being was briefly absorbed by that feathered phenomenon. This little creature, just like Rosa Parks, performed an act this morning. The question suddenly struck me, both pertinent and justified: what was that little bird thinking and feeling when it, in all its vulnerability, decided to be the first to make its sound this morning? Had it been waiting impatiently for another bird to break the silence? Did it think, "Why isn’t anyone starting? Someone has to do it—I'll do it"?
And why did all the birds immediately join in as soon as that one bird broke the silence? Do birds, too, have a kind of fear of speaking? Do they, too, live somewhere in fear of expressing their truth?
Suddenly, it seemed truly miraculous to me, so moving that it brought tears to my eyes. That fragile sound, full of strength in its hesitation and fragility: every morning there is a bird that has the courage to break the shell of the nocturnal silence with its little beak and open space for other voices as well.
It is through and for that bird that the sun continues its upward journey today, and it is through that small voice that the music of life sounds today.
Every day there are a thousand days, every day there is a thousandfold beginning. How beautiful it is to be a beginning at least once every day, to be that voice that breaks the silence, that voice that tames hollow echoes and hesitation; how beautiful it is to be that voice at least once each day through which and for which the sun spreads its light and life resounds in harmony.
With that, I will begin my day—and I dedicate it to that little bird.
Mattias
My father once told me, that the most beautiful experience in his life as a medical doctor was driving away from a lonely farmhouse where he had delivered a healthy baby after a long night's struggle. Looking into the morning sky he heard the first cry of a bird, before other birds joined and he never forgot this beautiful moment.
Remember too, that that first little bird that you heard was already hearing the songs of birds to its east, that as the dawn travels around the world, a wave of birdsong travels with it, from the Bering Sea to the Bay of Biscay. And what are they saying to each other, what news of the world are they passing on, from east to west? And they have been singing this song for far, far longer than we have shared the planet with them - they are after all the descendants of dinosaurs.