When I first read this line from Rumi, I got a chill. I knew exactly what he meant. For as long as I can remember, birdsong has been like the siren’s call to my soul. I’m riveted to the sounds as they echo through my being with a kind of joy that can’t be contained by words.
I played first flute (and piccolo!) in my junior high school’s concert band and I adored the beautiful sound of the flute. But no sound that emanated from my flute could match the gorgeous, uncanny, ethereal, harmonics-laden music of the Wood Thrush singing his heart out. The song is not of this world and it takes me to a higher dimension.
I also can’t get enough of the clear and glorious song of the Cardinal and the soulful calls of the Mourning Dove, the songs of the Lark and the Nightingale and the Whippoorwill. All the songs remind me of something buried deep in my psyche, in my soul, which I can’t express exactly with the limitations of words; I can only approximate.
What is this longing?
So what is this longing – and its satisfaction – that is elicited by the singing of my exquisitely feathered friends? I can’t be certain of what Rumi meant by his longing, but perhaps his longing was like mine.
Birdsong elicits in me a deep longing to remember beauty – the gorgeous beauty and joy of the natural world everywhere I turn. I’m awestruck by the incredible beauty of the simplest of the Earth’s gifts – like the little tuft of perfect violets in the parking lot that appeared this year in their innocent optimism long before the winter was even over. They beam with pleasure as I tell them I how much I love them. I love them as Spirit in disguise, with Spirit taking the form of violets – and humans and animals and all of creation – for my joy! Isn’t it all for our joy, this Earth?
And yes, I know that my old friends, grief and sorrow and anger and fear, will pay me a visit from time to time, but when those feelings pass, as they always do, there is nothing left but the joy of Spirit’s beauty in form all around me.
Beyond the physical realm, there’s the exquisite beauty of the spiritual world within myself and within you, as well, old soul (if you’ve read this far you’re an old soul). While the Earth is our temporary home, the inner spiritual world is our true home, a timeless realm of transcendent love and ancient wisdom. When we turn within, there’s the serene beauty of remembering the feeling of receiving God’s unfathomable love down to our bones, the love that Cory Asbury described in his song, “The reckless love of God.” “Before I spoke a word you were singing over me…, Oh, the overwhelming, never ending reckless love of God.”
When we turn within we discover the beauty in remembering that our bliss may not lie primarily in the gifts of the physical world but in the ascended dimensions of consciousness that await us as we begin to awaken to larger perspectives on what is real.
In the end, the glorious music of birds reminds me that underneath everything – underneath our longing for worldly things and our longing for love and for peace – is our longing to remember and to re-experience our oneness with our Creator, the loving Great Spirit of All That Is and All That Can Be. It all comes back to our longing to remember the beauty of who we really are.
Namasté, dear one.
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