When one tugs at one thing in the universe, they find that it is attached to the rest of the world

John Muir

I lead a little life. A little life that I love and one that fits me just right.

But I try to pay attention to the wider world around me. I try to see beyond my own backyard.

And like you, I scroll through the unbelievable hellscape of news on the internet. Sometimes, I get angry. Often, I am disillusioned. Mostly, I feel disconnected to the larger social problems that feel impossible for me to fix.

Still, I run my errands. I do the laundry, fix meals, and I exercise. I try to stay positive, I try to see the good.

But today, I was anxious and teary and couldn’t stop looking out the kitchen window.

Because deep in the yard is our bluebird house. And for the past 3 weeks I’ve eagerly watched a pair of them build their nest in it, and fill it with five perfect eggs. And yesterday they hatched.

But overnight the male and female abandoned them. They just flew away and never came back. And today, the babies are slowly dying.

So I’m obsessively watching and waiting for the mother bird to return to save them. I can’t stop hoping that she will fly back home to nurture the hatchlings.

I’m fixated on this, I’m anxious, and I’m unable to concentrate on anything else. Even though I know it’s futile.

And I am heartbroken.

Eventually, I curl up on the bed with my cat, hoping the little things die quickly.

And then, I think it’s crazy that I am grieving so deeply over these tiny birds. And I feel a tiny bit of shame in this. Because in the scheme of things – with all the rest of the world’s suffering – what does it matter?

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In the Celtic world, they believe that there is a specific sacredness to all of Nature. And they believe that humans exist in a seamless universe, bound together through every rock and tree and human and wild thing – as if by an invisible thread.

But the challenge is that we have forgotten this interconnectedness – we are alienated from one another and from the natural world.

We have failed to honor and nurture the relationship – and we fail to recognize the sacredness in one another.

And I believe that it is this rendering that is destroying our world.

But the thing is, we are all connected.

To the refugee, the trans person, the poor, the outsider – they are all me. And the bluebird in the yard, it is me, too.

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I remember one time my father saying that, pain is pain, it doesn’t matter where it comes from. Whether it’s the death of a pet or a loved one, we experience the grief and loss all the same.

In other words, human pain is indiscriminate – it touches each of us, individually and collectively. For big things and for little things.

And I think mostly we don’t want to linger on this pain – the suffering that we witness all around us – because it’s too hard, too excrutiating, too incomprehensible, or too close to the bone.

But I feel as if the whole world is grieving right now. And our planet is crying out for healing. And our hearts are breaking at the destruction we’ve allowed to happen.

An El Salvadoran, waiting in prison, the bleaching of the coral reefs, a neighbor struggling with bone cancer, and a small bird calling out in the backyard.

Yet, we are all one. And we all hold the thread.

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And so, later tonight, I will dig a hole and bury the perfectly woven birds nest, and I’ll place it deep into the cool dirt of the backyard, and maybe I’ll say a prayer.

Perhaps I will pray to find answers, answers to the questions of the Spirit. And pray that I might open my heart to the universe.

Maybe I’ll pray for how I might feel the Divine force that wants so desperately to hold me.

And I’ll pray to find ways that I might awaken my senses to the sacred in everything, in all of creation.

Simply, how I might find the holy thread, and hold it tight.

For, as the great environmentalist John Muir once wrote, “In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world”.

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