Great Egret, St Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery, St A, Florida

“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus

I was back at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm wild bird rookery yesterday morning early to have one last crack at flight shots. The birds are so close, and there is a lot of coming and going so there are not many moments when there isn’t at least one bird in the air. Great place to practice…or just to appreciate the beauty of flight. These are mostly big birds. Great Egrets and Wood Storks predominate…and both are great flyers. Graceful, elegant, with beautiful plumage. When you catch one, as I have here, with the light behind it, it is as beautiful a sight as I hope to see in this world.

The persistence of flight dreams in our kind, and our general fascination with flight, when taken with our images of angels, might lead us to think that there are wings in our future. I actually find no indication of that at all in the Bible, and it is certainly not in the Gospels, but that does not stop us from dreaming. Flight, we seem to think, would be the final freedom.  Personally I would like to be able to love as well, and as naturally, and as beautifully as a bird flies. I think that would be the final freedom! When I look with my generous eye, I do not see you or myself with wings, beautiful as that might be…I see you (and myself) as a unconditionally loving person. That is the generous view. Leave the wings for the birds. I will admire flight, and give it its due as beauty, but give me love any day!

Happy Sunday.