Carried Along

…but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 1:21

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When I began to think of this, it was months ago, back when the geese flew into the cemetery as I walked along its paved roads. They plucked blades of grass among the tombstones, rested in the sun and waddled up the roads like me. Canadian geese spend a lot of time here. Something within them moves them and here they are. When the pelicans come to the water as they are passing through, I lose my mind about it, jerking my car onto the shoulder to admire them on my way to work, planning when I can come back and watch them float on those backwaters of the Arkansas. I go out of my way to witness their big, awkward bodies gracefully carried on open water every time. And I wonder how they know to come here to our water and how they find their way. They are there through instinct, but I sit watching because of my sudden impulse and my amazement at their coming. They seem wise.

Even the stork in the sky knows her time to migrate. The dove, the swallow and the crane all take flight when the time is right. Jeremiah 8:7

The creatures with their inner knowing traverse the whole world indwelled with a special genius for living. And I’ve so often envied them and wondered where is mine? Knowing when to begin, when to stop, how to find food, choose a mate, make a nest, how to fly. How brilliant they seem to me. I’ve searched for such simple brilliance inside of me. The beaver builds his dam, the spider spins an exquisite web of perfection, and the honeybee has filled my cup of chamomile with sweetness. Each seem to know their time, are filled with skill for life and are always moving forward filling earth’s stage with beauty worth watching and wondering about.

I saw a picture once of many monarchs resting in trees and on a forest floor. It seemed such a spectacle to me. Their feathery bodies so vulnerable, like the tiny sprout emerging from the garden soil, could be crushed under foot, dashed by a heavy wind, devoured by a bird. The most delicate of bodies carried by the most weightless of paper-like wings having wafted miles and miles to gather by the millions. What a mystery! Their brain so miniscule, like a grain of rice, yet their orange glory lifts like flags in the sky over thousands of miles to finally rest in undulating blankets made of butterfly wings when their journey to Mexico is complete.

I was planning a little trip last fall. I would go when I reached the end of a long and arduous season. I would go up to a mountain and stay a couple of days, I would regroup, contemplate the past, I would pray about the future. I’d been longing for the seamless path like that of the Canadians on the walking path, like that easy instinct in a simpleton such as a butterfly. Maybe I would sense the way. It’s so easy for those geese on the trail, so simple for even the worms who used to busily aerate my garden soil, accomplishing great feats with their lives with less time and brains than we. Why should it be difficult for me?

I heard a man say it is called a sun-compass within the monarchs that enables them on their miraculous migratory way—that is the unearned wisdom built into their nature that guides them–and their compass, activated only when they take flight, follows the sun. When I went to the mountain and walked alone across its top, a fluttering of orange wings caught my eye in the woods lining the road. They lit on the leaves of trees in small groups. For all of a mile I marveled at a small glimpse of this migrating monarch wonder. They would be finished with their journey, resting in Mexico later that year. I would go down the mountain, back to my room in the house in town, back to my job and to my thoughts. Looking at them fluttering on glistening oak leaves I thought of how they’d come from up north after gorging on milkweed and emerging from a chrysalis to fly. Milkweed is the only plant that can nourish a monarch caterpillar and fills their body with a toxin that keeps them safe from being devoured by their enemies. How curious! How amazing! They move from the Great Lakes on to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas migrating into Mexico and to their mountain rest and some of them were there in Arkansas in September, on Mt. Nebo. It was my birthday weekend. And though I could never have planned so far in advance the exact time to go up and to see them, I was there too. It seemed much clearer to me then. I had been gorging on the food that protected me from my enemies too, a feast from Hebrews, Jeremiah and John. I had been following the sun too, the brilliant SON who made the sun that butterflies pine for on their way. With my own inner son/sun compass, always resetting with directions sometimes unannounced to me, as I, in faith, choose to fly. And me, not wise, not sure, not clever, but indwelled by the Spirit of God who is, can fly knowing that He who leads is also the Way.

This is my covenant promise to them: My Spirit, which rests on and moves in you, and My words, which I have placed within you, will continue to be spoken among you and move you to action. And not only you, but so it will be for your children and their children too. And so on through the generations for all time. Isaiah 59:21