Guest Author
Ron Starbuck - Author and Poet
A Mockingbird's Song
by Ron Starbuck
There are moments,
like this morning,
when my heart is so full
it has become the song of
the
Mockingbird
singing outside our windows.
Who may sing at any time
day or night, its song
of wonder and making.
Who is binding the world
together
with each single and
heart-making note, whose
songs are as bright as
God's love for all of creation.
It is 4:42 AM precisely
now,
at such and such
longitude and latitude.
(29° 48' 22'' N 95° 23'
47'' W)
And I am sitting in a
chair
typing as quickly as I
can these
words arising out of the
emptiness
of my own being, alive
with wonder.
So that no single word
may escape the
gesture of my mind, which
in this
moment is like a razor's
edge,
sharp and clearly
defined.
The Mockingbird is still
singing its song,
which you may easily
imagine moving up through its
gentle heart, and throat,
and out through
its voice, to spin again
and again
up and
around this fragile world, our home.
The song of its being is
still winding its way
into the many mansions of
my heart,
opening my heart to the
mystery of its word and voice.
On Friday afternoon our
neighbor delivered to Joanne,
a
bouquet of lilies from her garden, Easter Lilies in May.
Oh, more than a dozen I
can picture now.
And then yesterday Joanne
brought home
even
more flowers.
Carnations and mums for
church today,
so the house is full of
their fragrance,
along
with the smell of my morning coffee.
If the self is constantly
changing,
from one moment to the
next
as my Buddhist friends
tell me.
If the self is so
impermanent as
to be not-self,
or no-self, anattā (uhn-uht-tah).
Why is it then that I
feel so
completely and utterly
alive
in this very moment?
Why is it that I can
still
hear the song of the
mockingbird
entering my heart?
Raising it up again and
again
like a sacrament,
to the wonders of
creation,
to this gift we call
life.
Why is it that this one
song never
seems to leave me from
one
hallowed moment to the next?
Why is the song more,
much more,
than a
vague and distant memory?
Maybe as the Buddha
suggests, this is
a question we should put
aside for now, not to worry.
And just to be as we are,
to answer or say neither
yes or no, to live in the
mystery perhaps.
Still, wherever you may
be this morning, whatever
you may be doing, stop
now. Stop and take one
deep breath,
breathing in slowly and fully, and out once again.
Stop, and realize if
nothing else, that you are alive.
And that within your own
heart is the same song, of
the same mockingbird, in the
very same tree outside our window
that is singing through
our own hearts, binding us
together
as one human family, a family of humanity.
Let this one moment
become a beginning, a healing,
a
grace, a passage from one human heart to the next. Where
the world is made new and
whole, where we know who we
are with a certainty
marked by compassion.
Where we come to see
Christ, and even the Buddha,
alive
in one another.
Ron Starbuck
Copyright 2010
Here is a link to an article on the Buddhist concept
of not-self. It's not what you may think.