Flightless Souls on Walkabout

Flightless Souls On Walkabout

Copyright 2021 Don Ray.  Feel free to print and share.

 On a bench at the pond, post sunrise, the three Marx brothers ducks at my fe

The Marx brothers prune themselves in the morning low angle light, a fresh cool breeze slipping across the pond,

Little quaking sounds and little waterfall sounds and little bird songs accompanying this heavenly scene.

I remain in my usual wrestling match with God, marveling at the Paradox of the inherent beauty of life and Nature versus the inherent suffering and tragedy of Life and Nature.

The Marx brothers tuck their heads into wings and go back to sleep, right in front of me, just across the trail, the shadow of my toes touching a tail, the shadow of my head extending far beyond them.

Thank You!  Thank You!  Thank You!

Occasionally I see the Marx brothers going on long walkabouts, heading up the hill and into the woods, dangerous terrain far from the security of the pond, brushy terrain in which their flightless forms could be easily trapped and destroyed by a dog or a fox.  How I worry about them!  If I see them in time I try to herd them back toward the pond, as I scold them for such foolish and unnecessary behavior.  But their behavior is necessary.  The urge to wander, to get about, to explore that other place and it's potential, that is as ingrained in their being as it is in the nature of wild ducks who can fly.  

The wild ducks never sit in a pond week after week, month after month.  Through the course of even a day they fly from place to place, this creek, that meadow, into the next valley.

The Marx brothers have to try to do the same, regardless of their flightless wings.

So they waddle up trails into dry woods and I fret about them until they reappear at the pond.

We, just as flightless, our conscious souls trapped in a temporal blindness and localized into a carnal body, also feel driven to wander, to explore possibilities, to take risks, even risking our souls.  We explore beliefs and faiths and ways of being and ways of living, though that may mean leaving the security of the familiar and traditional.  

I fret about the Marx brothers but can do little more than fret.  God frets about us but can do little more than fret.

Our souls cannot yet fly, our eyes cannot yet see beyond the frame of time flickering before our consciousness.  But explore we must, we the fallen

Waddling Marx brothers, struggling humans, we seek fulfillment in our destiny, impatient with our present lot, wings not flying, minds not comprehending.

It is what it is, this perennial dissatisfaction.  It must be so if we are to ever someday fly.  But in the meantime, let our burning dissatisfaction and temporal blindness and carnal imprisonment and flightless wings not blind us to the beauty that we can experience and the life we already have.  

Let us go on our clumsy and dangerous spiritual walkabouts, for such is our inescapable nature.  Let us not forget though the momentary spiritual home that awaits our return, that place for our soul that nurtures and heals and protects us though we cannot, yet, fly.

Copyright 2021 Don Ray.  Feel free to print and share.