"a flash of Bluebird iridescence"
It's raining and raining and raining where I live. Everywhere that water can find to pool or flow is full. The rivers are swollen. Levees have been breached and sections of highway have collapsed or been overrun by landslides. Homes and neighborhoods are flooded. And still it rains and rains and rains.
This morning in our living room, I read aloud the opening paragraph of Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. Her writing is so beautiful and so calming that I almost find it painful to read sometimes. It's like my nervous system craves this kind of generous peacefulness so intensely that when my mind encounters it, it shies away in shock and fear. The invitation to slow down can be a scary one.
It's hard to be calmed when I'm so used to be activated. It's difficult to slow my mind, to let it be guided by a gentle hand rather than the electric-shouting-neon-imperatives of our attention economy, screaming at us to respond with urgency to THIS and THIS and THIS.
But I want to slow my mind. I want to calm my spirit.
In our living room this morning, when I read the paragraph below aloud to my love and our visiting friend, our friend paused on the very same phrase that lit my mind up with pleasure when I first read these words (the title of this post). We shared the momentary glow of having taken in a gorgeous phrase.
From Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
"The cool breath of evening slips off the wooded hills, displacing the heat of the day, and with it come the birds, as eager for the cool as I am. They arrive in a flock of calls that sound like laughter, and I have to laught back with the same delight. They are all around me, Cedar Waxwings and Catbirds and a flash of Bluebird iridescence. I have never felt such kinship with my namesake, Robin, as in this moment when we are both stuffing our mouths with berries and chortling with happiness. The bushes are laden with fat clusters of red, blue, and wine purple in every stage of ripeness—so many you can pick them by the handful. I'm glad I have a pail, and it's getting pretty heavy. The birds carry their berries in the buckets of their bellies and wonder if they will be able to fly with so much cargo.