Conventional Wisdom says Look at the Big Picture but maybe it's time to focus on some Little Pieces?

In the tsunami of Overwhelm, can you give yourself a moment of Gentle?

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

A bird-loving word-loving friend gave me one of those fun “create your own poetry” magnetic poetry kits. Filled with over 200 little single-word magnetic tiles, it’s thoroughly overwhelming when you dump all the words out.

Too many. Unrelated. Messy. I stare, paralyzed by the too-muchness.

But then, somehow, a single word says Hey, look at me!

This morning it was wren. So I picked her up, gave her a little room, took a sip of coffee. Stared again at the pile of tiles.

S. Ing.

There we are: a noun and a verb.

And I thought of the diminutive wren with her giant generous song. I thought of a particular wren, the one who perches on a chair on the back patio, gazes in at me or the dog or the pile of bills (who knows what she sees?) and sings.

She sings. It’s what she does.

And I like to think that she sings for me, but the thing is, she’s a creature created to sing, so she sings, and that’s her gift to the world, and here I am in the trajectory of her glorious noisy gift.

(She sings. All I do is feed her. But she would sing anyway. It’s who she is. Oh, so much to learn from this small creature.)

And because she’s here and because I’m here, the energy shifts in me: a little spike of gladness in my heart, a little enormous gratitude. And a life-giving reminder: A single bird does, in fact, matter. A song can, in fact, change a heart.

An act of joy, an expression of art, a declaration of life can be and is a beautiful powerful defiant response to the cacophony of doom.

Thank you, little bird.

Thank you, wild world.

Oh, and thank you, poetry-kit-giving friend.

So, dear one, where are you being surprised by the Little Pieces of Life today? I hope you’ll share!