Walking my dog today, while feeling especially weighed down by impossible questions, I slipped back into a mode I haven’t much occupied in recent years: what can only be called prayer.
If asked to explain my faith, I could only tell you, entirely in earnest, that it is first and foremost inexplicable. (Because it’s faith.) And that there is a level at which it feels specifically sacrilegious to so much as try. I could tell you that I am influenced by paganism and Buddhism and Christianity (most specifically, Quakerism), but this, to me, is also like trying to explain my musical proclivities. I listen to everything from Nina Simone to The National (going to a show tonight) to Queen and Lamb of God and Ella Fitzgerald and Otep and Maria Muldaur and the Distillers and The Pixies and Stevie Ray Vaughan and Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash and Ani DiFranco and Suicidal Tendencies and after all that, would you be able to come up with a handy category for my tastes? Of course not. So, too, it is for me and faith.
So I was praying, in my way, asking for some kind of sign, as I have lately been feeling myself to be at a crossroads. (I was also at a literal crossroads as all this was forming, in its necessarily inchoate way.)
Then I looked down, and saw this (click through to either image as hosted on Flickr for further ruminations, if desired):
And then, no sooner than I had uploaded the image from my phone, this:
Okay, Universe… next time I’ll try to be more specific in my questioning. But thanks for this, the images are resonant; the dollar bill will undoubtedly be spent, and hopefully the bird will find its way to wherever it was going, and I will find mine.
