What the cranes said

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Matthew 6:26)

You hear sand hill cranes before you see them. Sometimes you hear them but never see them at all because they fly so high. I heard them three or four times before I came to an opening in the forest and saw them circling just east of me.

Putting the tip of my tongue on the roof of my mouth, I blew from my throat, imitating the alto trill of their call. They ignored me. They just kept circling, round and round, going nowhere in particular, a convention of cranes, rather like church committees and assemblies that once were my lot to suffer through.

With each turn in the crystal blue of a November sky, however, more appeared, enlarging the flock from dozens to hundreds, their cries louder now, excitement building, drawn together by an ancient magnetism neither they, nor I, understand, but which tells them that their autumnal journey should not be taken alone.

And I, on my autumnal journey, am … well … jealous. I’ve always been jealous of birds, they for whom flight is like breathing, and I whose soul was meant for soaring, so often earthbound, my heart drawn to heights of love and joy by an ancient magnetism of a mysterious Something or Someone for whom the human heart longs from the very moment of birth.

I’ve been trying to name this Someone or Something all my life, hoping, finally, to make it my own, wanting to belong … fully and forever ... to the Mystery for which I most long—one with the Love who sometimes whispers to me, ‘We are one. We are one. Do not fear. We are one.’

Maybe the cranes hear this voice, too, in their own way. Their gathering, a congregation of flight, climbing higher now, making ready to embark to winter’s home, safe from the cold soon to descend on these woods.

Just as they set out, a southbound jet out of O’Hare, 25 miles north, passes by, little higher than their altitude. Ten thousand feet is nothing to them, just a nice glide path. And with that, they go, and I turn west, down a slope deeper into the woods, mostly denuded of the canopy that obscures the sun through the summer months.

Unlike the cranes, I’m alone, but smiling for reasons I don’t fully understand. My autumnal journey continues and not just in these woods. I’m 72, now, and wish I had a few more companions for my journey home, which I hope continues for a long time. I want to keep coming here to see the cranes and listen to whatever they have to tell me. They’ll pass this way again in the spring, and I know they’ll make me smile.

Maybe they are the voice of the Great Mystery—or at least one voice—telling me the truth. Do not fear. We are one, all of us together … in one great Love.

If that’s all I ever know of this Mystery, it’s enough.

David L. Miller