Sandhill Cranes

They dropped out of a high place where the naked eye cannot see. Even aided by binoculars my eyes couldn’t tell for sure if I was actually seeing them. I don’t often scan for that which is completely outside my field of vision, waiting for it to become visible. But my eyes were straining into the wild blue yonder because I knew they were coming. I was there with birders who go regularly to White Water Draw in Arizona to be astonished by the Sandhill Cranes. Walking the boardwalk through the marsh we awaited their coming and breathlessly anticipated the miracle to occur again, and we were not disappointed.

They kept coming and coming and they dazzled by their numbers. The spectacle began with thousands of altitudinous dots, not recognizable as birds, and it was difficult to believe each speck could actually be a large bird. They weigh between 6-15 pounds and have a wingspan of 5-7 feet. Breathlessly I watched and sure enough layer after layer glided into the marsh with avian mastery and landed in small family groups.

In fact this miracle has been occurring for an unequivocal 2.5 million years. Yes, in Montana, Ohio and Florida these birds have been making their incredible journeys around the Northern Hemisphere longer than any bird alive today, one and a half times longer than any living species. Some individuals in the group I was watching had migrated from as far away as Alaska and extreme Northeastern Siberia riding the thermal air currents at altitudes occupied by jets. (“Ladies and Gentlemen we have reached 30,000 feet and you may move about the cabin freely but please keep your seatbelt fastened and your shoes on while you are seated because we may fly past a group of Sandhill Cranes and it will knock your socks off.”)

I was taken by the exquisite precision with which they mastered that which is only theirs to do. The extravagant heights to which they soar and the unbelievable distances they fly are simply what they do in social groups. Mated for life they live in crane majesty completely unselfconscious but not without effort. They answer their highest calling trumpeting through the skies being cranes together. They seem to have direct contact with the animating force and purpose that lives within all things. How is it they have such ready access to their own true nature? What sets them ablaze with life to live out their winged perfection for millions of years?

A more personal question confronted me from the gray-blue heaven into which I gazed that day, “What is it you, in your humanity, are called to do that matches the exquisite calling of the Sandhill Crane?”

I have pondered this question for a year resisting the obvious answer.  Just last night the words describing it flew off the page of a book I was reading.  [God] “…seems to extend the invitation to follow the path of ‘pure flame,’ as the wick and tallow of our human lives are set ablaze in love to release the imperishable fragrance of our own true selfhood. Not to flinch from the ‘holocaust of becoming’ constitutes both the great challenge and the great possibility of”… [life].*

Those cranes fling themselves into the holocaust of migration braving the cold, the distance and the heights. Scientists who follow radio marked migratory individuals with identifications like “crane 117252” report their feathers are worn and discolored from the trials of long flights. They are birds that follow the pure flame of their instinct into the becoming, the challenge and the possibility of being fully CRANE!

What am I called to do and be that matches the calling of the crane? My true nature is consciousness and it is my human instinct to be conscious. In 2014 dare I fling myself into the pure flame of Becoming? What challenges and possibilities await me on such a formidable inward migration?

I am left with a prayer:

Dearest, set me ablaze in love to release the imperishable fragrance of my own true selfhood, every day.  Amen.

* Cynthia Bourgeault, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three: Discovering the Radical Truth at the Heart of Christianity, p.171.

Copyright © 2014 Gayle Madison