April, 2024
During a recent on-line yoga class, the teacher asked us to lay silently on our mats and listen to our inner voices. I find it hard to not be distracted at times like this. My inner voice can be a very busy voice at times. I’m not sure I want to hear it telling me that the laundry needs to be put in the dryer or that the electric bill is due or the front flower bed needs to be raked. For a few seconds, I can put all of this away; but then, it creeps back in.
At times like this, I prefer to listen to the quiet sounds around me. And this morning, the house was very silent except for the creaking of the heating pipes as the water moved through its system. Like so many mornings lately, it has been cold, and so I am thankful for that reassuring clinking sound that means heat is on its way. Somewhere, I am sure there is an inner voice speaking truths, but it is hard to hear it through the layers of life and duty that surround it.
Outside, the rain is tapping with a steady drip, drip, drip that sounds almost like the tapping of a soft drum. In the distance, the cawing of a crow signals as it sails on by. There are a lot of negative associations with the crow family. Some people think of them as harbingers of death. And who cannot think of that famous Raven memorialized by Poe…. Never more. But on this rainy spring morning, as I was lying on my mat listening to the crows, I was thinking about the saying “As the Crow Flies.” It turns out that there are a lot of different theories about the origin of the phrase. Over a century ago, Dickens used the term “straight as the crow flies” in his novel Oliver Twist so maybe his astute readers passed on the phrase. Maybe… Another theory is that back in the Viking days, a crow would be released from the crow’s nest in hopes that it would direct the sailors towards land. However, zoologist Luis Villazon points out that crows don’t necessarily fly in straight lines. So, there’s that too.
Who knows where the term came from, and does it really matter? All I do know is that I am thankful for the sound of crows outside my bedroom window. It is Mother Nature’s way of letting us know that she is never very far away no matter where we are. The wisdom of the crows tells us that we don’t always have to fly in the straight line that is expected. We are free to make our own unique pattern upon the earth, if we will only listen.
