Born Again (and again)

     The phenomenon of creation, whether of an individual bee, bird, or human being should take our breath away. Each happens in a community, one in a hive, one in a nest, and one in a family, however configured.

     Depending on how it is fed, the bee can become a worker that lives a few weeks or months, or a queen that lives three to four years. 

     Depending on the species, the bird will be shell bound for two to three weeks, then nest bound for two to three weeks, totally dependent for food. Finally, the moment arrives when the fledging is pushed out of the nest. The choice is all too simple: fall and be killed, or begin to fly and become reborn into sky.
The Indian sage Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) once wrote, “In Sanskrit, the bird has been called the twice-born,” once to life, once to sky.

     It takes much longer for human beings to learn how to fly, which is to say to be reborn because it takes a long time to become truly and deeply human. A. Powell Davies said that the purpose of life is to grow a soul, that irreducible essence of our unique humanity. To speak of salvation is to speak of wholeness, a destination in this lifetime, rather than any possibility in an afterlife. To speak of salvation is to speak of possibility, and moving toward that possibility, of becoming day by day more truly yourself.

     “Human being” is preceded by “human becoming.” Each of us is a wonderful mosaic of gifts and limitations that will never be repeated again in creation.

     You and I are not one in a million, we are one in all that has been and will ever be. The uniqueness of a snowflake is nothing compared to you. And your “becoming” is an open-ended process that is ongoing in every age and stage of your life. So we are not once-born or twice born, we are born again and again. And as Carl Sandburg wrote, we ask throughout our life, “where to, what next.”

Photo Credit: Red Tailed Hawk and Chicks by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash