They say that you can’t go home again. But thank goodness that the natural world pays no heed to such adages. Everything on my acreage testifies to the glorious return of birds and plants. They’ve come home again–the rose-breasted grosbeaks, the gold finches, the honeysuckle and wild raspberries, and the orioles. Oh, the orioles!
I set out my first bowl of grape jelly the last week of April and waited. Would they remember where the good stuff was? Would they come home to the faithful supply of grape jelly? Would they like the new feeder made especially for them? Would they return?
Yes. Within a week, a slew of orioles swooped onto and off of our deck. It was a veritable landing strip with orioles hovering, waiting to land. After landing, they ravaged the small bowl of jelly and relished the new feeder with its multiple-oriole capacity. They came home with a tangerine flourish.
There is a quiet assurance in the return we see in the natural world. Here, you can come home again. Here, perennialism is golden. Here, your reappearance is both ordinary and extraordinary, your homecoming wishfully anticipated.
In a world in which many things–and people–never return, there’s something particularly sacred about all this reemerging and reblooming and restoring. Sacred and hopeful. Every great story is founded on this archetype of leaving and returning (with a whole lot of searching and overcoming challenges in between). No matter how dark the journey may seem, how long the metaphorical–or literal–winter is, the hero returns in the end. Just as we wait expectantly for the return of our prize clematis, we wait expectantly for the hero’s return. Then, there is that moment when all seems right with the world. It may be just a moment–one brief but blessed stay against the confusion and despair of the world–but there it is, nonetheless.
Danish author Isak Dinesen wrote:
Nobody has seen the trekking birds take their way towards such warmer spheres as do not exist, or rivers break their course through rocks and plains to run into an ocean which is not to be found. For God does not create a longing or a hope without having a fulfilling reality ready for them.
This is it exactly: God does not create a longing or a hope without the assurance of a fulfilling reality ready and waiting. Herein lies the miracle of return in the natural world: that the long migration, the intervening seasons and unnatural intrusions finally culminate in the return to a fulfilling reality.
In this postmodern age, it’s often risky to talk about heaven as that fulfilling reality. It may be risky because there are some who’ll argue this is just foolish, wishful thinking. They’ll explain that we’ll return to the earth, period. That, they’ll assert, is our only reality. Others may cast us lovingly aside as sentimental, needy folks who must have something to long and hope for, something to keep us on the straight and narrow. Either way, if you talk of heaven, you may find that some respond cynically and some condescendingly.
Still, as the orioles’ almost-fluorescent orange backs flash through the leafed-out trees, I can’t help but think that this is one of God’s excellent ways to create a longing for a more fulfilling reality. And as these orioles return year after year, I can’t help but think that this is God’s assurance that there is, indeed, a fulfilling reality ready and waiting for us.
Undoubtedly, some will consider me a Pollyanna with all this talk of bird-watching and heaven. So be it. When I lose my way, when I find myself slogging about in perpetual winter, and when I long for something better, I’ll rest in the assurance that my journey will not end in a warmer place or in an ocean that doesn’t exist. No, I’ll find fulfillment in the place I was intended to be.
