On a sunny afternoon a couple of weeks ago, as I sat reading on the front patio, I suddenly was aware of a beautiful song coming from an unseen bird in my front yard.
The song was so bright, pleasant and amazingly strong, I wanted to learn its source. Yet the bird was nowhere to be seen. So I moved closer to the largest tree in my yard and studied it carefully. Finally, I spotted it. There, sitting alone on a high branch, a tiny thing, almost invisible with its brown feathers and fawn-colored underbelly, it sat, happily singing its song.
She, I think from her lack of color, had several verses to her song, four or five I believe. Some were of two syllables, some three, others a rat-tat-tat-tat. To whom was she calling, I wondered, what did her song mean?
Then my small black poodle heard barking in the distance. She answered it instantly. I knew what my dog’s bark meant. It meant hello. For even though her barking may sound hostile at first, she always wants to say hello, wants any human or dog passing or in our yard to notice her and say hello.
Earlier that afternoon, as I was backing up in the Food Pyramid parking lot, preparing to drive home, a man called to me from a couple of dozen yards away. I had never seen him before. I waited and he came to my window, then said, “I wanted to ask you how you feel about that hope-change thing you voted for.” There is an “Obama ’08” sticker still on the trunk of my car.
Before I could reply, he turned and walked away.
I was mildly irritated and thought, somewhat contemptuously on the way home, that whatever I voted for, he was not it. But after I heard the bird’s lovely song, heard my dog and knew her bark was friendly, I wondered whether that man, too, may have been calling out to me just to say hello, in his vaguely hostile way.
I have read many times that one of the reasons religion is found in all cultures is because man does not want to feel alone in the universe, wants desperately to believe that, even when alone, we are not alone. We call out in our prayers. All creatures call out. Sometimes the call is friendly, yet even when it is unfriendly, is it not still a call?
Is it Buddhists who believe that our human consciousness is clouded with too many thoughts, too many anxieties, too many desires, and that only when we are still can we be in touch with the universe? I am not a student of Buddhism, yet maybe they have a point.
I write this column, “A Progressive’s Point of View,” every other week. I know that, at 70, most of the progressive causes I believe are so important would not affect my life greatly, even if adopted. I know that most of the conservative policies I oppose will not affect me greatly, either. Yet I call out, to progressives and conservatives alike.
I try to keep my call friendly. Not all the letters written in response are friendly, yet I look forward to them, every other Monday.
All of us, Democrats, Republicans, birds and dogs, share our tiny planet together. Wouldn’t it be better if, like the bird’s lovely song that sunny afternoon, all our calls were friendly?
(Henderson is chairman of Kay County, OK, Democrats.)