Cactus Wren : Finding Water

This is a Cactus Wren. It is a quintessential desert bird, defined by its environment and utterly suited to its constraints. Water is imperative for all creatures, especially in the desert. The wren has an integrated approach. Rather than finding food and separately looking for water, these wrens derive the water they need from the fruit and insects they eat. Pursuing their “daily bread,” they simultaneously ingest needed water. They have found a successful, holistic approach, despite the challenges of their environment. The cactus wren has taken a continent’s harshest conditions and created a home in which to flourish. They belong here.

Appreciating the Bible requires understanding that it was given to a desert people. Where would a desert people envision a perfect, easy life? In a river-watered garden, the Garden of Eden. The famine that drives the Israelites into Egypt resulted from insufficient rain for crops and animals. Talmud prescribes the precise days and schedules for fasting, imploring God to send rain. And Pardes, a Hebrew word shared with the Persians and Greeks, is the “orchard” that in English we know as “paradise.” Even today, we read Torah, symbolized as water, at least every three days. Just as a longer interval without water would kill our physical bodies, so too our souls cannot go too long without Torah’s replenishment.

Why present this wren as the capstone of this Desert Drashot series? The Avian Rebbe teaches Jewish wisdom seen in the beauty of birds. Put another way: Godliness and Torah imbue everything, even when it’s unexpected or non-obvious. It just takes seeing. The desert is so spare, so elemental, that it starkly highlights how the wren finds water where it isn’t apparent. But even in our own more cluttered and noisy lives, these same lessons can be discerned. What we seek is already inside what we encounter. The Wren - living wholly - finds its water in grasshoppers and berries. We can find our water - our Torah - in all our daily interactions if we simply look with receptive eyes.