House Finch : How Did I Miss That?

This is a House Finch. He’s one of the most common birds in this area, and yet in over a year and a half of offering these photographs, this is the first time I’ve considered him. I’m not sure why that is. Being oblivious often defies diagnosis. Perhaps his very frequency has blinded me to seeing him. Perhaps I’ve overlooked him - individually - as being one amongst his large flock. Or perhaps I’d emphasized blinkered sight at the expense of careful listening. This morning, though, this early visitor, perched by himself, sang his heart out. And my attention - long overdue - was drawn to this lovely bird, giving him his belated due.

Our tradition teaches us to focus our awareness. Attentive time is the only finite resource we possess. Everything else can be replenished should it diminish. Investing our time - not spending it - is the most valuable decision we can make. Every aspect of our lives, from the prescribed times of daily prayer to the festivals of the year and the cycles of shemitah and Jubilee are intended to give us focal points. Structure, rituals, and social conventions are much more than random evolutionary developments; the Sages explicitly developed these well-crafted tools designed to heighten our intentional participation in communal life.

So much of daily life keeps us from living with awareness. Even the phrase, “daily life,” is used euphemistically for “that which isn’t special.” The claims of our livelihood, of our family, of our community make demands on our time, constituting the overhead of just living life. Our charge then is to utilize a framework into which all of these seemingly mundane “intrusions“ become instead meaningful parts of our lives’ tapestry. Beauty - frequent, plentiful, unobtrusive - then infuses our days. Following our Sages’ prescriptions, we start to see the Finch - and the purpose of our own lives.