Northern Cardinal : Molting Beauty

Northern Cardinal

This is a Northern Cardinal.  You might well be taken aback seeing her.  It’s not often we see a bird’s ear.  It’s rare we see a bird’s scalp.  Seeing a bird deprived of its feathers this way, you might find it off-putting.  Even repellent.  But it’s currently late summer, after breeding season.  This bird - this stunningly beautiful bird - is molting.  This is the period when she can afford the physiological stress of replacing worn feathers with new ones.  And so study closely.  Her head is largely bare.  Her body shows some wear.  Go all the way to the tip of her tail, and see the ragged edges reflecting a year’s hard service.  This marvelous process she is undergoing will restore her feathers to an enlivened condition, whole and ready.

This is the period in the Hebrew calendar when we look back at the concluding year and look forward to how the impending year should be different.  Traditionally we engage in three activities.  We increase our study and prayer, deepening our ties with God.  We give more charity, intended to restore the world’s righteous balance between the haves and have-nots.  And we make amends with the people with whom we’re in relationship.  Each of these three requires work.  Each of these three requires seeing things in a new way.  And each of these three can be unsettling, even painful.  But remember, too, that each is intended to be restorative, to put our lives back on track, to reposition us to thrive in the upcoming year.

This is arguably the most vital time of the year.  It is the world’s birthday, new and celebratory.  But we are not commanded to reinvent ourselves.  Instead, we are taught to restore what was there previously.  The assumption of our fundamental nature and relationships is that they are healthy and vibrant.  This is a period of restoration and repair.  Psychologically it is far less daunting to say that we “merely” have to return to where we were rather than that we have to become something new.  Can it be stressful to shed bad habits and misguided aspects of our nature?  Absolutely.  But as we do so, we come back - guided lovingly - to a healthy and enlivened state.  May we, like the Cardinal, find beauty as we spiritually molt.

Be Grounded.  Fly High.