Every year in mid-August I notice a repeated pattern in nature—the hummingbirds that flitted in and out to drink from the feeder during summer begin to devour the syrup. They sit on the ledge, sipping, sipping, sipping, growing fatter every day until they double in size. By the fourth week of September the tiny birds depart, having gained enough weight to sustain them in making a thousand or more mile flight southward, home for the winter.
The migratory journey of birds, butterflies, whales, caribou, and other creatures has fascinated me for years. I marvel at how they know what they must do to prepare well in order to not die along the way from hunger or from predators. How do they recognize it’s time to travel? How is it they do not get lost on the way? In spring and autumn I often go to the library to learn more about this astounding ability. Scientists continue to discover what prompts and guides the journey of migration. Some creatures, birds, fish, and insects rely on inborn instinct and inherited genetic memory, and some are also guided by what they’ve learned in their youth from adults if they made made the previous journey with them.
I see in all of this a metaphor for the human journey of spiritual growth. While non-humans listen and respond to an inner urge to go where it’s safe and nourishing, we humans also have an inner Messenger guiding, encouraging, and teaching us when it is time to leave behind and move onward. Our deepest self contains the resolute, unwavering, and steadfast instinct for Home. Our migratory route is not a physical one, but that of the soul, an invisible movement—an orientation toward where we know our truest Home of Peace is to be found. Like nature’s migratory pilgrims, we sense instinctually that we are to follow the longing in our heart to find an ever more complete union with the Holy One. It is the message of St. Augustine’s: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”
The seasonal paths of the heart that we humans travel are all as real as a flock of Sandhill cranes or an airborne stream of monarch butterflies on their annual migrations. They teach about impermanence and the necessity of inward listening to the Spirit’s pulse urging me toward inner peace. All of life consists of impermanence but some part of my human spirit wants the current season of satisfaction to last forever. Mary Pipher knows better and writes: “Everything is process and in process. We can hold on to nothing.” (Ouch)
Steven Charleston sums up the migratory spirit inherent in us at the end of his book, Spirit Wheel: “So many questions and so many mysteries in the long migration we see before us. Is it a place of shadows or light? I do not know, for I am no prophet. I am just an old man who believes in what his own lifetime of experience and learning has taught him: there is a Spirit who loves creation without exceptions and who will be there when needed if only we make room in our hearts to receive that love.”
Life does not stand still, no matter how much I demand it to do so. When I pause to pay close attention to the Spirit’s persistent nudge, a pervasive peace wings it way inside of myself and affects the world around me. It is then that I move freely onward, trusting I will continually find the way to Home in the migratory seasons of my lifetime.
Abundant peace,
Joyce Rupp
