The squirrels are freaking out. The worms are freaking out. The birds are freaking out especially. It’s 10 AM. These are the late birds. I’ve been taught all my life to have no sympathy for these birds, but truthfully, I have sympathy for all God’s creatures. I’ve seen more cardinals this last month in Texas, than I have in my entire childhood in Ohio. Being the state bird, Ohio cardinals must think of themselves as celebrities, hiding from the common people with their pointing fingers and their flashing camera-- in Texas they're just like any other bird.
I wiped my glasses off on my shirt, as I did every morning. Being that this morning, I was in the bright Texas sun, it was time to reckon with the fact that over the years my glasses had developed a yellowed film through which I was always viewing the world, dimly. Pulling my shirt up close to my naked eyes, the fibers appear in a stellar high definition. (If only the yellowed film would disintegrate between the fibers, like how a nightmare ends with skin between the fingers.) I have to live with these lenses for a little longer, until my health insurance is renewed upon enrollment at the University of North Carolina. Just a matter of time. For now, I navigate a seemingly featureless ocean (desert?) hoping to see enough of the fine texture of things to keep my head above water.
If you're going to offer a lamb to the slaughter, you have to offer your best. Jesus healed the blind for a reason.
The picture window in my new Carolina house contains all the wonders and horrors of nature. I’ll set my camera up on a tripod, so that I can unobtrusively capture as much of it as possible. The lenses on my camera are cleaner than the ones covering my eyes. This will have to do for now. My camera captures only carolina’s best: blue jays, the carolina wren, tufted titmouse, pileated woodpecker, and that famous red cardinal. However, it is the female cardinal with a bright orange beak that really catches my camera's eye.
I would be lying however, if I let on that I wasn't anxious to get my
glasses replaced soon, for it is the Lord that said "Do not offer the
blind, the injured or the maimed, or anything with warts or festering or
running sores. Do not place any of these on the altar as an offering
made to the Lord by fire." (Leviticus 22:22). If you're going to offer a lamb to the
slaughter, you have to offer your best. Jesus healed the blind for a
reason. A greater purpose. Graduate school probably.
