Last week, I set up a makeshift birdfeeder. Deep snow and ice came suddenly. I found myself thinking, what would Margaret do? Margaret is Margaret Rinkl, the New York Times columnist and author of The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year.
In The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, she observes her backyard, the ebbs, flows, transformations, potential, and loss. Turns out backyards contain multitudes when attention is given.
My birdfeeder is a tin cookie box lid in a plant stand outside my window near a bare winter bush. I’ve spent much time watching the birds, breaking the ice, refreshing the bird seed, and finding new places around our home to offer nourishment and abundance to the wildlife in this deep winter freeze.
Instincts keep them alive. The instincts are to find food, go slow, conserve energy in the cold, and even share. The chickadees, finches, sparrows, woodpeckers, and robins share my bird seed. I haven’t seen one bird trying to claim the birdfeeder. In contrast to hummingbirds in the summer, who aggressively claim the sweetened water I mix up.
in·stinct
noun
plural noun: instincts
an innate, typically fixed pattern of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuli.: "birds have an instinct to build nests" or "maternal instincts."
Backyard birds rely on instincts. Humans, of course, use our instincts for survival. Fight, flight, or freeze in life or death situations is one human instinctual impulse. We are creatures of instincts, but human intuition, which feels like a close cousin to instincts, is asking for my attention in this season of my life.
When I’m not watching the birds out my window, I’m spending a lot of time being a human in the middle of breast cancer treatment, going to doctor’s appointments, making sense of bills and insurance statements, and navigating the emotional, spiritual, and physical questions that come with this unexpected journey. I’m working with a surprising amount of intuition. Many years ago, a mentor told me intuition is really two questions: What do I know, and what will I do about what I know?
in·tu·i·tion
noun
noun: intuition
the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.: "we shall allow our intuition to guide us".
Just as the birds trust their instincts for survival, I’m trusting my and my medical team's intuition. I’ve listened to my knowing at each step of this journey, and my intelligent female doctors are doing the same. My doctors are tuning into what they know from years of experience and expertise and, at each critical juncture, are taking decisive, intelligent, evidence-based action while considering their intuition. I am grateful.
I’ve observed predictable patterns from the birds outside my window as they let their instincts guide them through winter survival. They are always looking for hungry predators that might want them for lunch. They share and trust that the abundance of seeds and millet here today will be enough for all. More birds and different varieties come every day, and all are welcome.
The predictable pattern of intuition has been intentional pauses, answering the question, “What do I know here.” Followed by purposeful action based on history, knowledge, and a Divine whisper. Intuition without action is just an idea.
With every intuitive sense, decisions have been made. The knowing, the proving right, comes later. In my journey so far, every intuitive decision has been proven right. Intuition begets intuition. I find myself more open to my own intuition as I continue to see the power “of understanding without conscious reasoning.”
I’m so thankful for intelligent, wise women who listen to their intuition and who are teaching me to listen to my intuition, too.
A Blessing for Intuition
May you know what you know. In the crush of information, the pressure of deadlines, and a culture of conformity, may you pause to listen to the Divine, still small voice and your voice of knowing. May you make room in your mind, heart, and soul to know what you know and act confidently upon that understanding. May the divine gift of intuition and instincts guide you.
Pause this week with the two intuition questions:
What do you know?
What are you going to do with what you know?
I loved (love, loved!) The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Rinkl. I’ve chosen just a few of my favorite passages from her book to use for reflection. Read each passage slowly, and notice if one seems to poke at your intuition or lights a new flame of an idea. Go for a walk with those words and see what new creative idea unfolds.
“Immersing myself in the natural world of my own backyard—or the nearby parks and greenways, or the woods surrounding our friends’ cabin on the Cumberland Plateau—is the way I cope with whatever I think I cannot bear.”
-Margaret Rinkl
“I need to remember that the earth, fragile as it is, remains heartbreakingly beautiful. I need to give my attention to a realm that is indifferent to fretful human mutterings and naked human anger, a world unaware of the hatred and distrust taking over the news.”
-Margaret Rinkl
“We are creatures built for joy. At the very saddest funerals, we can hear a funny story about our lost beloved, and, God help us, we laugh. We can stagger out of an appointment where a person in a white coat has given us the news we think we cannot bear to hear, and still we smile at the baby in the checkout line clapping her chubby hands at the balloons by the cash register or kicking her feet in pleasure at the sight of a stranger’s smile. This is who we are. The very best of who we are.”
Margaret Rinkl
“The world will always be beautiful to those who look for beauty. Throats will always catch when the fleeing clouds part fleetingly and the golden moon flashes into existence and then winks out again. Tears will always spring up at the wood thrush singing through the echoing trees, at the wild geese crying as they fly. A soul touched by the scent of turned soil or sun-warmed grass, a spirit moved by crickets singing in the grass, will spend a lifetime surrounded by wonder.”
-Margaret Rinkl
“Always I find more answers in a forest than I find in my own hot attic of a mind. Scientists have made studies of the walking brain, and the results are dumbfounding. Given a test that measures creativity, college students sitting at a table produced unremarkable results. But when scientists put them on a treadmill, or sent them for a walk around campus, their brains lit up like the night sky. The students who walked produced 60 percent more original ideas than the students who were seated.”
-Margaret Rinkl
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