Cardinal God

It’s the middle of February and it seems that absolutely everything once colorful is now an unwelcoming shade of gray. The streets are gray and the cars are gray-sprayed with salt, and all the trees and fences and sky are gray, too. Instead of getting ready for dinner with friends like I was supposed to, I stared out my gray window at the gray earth before me. Ice and snow cover the rooftop and garden of the house next to my three-story apartment and I squinted my eyes to decipher if the darker gray is tree branch or streetlight. My gloomy mood was verging on Eeyore-esque, as I scowled at the scene.

My eye caught something moving. He sat on the fence three floors down, head moving in twitches. It was a bright red, beautiful cardinal. I felt my heart swell. The tiny dot of red against the gray atop gray atop gray made my mood lift slightly.

And then, a moment later, the cardinal was gone. My eyes scanned for movement. Another bird, a gray with muted orange-bellied robin ruffled its wings further down the fence, relocated by the nasty cardinal. And I scowled again.

A few years ago my sister decided she was going to be a bird watcher. There’s some fancy word for it, and that, I figured, was the only interesting part. She’d call me, excited, “I was driving down the interstate and saw this beautiful bird flying!”
“What type of bird was it?”
“I couldn’t tell. It was really far away, and I was driving, so it wasn’t safe for me to try to get a better look.”
Okaaay. A ways to go before she’s an ornithologist.
After a few bird sightings she determined that it was a difficult hobby to pursue because you never really know when you’re right. Except for the easy ones like robins, cardinals and sparrows. Which, we decided, were good enough.

I wonder if God is a birdwatcher like my sister. “Who was that?” some heavenly being will ask. And God replies, “I’m not sure. It was either Susanna or Sarah. I couldn’t get a good look.”

My life feels like this winter sometimes: cold and gray and seemingly never-ending. I’m unable to distinguish a bad moment from an entirely bad day, and I feel like the unwelcome robin with a cardinal flitting me away. Maybe on gray February days God is the cardinal: beautiful, but in a bad and territorial mood. The insecure robin in me is easily transplanted, wondering when the spring branches and glaring sunlight will hide me.

Or perhaps God is watching from apartment three-o-nine with his eyes on the cardinals and robins and sparrows with an ever-swelling heart.