Bird in Hand

I'm writing this from Colorado. (whoo-hoo!)

Every two years or so I travel to Colorado for work, staying there for a significant amount of time. I love it here. If you've never visited, you should. I'll leave it at that, because Colorado is only the context for my comments, not the subject.

Two years ago here in Colorado I was sitting about 15 feet up in a tree. I had some time during a training session where I was challenged to go reflect on my personal life and how I was doing; spiritually, emotionally, relationally...etc. There was a beautiful and climbable tree nearby and I figured that was just as nice a place to think about myself than any. I was wrong.

What happened was that I wound up just soaking in the natural world around me. I couldn't quite stay focused on personal inventory. I was too absorbed in the tree, the sound of the wind, the dappled heat of the sun. The front door of my mind was locked, and my (often odd and meandering) internal dialogue just wasn't happening. What I would discover later is that the lessons that day (and I think, most days) come better through the back door of our minds - informally and somewhat unexpectedly, like an old friend popping in for a visit. My lesson that day would come, rather oddly, through two birds - the first of which landed just above me in the tree.

Very Large Tangential Aside: I like the idea of back door paradigm change. I like the analogy and I like the mechanisms of the uncontested entrance. What I mean is that when we want to challenge someone else's thinking and viewpoint, with the intent of changing their minds about some subject, we who are not so shrewd (especially Christians) tend to approach people at the front door. By this I mean, we come formally and directly - on topic with our best argument forward.

The problem? Door to door salesmanship is dead. Growing up at my parent's house, if people came knocking on the front door, we put our guards up. It would invariably be someone selling something, or wanting something, or a Jehovah's Witness. (there's a whole 'nuther blog topic!) Our goal when we answered the door was generally to dismiss them. (if we answered the door!)

Friends came to the back door. It was never locked. It was just a screen door - not a huge formal front. When someone showed up at the back door, we weren't guarded or defensive - we were ourselves. Maybe you didn't have a home like this, but I did.

If you really want someone to change their thinking it will generally happen incrementally, and you need to sneak in the new view around back - through a joke, a story, a movie, a comment - some vehicle that carries within it a different world-view. Rather like a Trojan horse, but not in a "let's decimate the city" way. Something appealing which has, implicit within it, a viewpoint or moral or message.

Stories do that. Movies do that. I think many people don't look at what they watch on TV or in theaters and ask the questions: What is the moral? The point? The Worldview. The fact is that all stories contain one, in one fashion or another. And there is the back door teaching and shift. When you or I watch or listen to or hear something without discerning what it teaches us, we are unconsciously hearing, at least in part, the viewpoint and beliefs of another. They are making their argument through the backdoor, where we are not consciously holding up our viewpoint to theirs and evaluating. It's coming in, albeit by increments, uncontested.

I'm not saying this is bad necessarily. What I'm saying is that it's shrewd and effective - over the long term. What I do think is bad is when you or I never give thought to this effect. I'm more likely to actually think about the viewpoint of, let's say, a Jehovah's Witness if it's given to me in a creative and gentle manner, rather than through a front door assault which makes put up defenses. I DO want to hear another person's viewpoint and worldview, but I don't want it to be forced and awkward and assaultive. I also don't want someone sneaking it in with zero awareness on my part. That feels like brainwashing and manipulation.

I guess what I'm saying is for real communication and life change to happen in the realm of how we understand the world, we're overly guarded to directness and underly aware of subtlety. What I need to do if I want to communicate effectively is knock on the back door. I need to communicate in a way that doesn't raise walls on the hearer's part, but also doesn't skulk about not showing my intent.

Maybe I'm nuts, but this is what I would most like to do. How? That's the real issue. At any rate, back to the tree I was in (it relates)....

So, a small bird (a sparrow, if you care) landed just above me in some of the branches. The first thing that popped into my head was "wouldn't it be cool if that bird would just come and land on my finger or hand - just for a few moments." So, on a whim, I said, out loud "God, it would be so cool if a bird would land in my hand - just a silly little selfish request." And I held out my hand - in an act of faith.

What happened next was unremarkable: My arm got tired.

Or maybe the bird took off. I can't really remember. Oh well, guess the answer was 'no.' A few minutes later I went back to the session I was a part of, having enjoyed the stay in the tree, but with little in terms of front door reflection on my life and what I need to work on.

The back door lesson came later, and I didn't even realize it right away.

That afternoon I rode my bike to pick up a rental car - I couldn't get a ride. The crazy thing is that it was well over 100 degrees that afternoon and in Colorado where there's much less atmosphere between you and the sun, it's intense.

Riding down a small side road I saw a bird in the middle of the street - another sparrow. As I approached I expected her to fly away. She didn't. As I passed I got a closer look - this little bird was probably overheated. It sat almost motionless with its mouth agape, baking on the asphalt. I kept riding another few seconds when compassion got the better of me.

There was no traffic so I went back. The bird never protested or fled as I approached, I scooped it up and place it in the coolness of some dense bushes at the side of the road. She never struggled or seemed afraid. She just hopped off, almost gratefully, into the shadows.

Probably a full 60 seconds later I answered the knock at the back door of my mind. "Hi!" said the friendly visitor, "Just stopping by to ask you a few things real quick: Didn't you pray a little while ago that you'd hold a bird in your hand? Hmm. Well, what's it tell you about yourself and about God (to whom you made this request) that your desire to experience something you thought would be neat for you was answered, a little different than you expected, and was used to secure the benefit of another?"

There were more lessons I learned from that little back-door experience than hours of front door contemplation could have yielded. And those lessons stick.