There are a number of statues around the World that have St Francis of Assisi crouching forward in a studious gaze of a little bird.  The image below deserves as much viewing time as he is giving this bluebird and I, like him am stopped momentarily to attempt to see what he sees. Here all activity ceases, both Francis’ and the birds as they engage in a reciprocal contemplative gaze.

Richard Rohr calls contemplation, 

“ ‘full-access knowing’—prerational, nonrational, rational, and transrational all at once… it refuses to be reductionistic.”

I have a blackbird that lives in my garden whom I call Birdy. I know it’s not the most original or creative name, but when I realised she was more than part of the flock who descend every morning to sort through the pickings of the chickens breakfast; sparrows, minor birds, pigeons (and the occasional rat hopping around) I felt a duty to name her.  It wasn’t that I was trying to own her, although if a wild creature becomes unusually friendly with a human it’s amazing how quickly we ‘think’ it belongs to us, as we try and make a pet out of it.

When she first made her home in our garden she would fly into the coop and share the breakfast grain with the chickens. But as her and I have become familiar she will often be waiting in the trees for me to come outside and will then fly behind me, landing a short, but safe distance away. Other times she waits down by the clothesline in full view of the kitchen window. I like to think she is watching and waiting for me. Lately she sits behind the chicken coop in the trees and after I have fed them makes herself known to me and I throw a small handful of grain just for her to feed off. I stay for a while, not standing more than a metre apart and we share a moment together. I feel the privilege of this encounter. I haven’t done anything in particular to deserve this special relationship, except I wonder if it's the fruit of my decision that whenever I have a brush with nature I will allow myself to stop what I’m doing, to be still, to gaze, be amazed and enjoy the gift that I am being offered. No explanation needed, just pure presence.

Rohr goes on to say, 

Contemplation is an exercise in keeping your heart and mind spaces open long enough for the mind to see other hidden material. As such, a certain amount of love for an object or another subject and for myself must precede any full knowing of it.

We in the West have done our share of reductionism. We bring things down to our level and then we conquer and divide. We have trawled through the world that we have been invited to care for, taken what we’ve wanted or needed to feather our own nests, and left the pickings for the hungry to consume. 

I’ve grown to realise, appreciate and love the unique and intricate relationship that I’m invited to share with creation which has become my first and best informer of the nature of all life. I’m trying to view it as though through the eyes of a child, as if every time was for the very first time. It seems to me that this is how St Francis of Assisi might be studying this little bluebird, and every bit of this image silently shouts at me to do the same.