The Reset Button
This story appears in M/U’s 2020 spiritual writing anthology, Spiritus Oppidum, Vol. 1. To read this alongside the other brilliant pieces included in the collection, you can obtain paperback and PDF copies in our store, with Kindle versions available on Amazon.
We were on our way home after packing up my older daughter’s apartment, and it had been a tiring few days. My cell phone rang and I hit the telephone button on my steering wheel to allow the call to come through the speaker. I was driving the streets of New York City and needed concentration. The roads were comparatively empty due to the Coronavirus, yet it was still difficult to manage construction obstacles, traffic lights and masked pedestrians who walked and rode their bicycles in the Flatiron district. I pulled up to a traffic light and listened. As I tuned in to her voice, the city faded away. The six years that my oldest had spent here disappeared behind us as the light turned green and we drove toward our unknown future.
“Mom! You aren’t going to believe what I just saw!” My younger daughter’s excitement oozed through the Bluetooth. She had developed the habit of reading the most sacred book of all each morning. She never ended a day without feeling she had something...a word, or thought or a sign to encourage herself and those around her. “I’m out walking. A golden eagle just landed on a tree branch directly in front of me. Then, it swooped down so close that I could not only see, but sense, its glorious power.” Her awe was palpable, and I caught the wonder and humility in her words. Just then a pigeon rose up from the pavement and flew over my car. I laughed to myself as a horn beeped behind me, letting me know I had waited a second too long to press the gas pedal after the light turned green. She got a golden eagle, but all I got was a pigeon. Talk about humility.
We hung up and I began the four-hour drive home to New Hampshire. I would have a child at home for a while. An independent adult child. What a surprise! I shifted my eyes and caught her profile and for a moment she was an elementary age girl again. I could see her fragile little face in my mind’s eye, and marvelled at the strong, accomplished business woman beside me. Musing as I sped along, I thought back to my own growth through the years, and how even the smallest little miracles along the way helped heal me after the tragic loss of my parents before the age of 4 years old.
There is a special place in my heart for pigeons, because when I was in 4th grade one was spotted on the grass outside our classroom. I felt a connection to the injured homing pigeon. When I was chosen by my favorite teacher to help return the bird to its owner, via a ride in her car to the airport, I surely was convinced I was the luckiest girl in the whole wide world.
Much later, another homing pigeon entered my life. I was married with children and living on a dead end road in a rural town in New England. A homing pigeon landed on our carriage house roof one summer and stayed a few days before flying off. “Our” homing pigeon used our house as a resting spot.
My childhood experience came back to me, and I again felt a connection to the bird, even though pigeons had lost their popularity and were often thought of as unsanitary “rats with wings.” They are actually very clean animals and there is very little evidence of them spreading disease, even in big cities. Pigeons and humans have lived in close proximity for thousands of years. “One of the earliest tame pigeons belonged to the Greek poet Anacreon, who lived more than 2000 years ago. In a poem, describing the bird’s flight as a messenger carrying a love-letter to the poet’s lover, we read that, at home, it drank from his cup, ate from his hand, flew around the house and slept on his lyre.”, according to Dr. Jean Hansell in The Pigeon in History. She goes on to say, “In later centuries pigeons played an important role in Western Europe, particularly during both World Wars. In the British Intelligence Service they were used in World War 1 as a method of maintaining contact with sympathisers and resistance movements in enemy-occupied territory. In one method used, batches of pigeons, each with its own body-harness and parachute, were jettisoned from an aeroplane and released at intervals by a clockwork mechanism. On landing, risks to the birds were considerable and while many perished, several returned with essential messages.”
One year, I saw my little friend walking dejectedly up our driveway. It did not take long for me to understand that he was injured, and, feeling quite familial at this point, I determined we would care for him. Our gently used dog crate was dragged from storage, cleaned and readied for “Freddie.” I read the band tag on his tiny leg and began my research. While Freddie was healing, we searched for his owner, with no luck. The series of letters and numbers on his tag were not traceable. A website assured us to go ahead and let the bird fly away after he was healed, and no worries, he would find his way home.
Every week or so we would let Freddie out of the cage inside our pool house. He tried to flap his wings, but he was not able to fly. I placed a call to the local Ecotarium, who agreed to take our dear Freddie and continue his care. On that day, we let him loose in the pool house one more time. He flew up to the rafters! We were thrilled! Opening the door, we watched him stretch his healed wings, and with a prayer, we wished him a safe journey home with a long retirement.
Thinking about my pigeon-laden past, it began to make sense that I had seen one of those instead of a golden eagle. Sure, pigeons were out of style, but I knew they were part of the dove family, and doves were still pretty popular...especially mourning doves with their spectacular plumage that changes with the light, their signature blue ring and their mourning song that somehow never fails to cheer us up with its pure and clear “coo”.
Humbling ourselves is out of fashion in today’s world, too, and no longer appears to hold the value that it held in years past. One of our early church fathers John Chrysostom (born in Antioch in 347) once remarked that “...humility is the root, mother, nurse, foundation, and bond of all virtue.” Was God trying to tell me something through the pigeon, a/k/a dove? Was humility somehow related to the Coronavirus pandemic? According to C. S. Lewis, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” Could God be hitting the “Reset Button” in hopes that His children would humble themselves once again?
After returning home, I researched more deeply and was not very surprised to find that a pigeon, as a spiritual animal, represents love. Pigeons also represent sacrifice. Love and sacrifice. It turns out that pigeons used to be exchanged as gifts by the upper class in Rome and elsewhere. The Romans cared for them so much that they built space into their homes for their family pigeons. Pigeons soon multiplied and became less exclusive. Oftentimes, the more we get of something, the less appeal it holds for us. We lose sight of its value.
I’m wondering if we have possibly rejected or distorted the good news of the Gospel because of its availability...and in so doing thrown away or put to the side the virtuous teachings that have been “tried and true” through the generations. Chrysostom spent two years committing the bible to memory. For two years he barely slept, standing on his feet to complete his worthy goal. It occurs to me that many of us have been given the gift of time at home with our families. And it looks like there is more to come. Time for worthy goals. Time for new beginnings.
Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”Let’s hit the Reset Button. Dig deep into the things that are good, and noble, and honest and praiseworthy. Try on love and sacrifice. Put others before ourselves. Humility is the way forward.
And clean living has its merits. Ask any pigeon.