The Wisdom of the Songbird

I find myself increasingly drifting downstream, and the world around me falls away as greater vistas slowly come into view. The warnings of the news reports thunder from the screen, but it seems each new warning is just a reflection of the one before it. Nothing has changed. In a hundred years, a thousand years, ten thousand years--nothing has changed. Multitudes bow before their gods, then pick up the blessed sword for holy slaughter. Rich men get richer, and with every dollar, more suspicious of their fellow man, the hunger gnawing deeper. Millions move about in the chains of futility, and yet their movement grows quicker. Empires rise up, gobbling up those smaller nations. And then the cancer of discontent spreads until the old order dissolves into chaos. The year is 2006 but is might as well be 2006 B.C. The only difference is the speed with which each generation marches onward triumphantly to the grave. The monuments to our collective idiocy have grown larger, and have been erected in far less time. And still, it is all incomprehensible to me. Perhaps I'm the idiot, the fool off to the side scratching his head. The world calls me a fool because I am content to be off to the side, content to live my life free of the virus of worldliness. I find my strength in my foolishness. If I were to be embraced by the world, then I would know that I have surely failed. So why then do I write these words? Because I have faith that there are other fools out there--those who wear the smile of the mountains. And so the songbird outside my window continues his song. He has no knowledge of who is in power, of what war is being fought or why. He does not even know the proper name of God. And yet he sings against the twilight. I deem him wise. To see the moment in eternity, and eternity in the moment! The gift of heaven's blue eyes!