Last Tuesday, March 2, once I had Mom settled back in her room after her shower, I decided to go outside and meditate for 20 minutes. It was cold. 30 degrees with a light wind that felt like 19. But the moon hadn’t risen yet, the sky was completely clear and the stars were incredible, as they are often here. I didn’t hesitate. Something was calling me to solitude and stars.
So I dragged my little $17 Ollie’s chair into the backyard, sat down, slouched back and nestled into my down jacket. I tapped start on the Insight Timer app on my phone and the Sakya bell chimed once softly.
Peace, child of God.
Inhale love. Exhale peace.
For five minutes or so, I repeated these words that calm and comfort me slowly over and over. The Big Dipper was in the east, fairly high up in the sky. Orion was mighty and unmistakable over my right shoulder.
Inhale love. Exhale peace.
It was so quiet. Just my breaths, one into another into another. Then I heard something in the southern sky. Birds in flight. Not the honk of geese. This flight call was softer, reminding me of woodwind instruments. These were swans migrating north at night, as most birds do, to elude predators and take advantage of less turbulent air.
Then they appeared. A wide, silvery white V made visible in the dark sky only by the reflection of the few city lights that surround us. They moved with migratory purpose yet undulated ever so slightly and beautifully as if to dance.
It looked like 30 to 40 swans, flying high up in the sky, long necks stretched out and steady as their white wings beat against the night air. Tundra swans on their way to far northern Canada to breed.
They flew first toward me, then directly over me, then off to the north through Perseus and Cassiopeia. Then out of my night vision. It might have taken a little over a minute. That’s all.
As I watched them slowly vanish in unison into the north, I looked straight up into the night sky and said, “Thank you, God. Thank you for this gift.”
I slouched back into my chair, grateful for and amazed by what I had just been given. I breathed in two lungs full of air more easily than I have in years, maybe ever. My chest filled with the air of pure delight.
It was then I knew. God is here.
God is always here. But I felt God’s presence in a way I never had before. I felt God’s perfect order and balance in the rhythm of the swan’s wings as they navigated their instinctual path of migration under the stars.
I let myself feel safe in God as I breathed—fully and expansively—and let go of any fear I had about things that go bump in the night. God is here.
Had I hesitated, become distracted or shuddered at the temperature and stayed in, I would have missed this gift. But thankfully, I needed some air after my nightly ritual with Mom that is at once loving, very sad and a chore. I thought at the least, I could get in 20 minutes of stargazing. I got so much more.
I’ve come to believe that the Holy Spirit guides us to do things without overthinking them. Big things and little things. We are moved in a direction and we don’t resist or question. We just go.
The Holy Spirit sent me outside tonight just before the tundra swans passed over on their journey north so that I would know God is here. It was one of the most beautiful gifts of my lifetime.
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