image credit: Dawn Scranton from Cornwall, Ontario, Canada, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The all-blue male Indigo Bunting sings with cheerful gusto and looks like a scrap of sky with wings. Sometimes nicknamed “blue canaries,” these brilliantly colored yet widespread birds whistle their bouncy songs through the late spring and summer all over eastern North America. —Cornell Lab, All About Birds
It’s no secret that, for years, I’ve harbored a healthy (mostly!) obsession with the indigo bunting. I’ve crept as slowly and quietly as humanly possible down gravel roads towards the silhouette of an indigo bunting in the tall grasses. Certain that I’ve heard one in the timber, I’ve stalked about my yard, searching tree tops for the elusive bird. When I spotted an indigo bunting on our bird feeder—a miracle that occurred only once—I fell to my knees, fearful my shadow would frighten it away, and crawled across my dining room floor to take a photo of it. After years of hunting the indigo bunting, I can spot them in the tree tops or on power lines—even in the shadows or on cloudy days when the sun doesn’t ignite their signature cerulean blue. I know their song and silhouette. I’m a fan for life.
Paradoxically, indigo buntings, like all blue birds, have no blue pigment. Similar to particles in the air that make the sky look blue, they possess microscopic structures in their feathers that refract and reflect blue light. This is why they appear brown-black until a ray of sun hits them, and they burst into color and become a “scrap of sky with wings.” I was walking early one morning when the clouds parted, and the sun broke through. In that moment, I looked up as I passed beneath a utility wire and witnessed the small, dark silhouette of an indigo bunting explode into an otherworldly blue. I stood and watched until a cloud covered the sun, and the bunting was once again transformed, its brilliance a lingering memory.
That the indigo bunting often appears as another dark-colored songbird, becoming remarkable only in the presence of light, is an apt metaphor for the human condition. Most of us are unremarkable in the sense that we’re simply one of 8.3 billion people in the world, one more living, breathing human. Some of us rise to public significance through our own efforts and talents. Most of us, however, do not. We are unremarkable figures living ordinary lives. Until we come into the light of one who sees us. Until we find ourselves in the presence of one through whom we can reflect and refract the light that’s uniquely and remarkably ours.
For 12 years, I watched my son’s football career. He’d proven himself as an exceptional football player during his high school career and summer camps throughout the Midwest. He’d competed and distinguished himself at a regional football combine in Indianapolis. He was recruited by a Division II university throughout his senior year, fielding weekly phone calls from the coach. In the light of this university program, he was wanted and seen. Until he wasn’t. Several weeks after he reported as a freshman and had begun practicing, he fell off their radar. What happened in those weeks to relegate him to the shadows? I thought about this a lot over the years and finally decided that the coaches simply stopped looking at him. I recalled all the well-meaning advice from coaches and agents: Be coachable. Be tough. Work hard. Show up. Learn from your mistakes. And the implicit message is that if you do all these things, you’ll succeed. In short, you’ll play. Although this is true for some, sadly, it’s not true for many others. You might work hard, play with grit and passion, do and be all the things coaches say they desire, and sit the bench. For if no one is looking at you, you’re just as invisible as you might be if you didn’t work hard, hone your talents, and aspire to improve.
For 4 1/2 years, my son conditioned and practiced—in and out of season—for a total of one minute of collegiate varsity football play. I’m not sure I’ll ever understand the courage and conviction he called upon to stay the course. He had the talent and desire, qualities that might’ve shone under a coach’s light. Yet, isn’t his story just another example of the human condition? We are all uniquely and wonderfully made, and like the indigo bunting, long to emerge from the shadows, to be transformed in the light of another’s interest and care.
Over the course of my teaching career, there were so many students who lived in the shadows of my classrooms. Most often, they sat in the back of the room, spoke little, and left class quickly. I checked them off on my attendance list and marked their grades in my gradebook, but regrettably, I didn’t really see them. Oh, I begin to see some as they emerged through their writing. Still, there were others who came and left my courses, largely unseen. I understand that it’s nearly impossible to devote real time and attention to each individual when you’re teaching 150 students per term, but I regret that I couldn’t. There were thousands of “blue canaries” in my classrooms just waiting to shine in the light of one who would see them.
And how many times have I failed to see my loved ones and friends? How many times have I consciously or unconsciously withheld the light through which they could be seen? Too many times, I’m afraid. I suppose this, too, is characteristic of our human condition: the way we often make ourselves the center of our own universes, ignoring and forsaking others—even those we love. And when we do, we leave them as dark silhouettes in the tree tops, as we turn our lights on ourselves in hopes of reflecting and refracting something brilliant.
When I think of the indigo bunting, I recall David’s words in Psalm 139. In God’s light, we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” We are “not hidden” but seen. We don’t remain dark, unremarkable silhouettes but instead reflect and refract a holy and transforming light:
13 You created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be. [Psalm 139: 13-16]
Just yesterday, as I was walking mid-afternoon, an indigo bunting sheared the airspace in front of me, a cerulean flash that stopped me in my tracks. “Look at that!” I gasped. As I’ve aged, I’ve found I speak the words I used to only think. And I speak them with abandon, not caring if anyone hears me. Because the wonder of an indigo bunting deserves such a declaration. Because when we speak these things aloud, we also bring them into the light. And because there is brilliance all around us, if we have eyes to see and light to shine upon them.
