“A man in Eastern Europe told me he found a stork at his front door early one morning. The stork was pecking at the glass with his bill. The man followed the stork into the yard and saw that the stork’s nest had been toppled by high winds during the night. A baby stork had a broken wing, which he set.
Three weeks later the same stork again knocked at his door. This time the old man returned to the nest and carefully removed the splint from the baby’s wing. Then the injured bird flapped his wings and slowly lifted into the air. Suddenly the sky was thick with dozens of storks who’s been waiting nearby. They’d delayed migration until the baby healed-only then did they take flight. Magnificent flight. It was the nature of the birds to wait. To wait expectantly, open to the old man’s skills, intents on finding a way. How different that morning would have been if they’d concluded instead, this small bird cannot be saved “(Daybreaks).
When I read this story I found myself wondering what I would have done in this situation. I thought about which character I related with the most and instantly knew what the answer was.
I would be in the group of storks waiting to leave and I would be annoyed.
I would be bothered that I had to wait around for this baby bird to heal and “get its act together” so to speak. Again, I come to the point of patience and my lack of it. I would have probably tried to convince all of the other storks that this was not our problem and we needed to simply move on.
I would be one very crabby stork.
Most of the time, when someone is called to patience with another it requires opening your heart to the other persons needs and quieting your own. Sometimes, all that person requires is time to heal and a little bit of compassion and those are often two very difficult things for me to give.
Then I think of all of the hundreds of times I needed that time and compassionate patience from another person. I tend to make demands on others but when the time comes for them to need something from me I can be incredibly selfish. I also don’t think we live in a culture that encourages behaviors like these storks practiced. We can’t be bothered with the struggles of another when we have so many struggles in our own lives. We don’t want to be seen as weak. We don’t want to be taken advantage of. We are taught to keep our heads down and plow ahead. If people want our help then they need to accept it on our terms and if they can’t then, oh well, it’s no longer our problem.
I found myself thinking about this today when I was driving to work and I saw a teenage girl running down the street and wondered to myself what she was running to or from. What if she was running away from a person who was trying to hurt her? What if she were running from an abusive parent? I will never know because I just kept driving. It stuck with me how easily we close our hearts to the needs of the people around us and take flight without them and then tell ourselves “this is for the best.”
Now, I know I cannot run out and help every person I ever encounter who needs something from me but, this Advent, what are the ways I CAN open my heart? I can practice patience with others. I can wait for the injured storks in my life instead of squawk and ruffle my feathers and demand that they get it together already! I have most certainly been an injured stork before in my life and it’s only a matter of time before I am again. This Advent, I want to emulate the old man and leave my crabby stork-like tendencies behind me.
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