{"id":1161,"date":"2013-09-15T17:56:41","date_gmt":"2013-09-15T21:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ohe.5c7.myftpupload.com\/?p=1161"},"modified":"2014-03-29T18:34:28","modified_gmt":"2014-03-29T22:34:28","slug":"of-both-earth-and-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inourrightmind.com\/?p=1161","title":{"rendered":"Of both earth and heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ohe.5c7.myftpupload.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/nuthatch1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-1162\" title=\"nuthatch\" src=\"http:\/\/ohe.5c7.myftpupload.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/nuthatch1-170x170.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"170\" height=\"170\" \/><\/a>I am awed by the intelligence that flits through my back yard on a daily basis. I hang 2 ounces of sugar water from the awning in a tiny plastic tube, and a ruby-throated hummingbird finds it in a matter of hours.\u00a0<em>How does he do that? What sense leads him to this little tube in the midst of the vast world?<\/em> Ditto for the chickadees who know when I&#8217;ve replenished the nyjer seed and the downy woodpeckers who drop in when the suet feeders are full.\u00a0<em>How do they know this? Do they instant message each other?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s another mystery. I have lots of travelers, especially in the spring and fall. <!--more-->A nuthatch showed up on the 10th, and last year on the 7th, and the year before on the 3d, and in 2010 on the 16th. He [she? they?] will come through again, traveling north I assume, sometime in mid-March. Wood thrush, who winters in central America, shows up in late March or early April to till the hellebores and tear up the sod. <em>Why doesn&#8217;t he visit on the southbound trip?\u00a0<\/em>Carolina wren, who usually stops by in November and February, doesn&#8217;t migrate.\u00a0<em>Where does she spent the winter? How does she feed and warm herself?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The hummer stays all summer, but any day now, he&#8217;ll start his long trek to central America. How does such a tiny thing&#8211;he weighs about as much as a penny&#8211;travel 1500+ miles to <em>central America?<\/em>\u00a0<em>How does he fly 500 miles nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I could Google these questions and get answers. But they wouldn&#8217;t touch the mystery and magic unfolding here. I am with the poet Mary Oliver on this one:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For truly the body needs a song, a spirit, a soul. And no less, to make this work, the soul has need of a body, and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable beauty of heaven where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes, and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am awed by the intelligence that flits through my back yard on a daily basis. I hang 2 ounces of sugar water from the awning in a tiny plastic tube, and a ruby-throated hummingbird finds it in a matter of hours.\u00a0How does he do that? What sense leads him to this little tube in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-business","category-mindfulness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inourrightmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inourrightmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inourrightmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inourrightmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inourrightmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1161"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inourrightmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1164,"href":"https:\/\/inourrightmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions\/1164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inourrightmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inourrightmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inourrightmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}