If God Were A Hummingbird

I have been in my head so much lately that a song on the radio last night, as I drove home from the gym, warranted a volume up to blasting.  I have not been having nearly enough fun with very little emphasis on laughing at all.  Far too serious and far too self involved.  Not a good recipe for a job seeker or for a person who tends towards the dark end of life's spectrum.

Actually, tending towards the dark end of the pool allows me to feel compassion for others though like many humans, I am most demanding of myself.  Cultivating a gentle hand for myself was not part of my childhood lessons and so I filled in the gaps.  Or the part of me that tried to make sense of a family home as violent and abusive as ours led me to decide it must be "my fault" if bad things happen.  You know who you are so just know that I know.

I had two job interviews in the last seven days and I am still waiting to find out if I cleared the bar on both.  This silence that follows an interview often means something less than kind for those of my ilk.  And so, I have tried something different as I wait but don't wait or rather hope without knowing what hope really feels like.

I imagined that in a bay off the coast of somewhere there is a ship anchored with the employees of one store where I interviewed.  They are standing on the deck in their company sweatshirts and they are looking towards me.  At times, they cheer. At times they shout encouragement to keep rowing, keep rowing.

I am in a perfect Nantucket, white row boat with a royal blue stripe around the rim.  I pull on well worn wooden oars and my dog Rosie is stationed at the bow, her huge, white angel wings extended like a sail themselves. Rosie does that dog snot thing where she breathes in the sea air and blows snot out her long, Greyhound nose.  She looks back at me from time to time as I pull the oars against the incoming tide. 

At times this week while raking, weeding, spreading compost, sweeping and hoping, I reminded myself that I am still out there rowing.  Sometimes there is the voice of the people on board telling me to keep on and sometimes it is the benevolent voice in myself that tells me to hope because hoping is worth it.  I am worth it.

Today there was another boat in the water which held one of my co-workers who had a second interview at an awesome company called Traditional Medicinals. She is a woman who has suffered through a variety of betrayals at our place of work and who also expects the worst but deserves the very best.  And so I placed her in a boat with a man in a black chauffeur's cap rowing her white boat with red stripe to the shore where she would go for her interview. Maybe that is just the kind of prayer someone needs to get to the finish line.

I am home now writing and getting ready to shower and do my homework for a college class I am taking.  I am feeling emotional and kind of sad and I am still rowing there in the bay towards the ship with my new co-workers waiting for me. 

A thought came to me this afternoon as I freshened up the fruit tree rings in Commons B & C, as a hummingbird clicked away and drank from a nearby feeder.  What if God is a hummingbird?  Every flower would be red and full of pollen because the "God" in everyone, our benevolent better selves in other words, wants the best for us.  The "God" in everyone is there in the row boat whether we are aware of it or not.