Blog 1502 – 10.29.2019

A Wise Visitor, All Ears

My job as a professional watcher, I am a contract inspector, has me always looking and listening carefully. Yesterday, I saw a large bird land on a limb in a tree not far from where the construction crew was working. It was an owl whose feathers blended so well with the tree bark that had I not seen it land I would not have known it was there. Later after the noisy welding truck had move on, the owl, moved to a lower limb, even closer to look at our large excavation with bright orange snow fence around it. I saw the turn of it’s head and got this great picture I wish to share.

I am grateful for my wise visitor and also want to write a few words about wisdom to go with the picture. We consider owls to be wise and why not, they ask questions (Who? Who?) and listen. We often do not even slow down long enough to ask the question “Who am I?” or to wait patiently for the answer. In the Jewish Bible, the Christian Old Testament, in the book of Jeremiah is a verse that some call, God’s telephone number. It reads, “Call unto me and I will answer thee.” We don’t use the phone much for voice calls anymore, mostly for texting, or surfing the web. People don’t have time for listening anymore, even to the one’s the profess to love. Their loss, our loss, for wisdom is often in a spoken word – out of the mouths of babes, wizen old owls, and all in between.

Wanna be wise – listen with your whole heart. Did you ever notice that if you put two ear shapes together that it makes a heart. There was a cool movie in the early 1950(s) by the title, “The Next Voice You Hear” after a common radio introduction of the next speaker. In the movie the next voice you hear is God’s. But then isn’t it always? Anybody listening? Only the wise guys and gals.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White