A personal example of this oscillation between cage and bird is what I felt in the throes of my cancer experience. In moments of fear my illness became the oppressive bars of my cage. But inexplicably, I was somehow thrust deeper into the freedom of my inner heart, where I realized, like Magritte’s white bird, that despite my fear, there was nowhere else to go—illness and all. This life was and is my nest, my home. From that feathery spirit’s perch between my eyes, other psychological bars dropped from view. The urgency of my illness—the sudden prospect of not existing anymore—made visible my luxuries of denial and projection and procrastinating, and my need to sing and give myself away, no matter how softly, became ever-present, opening Now.

The song, to my surprise, even when no one else could hear it, began to melt the bars, and those that didn’t melt split and sagged and reformed into the bent branches of my life. Amazing and mysterious yet true—the bird, if allowed to sing, shapes its tree.

Now that I am well—my cage door blown open, my cage bars now revealed as the forest I have come from—all moments of living, no matter how difficult, come back into me, into some central point that opens like that unseeable eye that Jesus speaks of. Now light pours in and out at once, and I realize that this moment, whatever it might be, is a fine moment to live and a fine moment to die.

Full of light, everything happens at once—not pain-free, but unencumbered. I’m surprised to discover that loving yourself is like feeding a clear bird no one else can see. You must be still and offer your palmful of secrets like delicate seed. As she eats your secrets, no longer secret, she glows and you lighten and her voice, which only you can hear, is your voice bereft of plans. And the light through her body will bathe you till you wonder why the gems in your palm were ever fisted. Others will think you crazed to wait on something no one sees. But the clear bird only wants to feed and fly and sing. She only wants light in her belly. And once in a great while, if someone loves you enough, they might see her rise from the nest beneath your fear.