The Lady Bird

To all my friends whose selfless Presence feeds the human birds even without knowing, Mona

Sometimes in my ordinary life, I come across people who seem to come out of nowhere, who touch me because they are so gifted and full of grace.

A few months back, as I was taking a walk in my little neighborhood here in L.A., I met a woman who touched me deeply because of her level of commitment.  She was an ancient, elfin little person, walking in front of me, pushing a shopping cart. I assumed she might be a homeless person, inner tattered, faded red coat. As I got closer, I noticed that her shopping car was full of bags of bread. One of the wheels was sticking, and she was having a hard time crossing the street, so I bent down to help her, and together we made it safely across.

When we got to the other side, I was rewarded with an effusive thanks and a smile that seemed luminous even in the L.A. sunshine. She was cheerful and struck up a conversation almost instantly. I fancied myself to be in a hurry, but didn’t want to be impolite, so I listened to what she was telling me.

She didn’t live in the neighborhood and everyone here knew her as the “Bird Lady.” 

Every day, she took three buses to get to my neighborhood where there is a very nice city park. When she arrived, she would make the rounds of all the local bakeries, getting day-old baked goods, which she would carried in a shopping cart to the park. There, she would feed an enormous flock of pigeons that waited for her. She never missed a day, she was always there, and the birds always waited. She said even the seagulls came, all the way from the ocean to eat her bread. She seemed to know all the birds.

I thought it was sweet to devote her life to feeding a flock of birds. Certainly she was committed, but what value did this commitment have in the larger scope of the world? She intrigued me, so I decided to join her on her journey the next day, and that it when I learnt something remarkable. When we commit to something, anything that is basically good, no matter how small, it has huge effects on other people, in ways that are almost impossible to quantify.

I went with her to the local bakeries where she was cheerfully greeted by each of the owners. There were happy to see her, and happy to do something besides thrown away what was perfectly good food. I sat with her in the park. Many of the local children and adults in that park would come by and feed the birds alongside her. Everyone who strolled by ostensibly came to join her in feeding the birds, but I noticed that she knew a lot about all the people who stopped and was a gifted and eager listener. A child updated her on a project she was working on for school, a young weary mom told her about her difficult nights with a colicky baby. A cop who walks a bit in the park told her about problems he was having with a young boy he mentors. To each of these people she offered a kind ear and her sweet mischievous little smile along with another handful of crumbs. She would inevitably murmur some words of encouragement, nothing huge or profound, but everything she said was received eagerly, and gratefully. As people went on their way, they seemed relieved, somehow restored, just from the five minutes or so they had spent with the Bird Lady. In this way, she seemed to function as the wise woman of the neighborhood. There was so many people whose life she obviously touched on a daily basis. She was not appointed by any commission, she didn’t received a grant, she just made a simple commitment, and put her own self into what she had committed to do. She would be there every day to feed the birds, and in the process she also fed humans spiritually. I asked her how many years she had been doing this. She said she started in Romania. She came in America in her fifties. She has been feeding the birds everyday since she came to this country, almost fifty years.

As I spent those few hours with her, I became deeply aware of how some people really functioned almost as angels in our lives, and how, by her attitude and her commitment brought healing and hope to so many people in my little neighborhood.

The lesson I learnt from the bird Lady is that you don’t have to do anything earthshaking to make a difference in people’s life, you just have to be present, committed to whatever it is you do. You can be of service in the most mundane way if you are present and committed every moment of the day.

The Bird Lady was a master of this. She is forever with me in my heart.

From Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, The Eight Human Talents