Have you noticed the songs of the birds returning to your neighborhood? I’m always amazed at how they spring into song the moment the weather warms. Our parakeet, who recently died, was a marathon warbler. Three years ago, we bred him with a cute female by giving the smitten pair a bigger cage and wood nesting box (unlike human beings, hens generally won’t lay until they have a warm, safe place). The experience of watching two birds have babies was one of our best as a family. The male sang every minute his mate was warming those eggs. He contained and comforted her with his song. We still talk about this.

So I was all ears when I reached the following passage of an interview with Peter Kingsley, author of “In the Dark Places of Wisdom,” and “Reality,” featured in the Spring issue of the fab quarterly “Parabola.”

“The famous mystic Rudolph Steiner has said that for the agricultural process to happen, for seeds and plants and trees to grow, birdsong is absolutely essential. This is a beautiful truth that very few people know. But we also need to take what he said one stage further, because birds call and sing not only to quicken the plants, they also call to awaken the human seed that we are. They are actually singing for our sake as well. If we can start to listen to them, really listen, they will draw us into this greater consciousness I have been talking about. They will be our teachers, because outer nature is able to point us to inner nature.”

I suggest checking out the whole interview if you get a chance.