The camaraderie we can't yet see

Or, consider the Buffleheads

Recently, while wandering along the rocky beach at a park on whulge / Puget Sound—the same park I mentioned in other recent reflections—I found myself tracking with a flock of Buffleheads. 

(I had to look up their name; fortunately, Googling something like “white and black duck-like bird” worked well enough.) 

A gorgeous flock of Buffleheads / Photo by Lindy Murphy on Unsplash

Something about the camaraderie of their little group resonated with me as I watched them float along the salt water that morning. Other birds fished around on their own, but these ones were traveling together. 

I thought, I want that feeling. I want that traveling-together-ness. 

I looked away for a few moments, maybe at the beach rocks beneath my feet as I moseyed along, or at an interesting-shaped tree, its branches reaching toward the water. When I looked back, there were only four Buffleheads visible in the group. 

I knew I had seen more than that, just a few moments before. 

I kept watching. And sure enough, soon another Bufflehead appeared, and then another. They had all gone fishing underwater together.

I kept watching the Buffleheads, on and off, as I meandered along the beach and they took their time making their way northward in the water not too far away. At most, I counted fourteen birds. At their least, I counted just one. 

I watched as one Bufflehead would dive underwater, then another, then another, most of them following suit as they seemed to get the word that this is a good spot for food. 

Something struck me about the times where there was only one Bufflehead visible of the fourteen. I thought about how much I don’t see. How much I don’t know about what’s going on under the saline surface of whulge. 

(Actually, I’ve been swimming in the Sound a couple times, so I know a little bit of what’s under there. Yellow sea cucumbers come to mind, as well as an amazing mudflat full of sand dollars, very much alive and tilted at an angle to the sea floor, swaying with the waves. But I haven’t been swimming in this particular spot, and I’m sure the undersea world changes a great deal day to day anyway. There is so much I do not see, so much I don’t know.)

I thought about how sometimes we’re on a path and it might look like we’re alone. It might feel like we’re so alone. 

And then others come up from underneath the surface, ones we couldn’t see before, and they surround us. It turns out we were journeying together in a friendly little flock all along. 

I want this flock-ness. 

I reflected recently over at Red Tent Living about the process of writing Nice Churchy Patriarchy and sending it out into the world—and on how the more we speak the truths of our experience into the world, the more possibilities we create for connection with others who have similar experiences. The more traveling companions we might meet. 

For those on the underside of patriarchal power structures—and/or other interconnected power structures—the powers-that-be often want to make us think we’re alone. They want us to feel like that one Bufflehead who’s on the surface while its companions are nearby but out of sight underwater. Like that Bufflehead, though, we are not actually alone. 

We are surrounded by others who can affirm and support us, and whom we can affirm and support in turn. The journey of building a more just, inclusive, and loving world is not easy. But it doesn’t have to be lonely. 

So, a blessing:

May those on this journey toward peacemaking among all beings find one another.

May we know we are not alone.

In the times when we feel like we are alone, or when others try to make us think we are alone, may we take courage knowing there is camaraderie we don’t yet see.

May we find kinship with the Buffleheads who travel together even though they don’t always see each other at every moment on the way.