Jesus is a bluebird

From my earliest memories, Jesus has always been a part of my life. I remember my Dad reading me bedtime stories from this great children's bible that dumbed-down the language, but not the content. David was not merely the sheperd boy who killed Goliath, but also the murderer and adulterer and the man with God's heart. Bible stories mixed with fairy tales which mixed with real life stories that mixed with my overactive imagination which created a whole other world that was just as real, if not more so, than reality.

In this reality Jesus was a constant character, a steadfast imaginary friend who had tea with fairies, danced with dryads, and ran away from the Nazis with me. I would talk to Jesus all the time, even if he wasn't omniscent I don't think he could have know more about me. In my sylvan wanderings, I had a few favorite spots. One of them was in a little glen in the woods that you could only get to if you were small enough to scramble underneath the rasberry bushes that grew along the creek in my backyard. I would go there and sit, knowing that no one but Jesus could get in there with me. (I was Queen of the Forest most days, and the little glen was a place that I could escape from the frenetic demands of my imaginary world.)

One day a bluebird flew into the glen while I was there, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was that bluebird. I thought it very nice that Jesus decided to be a bluebird for a while, so I talked to him. And almost every time I went to that glen, Jesus the bluebird would show up. After a while I started imagining Jesus as a bluebird in Sunday School and during bedtime bible stories. My Sunday School teacher thought I was mixing up Angels and Jesus, because I kept talking about how he could fly.

That year during Holy Week my mom thought that I had taken the message of Jesus' death a little too morbidly when I came home in tears crying "Jesus is dead! Jesus is dead!" Mom went through great pains to explain to her hysterical child that Jesus died, but that wasn't the end of the story-- that he rose from the dead. Mom didn't know that I had seen a bluebird dead on the side of the road. And I never did see a bluebird in that glen again. Maybe Jesus the bluebird is in heaven.