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This morning, while enjoying the beauty and silence beside the lake, I heard a sound within the stillness — the familiar hum of hummingbird wings.
It arrived like a heaven-sent gift, hovering directly in front of my face, and remained there for what felt like eternity.
We were eye to eye.
I wondered at how tiny its eyes were. I noticed how frantically its small wings were beating — so fast they appeared to be a blur, a hush.
Yet even while its wings moved with such astonishing speed, its tiny body remained perfectly still.
Unmoving.
Centered like a soul in prayer.
My husband sat beside me, watching in amazement.
The first time this happened months ago, he hadn’t seen it.
This time, he did.
I was delighted — not only because the hummingbird had come again, but because wonder feels fuller when it is shared. Joy and delight are meant to have witnesses.
And almost immediately, an old lesson from my father rose in me.
My first thought was immediate and almost childlike:
Oh.
A flying duck.
How my father would have loved seeing this.
I was a shy, anxious child in new spaces, and my father would take me to watch the ducks on the lake. He showed me that no matter how furiously they were paddling beneath the water, they remained serene and peaceful above it.
It became one of his lifelong phrases to me:
Be like the ducks. Just float.
And here was the hummingbird, doing this very thing in the open air.
Undisturbed by air currents.
Hovering.
Still.
Elegant.
Centered amid motion.
And then another memory rose — not of ducks this time, but of a phrase we loved when I was growing up in Italy:
Il dolce far niente.
The sweetness of doing nothing.
My father said this phrase was often misunderstood. Doing nothing, he told me, is not nothing. It is one of the greatest kinds of work.
It is presence.
Slowing down enough to notice.
And this can be the hardest work of all.
This hummingbird was a jewel of il dolce far niente.
It was hovering, yes — but it was not absent.
It was actively noticing.
Actively centered.
Postured.
Receptive.
And so was I.
And perhaps that is part of the mystery of wonder:
when we arrive in the world with this kind of posture — attentive, receptive, present — we quietly invite others into it too.
We make room for shared delight.
We open space for one another to notice beauty, stillness, joy.
And somehow, this tiny hummingbird seemed to reflect that posture back to me.
Hovering.
Attentive.
Present.
A small living echo of the very thing it had come to teach me.
Perhaps this is part of what Jesus meant when He said:
“My peace I leave with you.”
Not the absence of movement.
Not a life untouched by wind or worry.
But a deeper centeredness.
A steadiness of soul that remains even while the wings beat furiously.
And perhaps this is why He also speaks of joy:
not fleeting happiness dependent on calm conditions,
but fullness —
a joy that can remain present even in motion.
The hummingbird seemed to know this secret.
The ducks did too.
And maybe we are all slowly learning it:
how to remain held at the center while life moves around us.
The hummingbird hovered there only a few moments more before disappearing back into the morning air.
But the lesson remained.
The ducks knew it.
The geese teaching their little ones along the shoreline know it too.
And perhaps we are slowly learning it ourselves:
how to remain centered while life moves around us,
how to carry peace without demanding perfect stillness,
how to become present enough to notice wonder when it arrives.
Maybe this is part of the holy work after all.
To hover attentively.
To remain receptive.
To let joy and peace settle deeply enough within us that even while our wings beat furiously,
the soul remains still.
And perhaps this is the holy work for today:
to remain receptive enough
for wonder,
and still enough for peace.
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© Gilda Wray. All rights reserved.