The housefinches…..the hailstorm lashed the garden of course, and the babies have not survived, I think. I can’t see any activity, nor have I seen the housefinches flying in and out as they normally do. I haven’t the heart to go and see….because I know that this is what has happened. I don’t want to come face-to-face with certainty….I’ll let it sink in a little. The nest hasn’t fallen out…I can still see its edges.

I feel really pensive. What was the point of the birth of those baby finches? Why did they come into the world, just to be helpless little nestlings for a few short days, and perish in a few hours of cold and wetness? Are these the feelings that Gautama had, when he came face to face with infirmity, old age, and death? Alas, I am made of far lesser material, and these thoughts do not lead me into either serenity or salvation…just a little melancholy about the pointlessness of life, which we yet cling to, as our most precious possession…because the alternative to life is something that we just do not know, and cannot begin to visualize.

I feel that perhaps, going on with life in the middle of death and destruction is the meaning of life…that’s what gives context and sense to this chaos of our existence.

Should I, when I saw the hailstones begin, have perhaps thrown a plastic bag over the top of the bush where the nest was? Or would that be unnecessary intervention?

Where are the parent birds now? I haven’t had the time to look enough out of the window to see if they are still around. Do they feel sorrow? Do they experience grief and bereavement? The questions abound in my mind….