In today’s episode, I share a story that begins with a small drama by a pond in my neighborhood: a duck, broken and abandoned, dropped off to fend for itself. What seemed like the end of its story turned into a lesson in trust, because of the unlikely care of a young girl named Michelina.

From there, I reflect on what this duck’s survival has to say about our own anxieties in a time of layoffs, economic shifts, and technological upheaval. Watching birds at feeders reminded me of an old teaching: that life is more than food or clothing, and that the birds of the air, who neither sow nor reap, are still cared for.

But I don’t shy away from the skeptic’s question: “Don’t some birds die of hunger or sickness?” They do. Yet the invitation of the teaching is not immunity from death, but freedom from worry. Birds don’t live crushed under imagined futures. They take what is given, move on when it is gone, and live inside providence.

This episode is about that invitation — to live as they do. To trust enough to spread our wings each morning without demanding to know how the next seed will come. To see that sustenance has never been about control, but about recognizing the mercies that arrive, again and again.

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