Look At The Birds by Jacqueline A. Cassidy

A woman was wandering the beach, collecting sea glass.
God spoke to her, “Did you come here for a lesson?”
She had and felt a little ashamed.
She looked for him in the birds, in the seashells. She found him in the lines and patterns. She looked to the sky. And he spoke again.“I am not the birds, I am not the ocean. I am in all things.”
She listened over the wind, hearing only the music made by human voices, angelic replicas of divine sequences, and found him there too.
“Your lesson is in the water,” said God.
A storm was coming, and the wind was blowing cold.
The woman worried. If she had really come to the beach for a lesson then was this what she asked for? Was she really hearing this? But earlier she’d read a passage about obedience and was doing her best to practice it. She walked toward the ocean, head down.
A new piece of sea-glass washed onto her toe. A reward? A sign that this was far enough? To stop before the lesson began? Had this only been a test of her obedience? But no, she felt it deep within, without hearing his voice: this was encouragement, a confirmation of her path forward.
The rain came and the people left the beach.
The water became rough, and the storm violent.
At the edge of the ocean, she stopped and asked, “God, I am listening, if I am to die, then I die, if I am to stop—”
And through the red, his voice came once again, “Come to me.”
The sea charged forward. And it was again that the woman saw birds against the sky. Only now, a white bird appeared against the dark.
“So long as you see the white bird you are safe.”
Between waves, between each crash and breath, underneath the water and back to the surface, the woman searched desperately for the white bird as it flew farther and farther away. Finally against the horizon, the white bird was out of sight and the woman left the ocean.
But then the white bird, from out of sight, from the horizon had turned around and was headed in her direction. It grew larger and larger until the bird landed at the woman’s feet and squawked at her.
Shivering and cold, she asked, “God I still don’t understand?”
And God said once more, “You were always sent for.”

I moved to New York City after graduating cum laude from The University of Notre Dame's Honors in Creative Writing Program and NYU’s Writer’s in Paris Program where I practiced unconventional forms of prose and poetry. I worked on their graduate literary magazine, Re: visions, and co-founded an “underground” writing workshop with graduate students named, “Rogue.”  At NYU’s Writer’s in Paris program, I learned from best-selling authors and poets like Zadie Smith, Darin Strauss, and Myla Goldberg, and am always nostalgic for our afternoon readings at Shakespeare and Co. After graduation, I worked for a small literary agency in New York City that published mainly true crime, and women’s fiction. After reading manuscripts for hours a day in a small, dark, New York office, I left the agency and now write fiction full-time. After reading some of my work, Stephen Chbosky (Perks of Being a Wallflower), bestselling author and award-winning filmmaker, wrote "You are a born writer. You have so much talent. I am not blowing smoke here. You could do something truly important.” I have taken that to heart and am working every day to make an impact through writing.