Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing, Passing from you and from me…
I hear it while I get ready for work each morning, where, of late, there’s a heavy atmosphere of uncertainty and despair.
Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing, Passing from you and from me…
I hear it while having to drive through town instead of the scenic route by the pond, where the great blue heron lives, because a bridge is out, I’m told, for maybe a year or more (how can this be?).
Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing, Passing from you and from me…
I hear it while noticing and grieving dead animals by the roadside… beaver, groundhog, opossum, squirrel, cottontail rabbit, white-tail deer, dog, cat; a hawk that flew too low at the wrong time, its wide pale wing, patterned in distinctive dark-brown bars, angled up and over its body like a shroud; and so many skunks, their beautiful black-and-white fur rippling in the wind…sluggish from hibernation, they wandered into the road, never to wake again.
Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing, Passing from you and from me…
I hear it when I’m running late and traffic in the heart of town is backed up to an absurd degree (of course), making me turn off the main road for a side road, to save a few minutes…
That’s when I see the mural:
An ethereal moment calls for an etheree…
Breathe deeply. The moments are soon passing from you and from me… let’s use them, not lose them for every precious minute sings unwritten song within it. Breathe, and appreciate the moment. Each, in itself, a sign of the divine.
Funny thing…I see the “Breathe” message on a most difficult morning; on the drive home that afternoon, just past the mural, a great blue heron passes overhead, strangely low and close. I have never seen one here before. It looks otherworldly, ancient, sailing along serenely, impossibly, with barely a beat of its wings.
great blue heron glides on slow wingbeats of wisdom breathing the moment
“Nature is the infrastructure of our communities…Nature enriches us economically and culturally and historically, but it also enriches us spiritually. God talks to human beings through many vectors: Through organized religions and the great books of those religions, through the prophets and wise people, and through art and literature and music and poetry, but nowhere with the same detail and texture and grace and joy as through Creation. And when we destroy nature, we impoverish our children. We diminish their capacity—and our own—to sense the Divine, to understand who God is, and to grasp what our own potential is as human beings.” —Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Confession
Before I started writing in earnest I didn’t know how much I love nature
I should have known by the way cicada summersong stirs sacred memories
I should have known by the certain slant of light on fiery autumn trees there’s hope within which never leaves
I should have known from the brilliant beckoning of silversharp stars on a clear winter’s night or by Venus, glittering bright over the ocean as the sun rises that the soul must keep reaching for what it cannot grasp
I should have known that once I start seeking I will find just as I discover hawks perched high above me every single time I think to look up
I should have known by the poignant scent of fallen pines and freshcut grass that newness returns after the pain
I should have known how much humans have lost by not living close to the earth as we were meant to (as we did, in ages past) or how this void is behind the longing of every soul crying out for belonging healing restoration and peace
I should have known all things are interconnected and sustained
by the voice speaking through nature…
Before I started writing in earnest I didn’t know how much I love nature
but the important thing is that I know it now
I will always know it, now
for, like finchsong at my door, untold glories surround me
weaving their way into my writings so that I recognize holy rhythms of life
spoken into being into my being
—let me listen oh, let me listen.
One of last year’s baby bluebirds hanging out by its natal home, on my back deck
******* Composed for Day 13 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers
In the fading light on the last day of January, I hear it:
a loud, merry squawk! on the front porch.
First time I’ve heard that precious sound since last April, when the silence set in without warning, when the whole nestful of beautiful finch fledglings in my door wreath died.
Season after season, tiny life came into being on my portal, taking wing from sky-blue eggs to blue-egg sky, until the April day when it stopped.
The hardest part of loss apart from the emptiness is the unanswered why.
For now we see through a glass darkly, wrote the Apostle in his chapter on love. Those words echo in my memory as I look through the etched-glass window of my door, where the silhouette of the visitor perches on the replacement wreath.
I don’t know, but I suspect he’s the father, returning to scout for a safe nesting-place as in seasons past.
I don’t know if I am hoping he’ll choose this wreath as bird courtship goes into full swing.
I don’t know, here on the cusp of Valentine’s Day, if my heart is willing to risk giving itself away after such a shattering
but at the sound of that squawk! it instantaneously leaps
and I can’t help remembering how Grandma used to phone me, saying I just wanted to hear your precious voice.
You cannot know, little Finch on the other side of the glass, how precious your voice is to me or how I marvel at your resiliency.
In the long continuum of things, our stories are interwoven as much as the grasses and tiny flowers and random sweet feathers in all your former nests.
If you dare to build again here in my sanctuary I will dare to love again.
If you do not, I will understand that your new life will go on elsewhere as I go on cherishing every bright memory and the sound.
This week I’m honored to host fellow Spiritual Journey writers who gather on the first Thursday of each month.
In choosing the theme of renewal, I note that one definition of the word is resuming an activity after an interruption. That’s exactly what I’m doing now: writing my first blog post in two months. My blogging life went on hiatus while a lot of other life happened. I spent the summer keeping granddaughters. I returned to work at school in a new role. And my husband, a pastor, slowly succumbed to debilitating back pain. Unable to stand for very long, he’s been preaching while seated in a chair. Surgery was inevitable. Having spent four days in the hospital at the end of October, he’s now home and slowly ‘resuming interrupted activities’ like sitting, standing, and walking, which are, at times, excruciating.
Considering my husband’s journey, I might have chosen the word endurance. He lost an eye to a rare condition in 2015. In 2019, he survived two heart attacks, cardiac arrest, and two subsequent surgeries. He was still convalescing when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Through it all, something he came to enjoy, and which helped him regain his physical strength, was hiking at a nearby dam. I’d return home from work and he’d tell me: “I saw an eagle at the dam today!”
I started accompanying him on weekends, armed with binoculars and my bird identification apps. We saw (and heard) a wondrous variety of birds, most notably the ospreys with babies in their nest, the great blue heron at the waterfall, and the gorgeous red-shouldered hawk that flew ahead of us in the woods to perch on a low branch, where it stared right back at us, with considerably less awe.
No eagles.
As time wore on, my husband’s back wore out, and there were no more hikes.
When the pain relegated him to preaching from a chair, he finally scheduled the surgery. It was more than he wanted to endure. He was tired of enduring.
Which brings me to the need for renewal.
Circle back with me, for a moment, to the eagles.
A few years ago I had a medical issue which required an outpatient procedure. My husband drove me to the hospital and back home afterward. It was winter; I watched the bare trees and old farm outbuildings whipping by my window when I saw… could it be? A bald eagle sitting, big as life, at the roadside! If I’d been on a bike I could have held out my hand and touched it (theoretically).
I was, however, still woozy from anesthesia…perhaps it was a figment…
But my husband cried out: “That was an eagle!“
He turned the car around.
The eagle might have ignored our passing again, but it grew suspicious when we slowed down. It unfurled its mighty wings and headed for a gnarled old oak.
Call it fanciful, if you like…sighting that eagle reassured me that all would be well with my medical situation.
So it was.
Four months later my husband’s heart stopped; he was resuscitated, with a shattered sternum; he survived emergency stents and bypasses.
He went walking at the dam as rehab. He saw eagles.
Although I’ve looked and looked, I haven’t seen one since that unique roadside appearance.
Until this last surgery.
Our oldest son offered to stay the first night with his dad in the hospital so I could come home and sleep. I was exhausted. I would stay the next night.
Early on the following morning, somewhat rested, I drove back to the hospital. October in the North Carolina Piedmont is breathtakingly beautiful. Along both sides of this particular highway the forest stretches out in a visual paean of orange, red, and yellow. That day, the blazing colors were framed by a brilliant blue, cloudless sky. Our son had texted that his dad had a rough night. We all knew to expect it it; the intensity of post-op pain for spinal surgery is severe. My husband has already been in tremendous pain for so long. He’s already suffered and endured so much…he knew he needed this surgery, but will he have the strength to endure the aftermath?
Will I?
Such were my dark thoughts that bright morning, inching my way back to him in the congested workday traffic, when a solitary bird glided into view in the tranquil blue above the gridlocked cars. A big, dark bird with long, broad wings, white head shining bright in the sun…
It can’t be, I thought. After all the times I’ve tried to see one…that it should be now…I leaned as far as I could toward the windshield, taking advantage of the stopped traffic to stare upward.
It came nearer, sailing with easy grace, low enough for me to see its gleaming white, fan-shaped tail.
No mistaking it.
Isaiah 40:31 came immediately to mind:
But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
Renewal. An infusion of new strength, sufficient for the day. An assurance of more for the difficult days ahead. These words were originally given by the prophet Isaiah to the Israelites, foretelling the end of their Babylonian captivity. The people would make the seven-hundred-mile journey back home; they would be restored. The chapter begins with Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. The phrase they shall walk seems especially significant in light of my husband’s situation, that he shall soon walk without the pain that’s plagued him. There’s more to say about the biblical symbolism of eagles, but in this verse, the original language seems to allude to feathers rather than wings and an ancient Jewish belief that when the eagle molts, his youth and vitality are restored.
My husband’s battered body will not be restored to youth in this life. Vitality, however, means strength and energy, which brings us to another definition of renewal: a return to vigor. A return of physical strength and good health. That is our prayer for his healing.
Most importantly, the verse speaks to strengthrenewed by waiting on, or depending on, or clinging to, the Lord. More than renewal of physical strength. It’s spiritual rehab.
That eagle, appearing on the morning after my husband’s surgery, buoyed my spirit. As did the other I saw by the road on the day I was concerned for my own health.
We continue to wait on, to cling to, the Lord as we travel this long road of recovery. Daily renewal of strength comes from nowhere else.
Let me close by saying I’m awed, anew, by His use of visual aids for the spiritual journey.
Harbingers
I. That Morning You Drove Me Home From the Medical Procedure
back country byway, winter-brown grass trees, old gray outbuildings, zipping, zipping past small pond clearing, wood-strewn ground bald eagle sitting roadside—too profound—
I thought it was the anesthesia until you saw it, too, before it flew.
And I knew.
II. On the Morning I Returned to the Hospital After Your Surgery
lanes of heavy traffic, day dawning bright our son says you had a painful, painful night dew on the windshield, fog in my brain all hope of moving past this gridlock, in vain but for the glory of autumn leaves, a-fire against cloudless blue where a solitary flier glides by, white head and tail gleaming in the sun…
I promise, beloved one.
Your healing has begun.
Bald Eagle by Gary Rothstein, NASA. Public domain.
Usually it’s the sound of cicadas that stirs my soul, their rattling courtship-chorus reaching a feverish crescendo in late August. Summer hits its brutal zenith just before it begins to die. Interesting how August means to increase.
On the last Sunday of August, it’s not the sound of cicadas which captivates me.
It’s the sight of one clinging to the screen in the kitchen window, early in the morning.
So still that I wonder if it’s dead.
I am tempted to go out and see, but I don’t. Let it be. If it’s dead, it will still be there after church and I’ll save its body to show the granddaughters. Cicadas are big insects that evoke terror in many people; I do not want the girls to fear them. The antidote to fear is understanding. Study. Fear not. Maybe even learn to love.
I take a photo instead.
It is a dark morning, like the one in the sermon text for this day, Mark 1:35: Jesus rises “very early in the morning, while it was still dark” to find a desolate place to pray. He’d spent the previous day healing the sick, including Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, and driving out demons.
When I return home, the cicada is gone.
Not dead.
All I have is this snapshot of it resting alone in a quiet place on the grid, with the crape myrtle by the old dog’s grave blooming in the background.
I could write an entire book, perhaps, on the symbolism and metaphor here.
I settle for a poem.
Clinging to the grid In respite from work Crape myrtle abloom August’s crescendo is the last Defying death in the wings As love drives resurrection
The cicada and crape myrtle are symbols of life, longevity, immortality, and resurrection. Summer is dying, but only for now.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life Story Challenge
with thanks to my Spiritual Journey writer-friends who gather on the first Thursday of each month, and to Chris Margocs for leading today with the theme of “Shall we dance?”
Today my heart dances. Even as I write these words, I am preparing to attend a chapel service in which my firstborn will be honored. He completed a Master of Divinity degree last December and the seminary faculty selects one graduate for the Pastoral Leadership award. My son was chosen.
Today, with the Spiritual Journey theme of Shall we dance, I recall Miriam, the sister of Moses. In Exodus 15:20-21 she led the women in a victory dance, echoing her brother’s song of praise to God for salvation from Pharaoh’s army in the miraculous parting of the Red Sea:
I will sing unto the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.
The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. (Exodus 15:1-2)
Today I think about the journey my husband and I have made. We’d been married less than two years when we rededicated our lives to God and my husband became a pastor. I was twenty-two; he was twenty-five. So much story to tell…all these years later, I stand in awe of the sustaining hand of God and His wondrous provision, grace, and mercy.
Our son named his firstborn daughter Micah, which means Who is like God? Answer: No one. And our little Micah, age eighteen months, loves nothing better than music and dancing. Except maybe food…
Today is a day of victory and praise for all that God has done, and continues to do, in the life of my family.
Today I dance…
I offer it in the form of a pantoum.
Dance, dance, dance! Who is like God? No one. No one. He is beside you, behind you, before you.
Who is like God? In the giving and forgiving He is beside you, behind you, before you. None of the sacrifices
in the giving and forgiving of all your beloveds —none of the sacrifices can do for you what God has done.
Of all your beloveds no one, no one can do for you what God has done— dance, dance, dance!
a favor or gift bestowed by God, thereby bringing happiness.
—Dictionary.com
*******
I could hardly wait to get home yesterday to check the progress of the new finch nest on my door wreath.
On Day Two, it now has the characteristic cup shape. It’s lined with white fuzz, a soft cushion for the precious eggs to come.
It is comprised almost exclusively of fresh green grass. The color of newness and life.
House finches are said to represent new beginnings.
Their nests always fill me with awe, and never more than now, watching the parents working together to rebuild immediately after two of their babies died in the previous nest, which I tore down. Confession: I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. Nature is mighty, ever-resilient, wise; it is imbued with regenerative power. Yet there are so many delicate balances within it. I didn’t want to upset any of these. I am a mere student of these birds. They are the experts.
So to see this nest being built in the exact spot as the ill-fated former one is a gift. It sends my spirits soaring, exponentially.
House finches are considered symbols of joy. If you ever hear one singing, you understand why.
In some parts of the world, they’re called the blessing bird.
They chose my door years ago as the place to bring new life into the world. I now share the wonder of it with my seven-year-old granddaughter, our “nurture scientist.” Together we have witnessed the miracle of tiny life coming into existence and eventually taking flight. In a couple more seasons, her baby sister will be able to enjoy it, too.
After I took this photo of the new nest, rejoicing and wondering when the first egg will appear, I went into the house to find a mysterious package my husband had retrieved from the mailbox.
Neither of us had ordered anything.
Curious.
I opened it…
A gift from a friend I met through writing, who reads about my finches each spring, who knows of the recent loss.
I am awed again.
A writing community is like a nest: a safe place especially created for growth, where we nurture one another and encourage each other to stretch our wings and fly.
It is here that we learn the true power of story and how it knits our hearts together. In the beginning, in the end, we are story.
To live it, write it, build it together, is a gift.
And the time for doing it is now. Today.
My love for the finches, like my love for writing, is inextricably woven through and through with gratitude for the blessings in my life. It’s all a song in my heart, greater than words.
Each day brings its own gifts. It’s up to us to see them, accept them, celebrate them.
And to give in return.
Beyond the horizon Lies infinite possibility Eyes cannot see. Sky meeting sea Sea meeting sky… I fly ever onward Nested and rested in the Giver of every good and perfect gift.
Today, there might be an egg.
******** with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge
On Monday afternoon I came home to check the nest on my front door wreath, expecting that finch fledglings had flown. They are the earliest brood I’ve ever known: four tiny blue eggs laid during the last week of February and hatching by the second week of March; I discovered a pile of fuzzy gray, mohawked nestlings after a snowfall.
By Monday, as the temperatures finally warmed, I hadn’t heard their happy chatter at my door in a day or so. I assumed the babies had left home; it was just over two weeks after hatching, which is normal.
But that afternoon I found two perfectly beautiful fledglings dead in the nest.
First time this has happened in all the years of house finches adopting my porch as their sanctuary. No real clue as to why. Inexperienced parents? Doubtful, as nesting in my wreath is an established pattern and the finches are quite prolific. Disease? Maybe; but where were the other two babies? Sustained freezing temperatures? Possible. Survival of the fittest? Probable.
No sign of the parents. Had something happened to them? Had they abandoned these little ones? If so, why?
I stood before the nest, icy shock quickly melting into grief.
It had to be dealt with…
Armed with paper towels and cloths, I extricated the tiny lifeless babies. I carried them to the edge of the woods out back and covered them, together, in a deep bed of dry leaves. I couldn’t just throw them away; they had been living things. They had been growing. I couldn’t bury them; birds don’t bury their dead and furthermore, they’re creatures of the air.
They never got to fly.
I bid the babies goodbye and told them I was sorry that this was the best I knew to do for them, to let nature reabsorb them.
Then, the nest.
Finches sometimes reuse them.
If I were a mother bird, however, I wouldn’t want to reuse a nest where two of my precious babies had died.
I decided the nest—every one a unique masterpiece, this one threaded with tiny dried flowers and padded with white hair from some mammal—had to go. In case there were mites or germs or traces of decay…
It should be burned, I thought, as I pulled it away from the wreath.
Instead I wrapped it, bagged it, and threw it in the trash.
I almost threw the whole wreath in the trash, too, but just as I took it down, I remembered how, all winter long, two little birds slept in this wreath together at night, keeping each other warm, sometimes startling me by flying out when I opened the door.
No doubt it was the finch parents, staking their claim until nesting season.
I couldn’t throw the wreath away.
I guess…I know… well, just hoping…
I shook out the wreath and hung it back up.
Monday evening, I was forlorn. I read everything I could find online about bird babies dying in nests. I read that bird parents grieve for their lost ones. I peeked out of the front blinds; I am sure I saw a little shadowy figure on the porch railing, just as it saw me and darted away, without a sound.
I didn’t sleep well.
Tuesday morning, as I got dressed for work, the silence was depressing. This is the time I’d hear them most, the parents with their song-chatter, the chorusing baby voices…
So I went outside with my Merlin Bird Sound ID app. It picked up robins, a mockingbird, a Carolina wren, a chipping sparrow, a mourning dove…no house finches.
I drove to work heavy-hearted, knowing that there are countless other birds for the savoring and that in the human world incomparable horrors are steadily unfolding…yet that’s why the finches matter. One bit of joy that softens the edges of the blade. A little song of light against a devouring darkness. A tiny comfort on the wing, a fleeting moment of transcendence…
Tuesday afternoon I came home and checked the wreath.
I don’t know what I expected. I don’t even know if this is wise or healthy (when is a thing officially an obsession?).
It didn’t look any different. I thought I saw one shred of green grass hung in the grapevine where the nest used to be…probably a remnant.
I tried Merlin Bird Sound ID again. —Crows! You are SO. LOUD. Chickadee, cardinal, dark-eyed junco…blue-gray gnatcatcher? Chipping sparrow, osprey. —Osprey! Several of them, impossibly high overhead, calling in their wild, echoing sea-song bursts.
But even in my awe…no finches.
As I turned to leave the driveway a bird sailed right past my head to land in the crape myrtle.
I couldn’t believe it: Papa Finch! Speckled brown, gorgeous red head…I’d know him anywhere.
Then another swoop over the fence to the backyard, not so far from where I laid the babies to rest…is that Mama Finch? Am I making this up? The power of suggestion, or wishful thinking? Writer’s imagination?
I came back into the house to watch a while through the beveled glass of the front door… clandestine operations…
It wasn’t long before he appeared on the garage roof top.
Papa Finch.
With something trailing from his beak.
‘THEY ARE REBUILDING!” I cried aloud to no one, before I remembered to be clandestine.
Sure enough, Mama Finch soon joined him… appears they have a personal stash of building materials on top of my garage, for they took turns swooping to the front door.
Making a new nest, in a big hurry.
If you have time, watch the short video; it is the first footage I’ve ever obtained of the house finch parents. I’ve never even been able to get a photo. But here’s Papa holding wisps of nesting material while Mama sets hers in place; she returns, and he goes to add his layer.
In the exact same spot as the nest I removed the day before, with the lost babies.
This is what they accomplished in one afternoon:
Look at those soft white pieces procured by Papa.
They’re not done, of course, but are working feverishly in tandem; I suspect Mama is ready to lay more eggs…
If I know my finches, they’ll start hatching right around Easter.
And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new —Revelation 21:5.
For the first time, I rejoice at tearing the old nest down. I marvel at the fortitude of these little birds, prevailing today over yesterday’s loss, pressing on with urgency. They have a contribution to make to the world. This is not the first time, nor surely the last, that I am awed by the resilience and regenerative power of nature. It’s all doing exactly what it is meant to do…with hope and healing for the taking.
Courage, dear hearts.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge
With thanks to Stef Boutelier for the “pile-poem” form and Canva template on Day Two of Ethical ELA’s Open Write.
Thanks also to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge.
Life IS a challenge. The greatest. For writing inspiration, Stef quotes author Rainbow Rowell:
So, what if, instead of thinking about solving our whole life, you just think about adding additional good things. One at a time. Just let your pile of good things grow.
lit bits and pieces 