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
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.
Halfway between work and home I noticed the field. How could I not, such vibrant green popping against the panorama of brown grass and tired trees giving way to winter.
I needed this shot of unexpected freshness after these first days back to full-time work with my husband at home in the middle of a slow recovery from spinal surgery.
The waning afternoon light slants gold across the green and there, there, clear as day, two deer graze, gilt-edged and peaceful and perfect
as if it isn’t hunting season as if carcasses of their kindred aren’t lying mangled by the roadside within their view as if the long in-betweenness of hours and days and seasons and breaths is no consequence
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.
When death is all around be still, listen to the sound of birds
to hopes lost and found
here in the song life and grace abound
Backstory: House finches return year after year to build nests on my front door wreath. Every spring and summer, my porch becomes a bird sanctuary and nursery; I, a present but uninvolved custodian, watch it all unfolding from the periphery. This winter the little finch pair actually roosted in the wreath at night. That is a first. I imagined them nestled together in the grapevine, keeping each other warm, dreaming dreams of life to come. They started awfully early this season, building their nest in the wreath and laying at least four eggs before the last week of February. It was still cold. March arrived with gusting winds and sustained freezing temperatures; I worried about the tiny life on my door. During winter’s only snow this year, well before before spring officially arrived, the baby finches hatched. Because of the cold, I stayed away; I didn’t want to startle Mama Finch, who needed to be on the nest keeping her babies warm. I saw the hatchlings when they were a day or two old and didn’t check again for about three weeks…expecting they had fledged and possibly gone, as the happy singing and trilling bird-talk at my door had ceased. When I came around to check the nest, I found one fledgling dead, its little head drooped over the front of the nest, and another beautiful fledgling, so tiny, with such perfect little wings, enmeshed with the nest at the back—almost becoming part of the nest. This is another first: in all these generations of finches I’ve not known any babies to die. In fact, they usually stay in the nest after they can fly, seemingly unwilling to leave. I marvel at how they can still stuff themselves into it. Home sweet home…until now. Not wanting to leave the dead baby finches and fearing there were parasites or some disease in the nest, I removed the babies, placed them deep in a bed of leaves by the woods out back, and destroyed the old nest.
It broke my heart.
The parents must have been watching me…I read that birds mourn for their little lost ones.
They began rebuilding immediately. With urgency, Soon there was a perfect green nest artistically adorned with a long gray feather from some other bird, lined with layers of the softest, whitest fluff —wherever do they find this? And a week before Easter there were five—five!—new eggs.
They began hatching yesterday. I’ve been keeping close watch…and this is the first time I’ve caught a glimpse (just the very quickest glimpse) of a finch actually hatching.
The poem at the opening was inspired by one shared for VerseLove on Ethical ELA yesterday, coinciding with the hatching of these finch eggs: Why Do You Write Poems When Death is All Around Us?
The answer, for me, is a matter of awe: Life is all around, somehow overcoming, even singing at the door.
*******
with thanks to Andy Schoenborn for sharing Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre’s poem yesterday and Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life story sharing-place
and to the finches for infusing my days with so much awe hope and notes of joy
On the fourth day of rebuilding after tragedy, here’s what the new house finch nest looks like:
In all the years of finches raising broods in my front door wreath, I have never seen a nest lined with such deep layers of fluff and feathers. The little blue eggs to come any morning now (prediction: the first one on Sunday) will be so well-cradled, so tenderly sheltered.
This week I read that birds mourn the loss of their young.
I believe it.
I also believe, looking at this nest, that my house finches are determined not to lose any more.
*******
Backstory/timeline:
March 1: Auspices – discovery of an unusually early nest and eggs laid in February (with photo)
March 5: Eavesdropping – audio of the parent finches’ joyous chatter
March 14: Nestlings – likely hatched during a snowfall (with photo)
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
On the last day of Ethical ELA’s Open Write, host Denise Hill offered this invitation:
“Take a metaphor or idiom and reverse it or twist it up in any which way you choose – mumbo jumbo jam it!
Then write from the ‘sense’ the new phrase makes. It may be total nonsense. That’s perfectly fine! It may provide a ‘feeling’ or strike a memory chord or a fantasy chord with you in some way that inspires your poem today. Just go with it!”
Here is what came of my scrambling the writing on the wall…
The Wall on the Writing
In prehistory cave-dwellers dipped their fingers into animal fat charcoal their own earwax
then dirt and ash
to paint their stories on the walls by flickering torchlight
over time many caves collapsed
to be reabsorbed by the earth
In the course of human migration the region of the caves became a fortified city with iron gates and great stone walls
one of which was constructed over the buried caves
It is said that at this wall the great orators gave their mighty speeches humble petitioners made their prayers poets composed their epics chroniclers penned histories and storytellers found their words
I do not know if the wall or the legends are real
but I do know that when I hit a writing block that I cannot go over around or through if I dig deep deeper deeper still within
I will find the words
just human DNA finding its way with story waiting deep deeper deeper still beneath the wall on the writing
lit bits and pieces 