Category: bird's nest

This Twittering World

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photo by Josh Scholten

Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning…

…Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.
from Burnt Norton (1936) part of Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

Eliot didn’t have birds or future tweets of the 21st century in mind when he wrote Burnt Norton in 1936.  He was far more concerned about the concept of time and redemption, using the analogies of a garden, a graveyard, and most disturbingly, a subway train of empty-souled people traveling under London in the dark.  Only the present matters as the past cannot be changed and the future remains unknown, trusting the reassurance and salvation of Logos, the source of  the natural and creative order of all things.   Only God Himself remains outside of the constraints of time and place.

Perhaps Eliot had predicted the unknowable future.  It now is a “twittering world” in a way that Eliot, critical of dehumanizing technology of his time,  somehow was prescient enough to foresee.

When birdsong begins on our farm in early June at 4 AM in the apple, cherry, chestnut, and walnut trees outside our bedroom windows, I am brought face to face, eyes and ears wide open, with the immediate present, distracted from the distraction of my dreams by the distraction of awakening to music of the creative order among the branches,  amidst cool morning air.

Once the birds settle into routine conversation after twenty minutes of their loudly tweeted greetings of the day,  I sit down bleary-eyed at my computer to enter the twittering world of technology, too often filled with fancies and empty of meaning.

Yet, I’m determined.  Not here the darkness, if I can keep it at bay.

No darkness here.

photo by Josh Scholten

Moving Up a Notch

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Scars come in various sizes and shapes, some hidden, some obvious to all.  How they are inflicted also varies–some quite accidental, others therapeutic, and too many intentional.  The most insidious are the ones deep inside where no one can see or know.

Back in our woodlot stands a sawed off stump of a cedar that was old growth in virgin forest over a hundred years ago.  One day the clearcut loggers came through our part of this rural county and took every tree they could to haul to the local sawmills to become beams and lumber for the growing homesteading population in the region.  This cedar once was grand and vast, covering an immense part of the forest floor, providing protection to trillium at its feet and finches’ nests and raptors hunting in its branches.   It nurtured its environment until other plans were made, and one day, axes fell on its sides to cut out the notches for the springboards where two loggers stood to man the saw which brought the tree down.  Where the wood went is anyone’s guess.  It could be one of the mighty beams supporting our old hay barn roof or it could have become the foundation flooring of a nearby one room school house.  It surely had a productive and meaningful life as part of a structure somewhere until rot or carpenter ants or fire brought it once again to its knees.

But the stump remains, a tombstone of remembrance of a once grand tree, the notch scars embedded deep in its sides, nursing new seedlings from its center and moss, lichen and ferns from its sides.

I come from logger stock so I don’t begrudge them their hard scrabble living, their dangerous work in order to feed themselves and their families.  It’s just that those scars even one hundred years later are such a visible reminder of what once was a vital living organism toppled for someone’s need and convenience.

Trees are not unique.  It happens to people too.  Everyday scars are inflicted for reasons hard to justify.  Too often I see them self-inflicted in an effort to feel something other than despair.  Sometimes they are inflicted by others out of fear or need for control.  Moving up a notch only allows more precise aim and a deeper cut.

Sometimes they are simply the scars of living, accumulated along the pathway we tread.

None of them are as deep and wide as the scars that were accepted on our behalf, nor as wondrous as the love that oozed from them, nor as amazing as the grace that abounds to this day because of the promise spelled out by them.

As a result, that tree lives.

 

Lenten Reflection–Be Hatched

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photo by Josh Scholten

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
C.S.Lewis

There is certain comfort in incubating in the nest, snuggled warm under a fluffy breast, satisfied with the status quo. I tend toward perpetual nesting myself, preferring home to travel, too easily contented with the familiar rather than stretching into uncharted territory.

But eventually the unhatched egg gets the boot, even by its parents. When there are no signs of life, no twitches and wiggles and movement inside, it is doomed to rot. And we all know nothing is worse than a rotten egg. Nothing.

So we must chip away and crack open our comfy shell, leaving the fragments behind. Feeble, weak and totally dependent on the grace of others to feed and protect us, we are freed of the confinement of the sterility of the commonplace and loosed upon an unsuspecting world.

Eventually we will fly, the wind under our wings.

photo by Josh Scholten

A Shared Nest

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It’s spring. My dove just hatched her single egg yesterday after two weeks of faithful brooding.   I was puzzled when I approached the dove house as she was in the outside enclosure sunning herself for the first time in those two weeks.  Inside, on the nest, her mate was dutifully taking his turn sitting atop the hatchling, making sure the little naked baby didn’t get cold in the brisk morning temperature.  He was giving her a break from her 24/7 job yet he himself had been her constant companion during those two weeks, sitting on a perch where he could watch her and protect her and the egg if the need arose.    Who was going to give him a break from his vigilance?

They are monogamous and committed partners, these two.  It does my heart good to see such instinctive drive to cooperate together to raise the next generation.  There are a few species who prove over and over again how beneficial it is when two parents work together to raise the young.  I’m not always sure humans are one of those species.  Monogamy is taking a heavy beating in today’s society.

More children are born out of wedlock now than to married parents.  More children grow up in single parent homes than in homes with two parents.  More children are left alone to their own care, or to the care of the internet or television than at any time in history.  They are raising themselves~~disastrously.  There is no one sitting on the nest.

In the mean time the adults are struggling to sort out just what they want for themselves.  While one segment of society is fighting hard for the legal right to get married (and of course divorced),  a majority of heterosexuals are increasingly rejecting legal marriage in favor of a  “roommates with benefits” arrangement.  No harm, no foul.  Those who do spend an average of $20,000 for a wedding ceremony and reception can anticipate a 45% divorce rate within fifteen years.  Not a great return on investment.  I wouldn’t gamble that kind of money.

A New York Times article this week reported on the increasing divorce rates in rural communities as traditional womens’ roles in the home have been turned on their head by economics, politics, education and changes in moral and spiritual values.  Women are opting out rather than staying put in a relationship that doesn’t meet their expectations.  Some are taking their children with them, others choose to leave them behind.  The article is disturbing enough to read, but even more so the hostile and vitriolic comments about marriage and monogamy that follow the article.  My comment in defense of the covenant implied in marriage vows, which takes precedence over the desires of the individual, was a distinct minority view.  Most people want their “pursuit of happiness” to include escaping the bonds of marriage if that is what it takes.  I once attended a wedding where the couple’s vows were “as long as we both shall will.”  Oh really?  And how long might that be?

So just what did they expect?  The princess wedding dress and crisp tuxedo suit with a half dozen attendants along with the anticipation of “happily ever after” is not enough to carry a couple through many sleepless nights, baby poop and toddler vomit, pounds gained and jobs lost.  It can be an interminable tough slog.  It’s not long before it isn’t fun and fantasy anymore, the passion is past, and it is hard work to stay together.  Some people move on, still looking for happily ever after, wherever they may find it: in material possessions, in status and income, in another partner’s bed, in a bottle, or in the haze of smoked substances.

I’m blessed to be bound nearly thirty years in marriage to someone who I celebrate every day, even in the times when it is work to share our nest.  When I look at my dove’s devoted partner, I see that same protective look that I see in my husband’s eyes in his commitment to stay by my side no matter what, helping to raise our youngsters until they fly from our nest to their own adventures and someday families.  And I am committed to stay with him,  just as we said in our vows to each other (from Thomas Hardy): “And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be— and whenever I look up, there will be you.”

When our nest is empty, now only in a matter of a few months, we will still have one another to keep us warm.

Happily together ever after, as long as we both shall live.

Without A Leg to Stand On

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Three weeks old
when his mother allowed me
a peek in the nest
to spy his fledging wings;
he did his best to hide beneath her.

It was another week before
it was clear
he could not stand or perch,
deformed legs sprawled
and spraddled aside.

He flopped rather than hopped
out of the nest at five weeks,
fluttering to the cage floor
in search of the world
outside his mother’s wings.

Crouched next to seed and water
he fed himself, tucked in a corner
watching others come and go.
Soon he jumped out the door
to join them outside.

Now it was up to me:
walk away or put feed and water
on the ground where he could reach.
His desire to live so strong,
his voice just forming in his throat.

Now two months later I fret
as the night grows chill
and the rain falls,
his makeshift shelter may fail
to protect him.

He can not stand
and will never fly,
yet he can sing
and does
so my heart may hear.