Here in the time between snow and the bud of the rhododendron, we watch the robins, look into
the gray, and narrow our view to the patches of wild grasses coming green. The pile of ashes
in the fireplace, haphazard sticks on the paths and gardens, leaves tangled in the ivy and periwinkle
lie in wait against our will. This drawing near of renewal, of stems and blossoms, the hesitant return
of the anarchy of mud and seed says not yet to the blood’s crawl. When the deer along the stream
look back at us, we know again we have left them. We pull a blanket over us when we sleep.
As if living in a prayer, we say amen to the late arrival of red, the stun of green, the muted yellow
at the end of every twig. We will lift up our eyes unto the trees hoping to discover a gnarled nest within
the branches’ negative space. And we will watch for a fox sparrow rustling in the dead leaves underneath. ~Jack Ridl, “Here in Time Between” from Practicing to Walk Like a Heron.
“Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they’ll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields… and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?” ― J.R.R. Tolkien
In our despairing and wintery moments, we recollect and hold on to memories most precious to us, like a prayer, recalling what makes each moment, indeed life itself, special and worthwhile.
Something so seemingly simple becomes most cherished and retrievable: the aroma of cinnamon in a warm kitchen, the splash of new buds forming on orchard branches, the cooing of mourning doves as spring light begins to dawn, the velvety softness of a newborn foal’s fur, the taste of sweet berries in late spring.
Renewal is happening around us – and if we dig deep in our longing hearts, renewal happens within as well.
Death will not have the final word.
Amen and again, Amen.
Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? Do you remember?
This year’s Lenten theme: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4: 18
I have been trying to think of the word to say to you that would never fail to lift you up when you are too tired or too sad not [to] be downcast. When you are so sad that you ‘cannot work’ there is always a danger fear will enter in and begin withering around.
A good way to remain on guard is to go to the window and watch the birds for an hour or two or three. It is very comforting to see their beaks opening and shutting. ~Maeve Brennan in a letter to writer Tillie Olsen
My window is a book of birds. I draw back the curtains and there they all are, scribbling their lives in the trees.
Bird in the holly tree, invisible mentor, your cheerful philosophy is a glittering chain of light slung between us, drawing me ever closer to the source of your joy.
The silver thread of your song guides me through the dark as surely as the night I first heard you, improvising on a theme of beauty and truth in the holly tree out there. ~Hugo Williams from “Birdwatching”
I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven. ~Emily Dickinson in an 1885 letter to Miss Eugenia Hall
The windows are dressed in feathers where the birds have flown against them, then fallen below into the flowers where their bodies lie grounded, still, slowly disappearing each day until all that is left are their narrow, prehensile bones.
I have sat at my window now for years and watched a hundred birds mistake the glass for air and break their necks, wondering what to do, how else to live among them and keep my view. Not to mention the sight of them at the feeder in the morning, especially the cardinal in snow.
What sign to post on the sill that says, “Warning, large glass window. Fatal if struck. Fly around or above but not away. There are seeds in the feeder and water in the bath. I need you, which is to say, I’m sorry for my genius as the creature inside who attracts you with seeds and watches you die against the window I’ve built with the knowledge of its danger to you. With a heart that rejects its reasons in favor of keeping what it wants: the sight of you, the sight of you.” ~Chard deNiord, “Confession of a Bird Watcher” from Interstate
I made the terrible faux pas of running out of suet and bird seed this week. My little feathered buddies fly up to the feeders by our kitchen window and poke around the empty trays, glance disparagingly in my direction, then fly away disheartened. There is no free lunch today.
I am no birder; I don’t go out looking for birds like the serious people of the birding community who keep a careful list of all they seen or hear. I don’t even track every species that comes to visit my humble offerings here on the farm nor do I recognize the frequent visitors as individuals. I just enjoy watching so many diverse sizes, colors and types coming together in one place to feast in relative peace and cooperation and I’m the hostess.
Birds are my visual and tangible reminder that the good Lord provides, buoyed by the help of hospitable humans who set out irresistible treats next to big windows. These delightful creatures have such autonomy and genuine glee in their daily existence until they forget their boundaries and slam headlong into invisible glass, too often falling to the ground for good. Then the farm cats are gleeful.
I know all about the warnings to stop doing communal bird feeding: spreading bird diseases too easily among multiple species who come together to feast, attracting vermin and assisting their burgeoning population growth, assisting predators like my aforementioned farm cats in their decimation of the wild bird population, encouraging wild birds to ignore their usual migration urge to seek better feeding/breeding climates so they often die prematurely.
As a trained scientist in animal behavior, I understand it all. As a human observer seeking to enjoy feathered friends during long gray winter days, I ignore it all.
Pardon me now, as I better head to the farm store to replenish my bird feasting stash. See you all later.
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Silence and darkness grow apace, broken only by the crack of a hunter’s gun in the woods. Songbirds abandon us so gradually that, until the day when we hear no birdsong at all but the scolding of the jay, we haven’t fully realized that we are bereft — as after a death. Even the sun has gone off somewhere…
Now we all come in, having put the garden to bed, and we wait for winter to pull a chilly sheet over its head. ~Jane Kenyonfrom “Season of Change and Loss” in Winter: A Spiritual Biography
The tree, and its haunting bird, Are the loves of my heart; But where is the word, the word, Oh where is the art,
To say, or even to see, For a moment of time, What the Tree and the Bird must be In the true sublime?
They shine, listening to the soul, And the soul replies; But the inner love is not whole, and the moment dies.
Oh give me before I die The grace to see With eternal, ultimate eye, The Bird and the Tree.
The song in the living Green, The Tree and the Bird – Oh have they ever been seen, Ever been heard? ~Ruth Pitter “The Bird in the Tree”
Every day now we hear hunters firing in the woods and the wetlands around our farm, most likely aiming for the few ducks that have stayed in the marshes through the winter, or possibly a Canadian goose or a deer to bring home for the freezer. The usual day-long serenade of birdsong is replaced by shotguns popping, hawks and eagle screams and chittering from the treetops, the occasional dog barking, woodpeckers hammering at tree bark with the bluejays and squirrels arguing over the last of the filbert nuts.
In the clear cold evenings, when coyotes aren’t howling in the moonlight, the owls hoot to each other across the fields from one patch of woods to another, their gentle resonant conversation echoing back and forth. Our horses, confined to their stalls in the barns, snort and blow as they bury their noses in flakes of summer-bound hay.
But there are no longer birdsong arias; I’m left bereft of their blending musical tapestry that wakes me at 4 AM in the spring.
And no peeper orchestra tuning up in the swamps in the evenings, rising and falling on the breeze.
It is way too quiet – clearly a time of bereavement. The chilly silence of the darkened days, interrupted by gunshot percussion, is like a baton raised in anticipation after rapping the podium to bring us all to attention. I wait and listen for the downbeat of spring — the return of birds and frogs tuning their throats, preparing their symphony.
Oh, give me the grace to see and hear the Bird in the Tree with an eternal ultimate eye and ear.
Like a bird on a tree I’m just sitting here I get time It’s clear to see From up here The world seems small We can seat together It’s so beautiful You and me We meant to be In the great outdoors Forever free Sometimes you need to go And take a step back To see the truth around you From a distance you can tell You and me We meant to be In the great outdoors Forever free ~Eldar Kedem
Between the March and April line— That magical frontier Beyond which summer hesitates, Almost too heavenly near. The saddest noise, the sweetest noise, The maddest noise that grows and grows,— The birds, they make it in the spring, At night’s delicious close. The saddest noise I know. It makes us think of all the dead That sauntered with us here, By separation’s sorcery Made cruelly more dear. It makes us think of what we had, And what we now deplore. We almost wish those siren throats Would go and sing no more. An ear can break a human heart As quickly as a spear, We wish the ear had not a heart So dangerously near. ~Lyrics adapted from an Emily Dickinson poem
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Wild geese fly south, creaking like anguished hinges; along the riverbank the candles of the sumacs burn dull red. It’s the first week of October. Season of woolen garments taken out of mothballs; of nocturnal mists and dew and slippery front steps, and late-blooming slugs; of snapdragons having one last fling; of those frilly ornamental pink-and-purple cabbages that never used to exist, but are all over everywhere now. ~Margaret Atwoodfrom The Blind Assassin
But it was no good trying to tell about the beauty. It was just that life was beautiful beyond belief, and that is a kind of joy which has to be lived.
Sometimes, when they came down from the cirrus levels to catch a better wind, they would find themselves among the flocks of cumulus: huge towers of modeled vapor, looking as white as Monday’s washing and as solid as meringues. Perhaps one of these piled-up blossoms of the sky, these snow-white droppings of a gigantic Pegasus, would lie before them several miles away. They would set their course toward it, seeing it grow bigger silently and imperceptibly, a motionless growth; and then, when they were at it, when they were about to bang their noses with a shock against its seeming solid mass, the sun would dim. Wraiths of mist suddenly moving like serpents of the air would coil about them for a second. Grey damp would be around them, and the sun, a copper penny, would fade away. The wings next to their own wings would shade into vacancy, until each bird was a lonely sound in cold annihilation, a presence after uncreation. And there they would hang in chartless nothing, seemingly without speed or left or right or top or bottom, until as suddenly as ever the copper penny glowed and the serpents writhed. Then, in a moment of time, they would be in the jeweled world once more: a sea under them like turquoise and all the gorgeous palaces of heaven new created, with the dew of Eden not yet dry. ~T.H. White from The Once and Future King
Each day this first week of October, feathered travelers have slipped past us unseen and unheard. They may stop for a drink in the pond or a bite to eat in the field and woods, but we never know they are there – they are simply passing through.
Others are compelled to announce their journey with great fanfare, usually heard before seen. The drama of migration becomes bantering conversation from bird to bird, bird to earth, bird to sun, moon and stars, with unseen magnetic forces pointing the way.
When not using voices, their wings sing the air with rhythmic beat and whoosh, like the creaking of rusty hinges.
It reminds me how we are all together here — altogether — even when our voices are raised sharply, our silences brooding, our hurts magnified, our sorrows deep. How we spend our days becomes a matter of debate.
Our destination is not in dispute however. We’re all heading to the same end to the human story of creation/fall/redemption, no matter how we manage to get there.
It is just that life is beautiful beyond belief, and that is a kind of joy which has to be lived.
So let’s unite our wings and voices in joy: we are just passing through, just passing through, just passing through.
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Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come– ~Chinese Proverb
photo by Harry Rodenberger
I heard a wood thrush in the dusk Twirl three notes and make a star— My heart that walked with bitterness Came back from very far.
Three shining notes were all he had, And yet they made a starry call— I caught life back against my breast And kissed it, scars and all. ~Sara Teasdale, featured in “The Wood” in Earth Song
…then came a sound even more delicious than the sound of water. Close beside the path they were following, a bird suddenly chirped from the branch of a tree. It was answered by the chuckle of another bird a little further off. And then, as if that had been a signal, there was chattering and chirruping in every direction, and then a moment of full song, and within five minutes the whole wood was ringing with birds’ music, and wherever Edmund’s eyes turned he saw birds alighting on branches, or sailing overhead or chasing one another or having their little quarrels or tidying up their feathers with their beaks. ~C.S. Lewis from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
Their song reminds me of a child’s neighborhood rallying cry—ee-ock-ee—with a heartfelt warble at the end. But it is their call that is especially endearing. The towhee has the brass and grace to call, simply and clearly, “tweet”. I know of no other bird that stoops to literal tweeting. ~Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven. ~Emily Dickinson in an 1885 letter to Miss Eugenia Hall
I need reminding that what I offer up from my heart predicts what I will receive there.
If I’m grumbling and falling apart like a dying vine instead of a vibrant green tree~~~ coming up empty and hollow with discouragement, entangled in the cobwebs and mildew of worry, only grumbling and grousing~~~ then no singing bird will come.
It is so much better to nurture the singers of joy and gladness with a heart budding green with grace and gratitude, anticipatory and expectant.
My welcome mat is out and waiting.
The symphony can begin any time now…
Original Barnstorming artwork note cards available as a gift to you with a $50 donation to support Barnstorming – information here
Every spring I hear the thrush singing in the glowing woods he is only passing through. His voice is deep, then he lifts it until it seems to fall from the sky. I am thrilled. I am grateful. Then, by the end of morning, he’s gone, nothing but silence out of the tree where he rested for a night. And this I find acceptable. Not enough is a poor life. But too much is, well, too much. Imagine Verdi or Mahler every day, all day. It would exhaust anyone. ~Mary Oliver “In Our Woods, Sometimes a Rare Music ” from “A Thousand Mornings”
What does it say about me that six months ago, in the darkness of December mornings, I was yearning for the early sunrises of June but once I’m well into the June calendar, these early mornings are no longer so compelling? It confirms my suspicion that I’m incapable of reveling in the moment at hand, something that would likely take years of therapy to undo. I’m sure there is some deep seated issue here, but I’m too sleep deprived to pursue it.
My eyes popped open this morning at 4:17 AM, aided and abetted by vigorous birdsong in the trees surrounding our farm house. There was daylight sneaking through the venetian blinds at that unseemly hour as well. Once the bird chorus started, with one lone chirpy voice in the apple tree by our bedroom window, it rapidly became a full frontal onslaught symphony orchestra from all manner of avian life-forms, singing from the plum, cherry, walnut, fir and chestnut. Sleep became irretrievable.
It would be such a poor life without the birdsong.
I remember wishing for early morning birdsong last December when it seemed the sun would never rise and the oppressive silence would never lift. I had conveniently forgotten those mornings a few years ago when we had a flock of over a dozen young roosters who magically found their crows very early in the morning a mere 10 weeks after hatching. Nothing before or since could match their alarm clock expertise after 4 AM. No barbecue before or since has tasted as sweet (apologies to my vegan/vegetarian readers, but too much was too much).
So I remind myself how bad it can really be; this morning’s backyard birdsong was a veritable symphony in comparison.
I already need a nap.
Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark. ~Rabindranath Tagore
photo by Harry Rodenberger
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Only a flicker Over the strained time-ridden faces Distracted from distraction by distraction Filled with fancies and empty of meaning…
Not here Not here the darkness, in this twittering world...
After the kingfisher’s wing Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still At the still point of the turning world. ~T.S. Eliot – excerpts from Burnt Norton, first of the Four Quartets
Their song reminds me of a child’s neighborhood rallying cry—ee-ock-ee—with a heartfelt warble at the end. But it is their call that is especially endearing. The towhee has the brass and grace to call, simply and clearly, “tweet”. I know of no other bird that stoops to literal tweeting. ~Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
A hundred thousand birds salute the day:– One solitary bird salutes the night: Its mellow grieving wiles our grief away, And tunes our weary watches to delight; It seems to sing the thoughts we cannot say, To know and sing them, and to set them right; Until we feel once more that May is May, And hope some buds may bloom without a blight. This solitary bird outweighs, outvies, The hundred thousand merry-making birds Whose innocent warblings yet might make us wise Would we but follow when they bid us rise, Would we but set their notes of praise to words And launch our hearts up with them to the skies. ~Christina Rossetti “A Hundred Thousand Birds”
Eliot didn’t have in mind future tweets on 21st century Twitter when he wrote Burnt Norton in 1935. He was far more concerned about the concept of Time and redeeming our distraction from connecting to God Himself, the “still point” source of the natural and creative order of all things. He uses the analogies of a garden of flowers and singing birds, a graveyard, and most disturbingly, a subway train of empty-souled people traveling in the Tube under London in the dark.
Eliot was predicting an unknowable future. Great Britain was facing a second war with Germany, but nearly a century later, we live 24/7 in a “twittering world” war of empty words and darkness through devices we carry with us at all times. Eliot, critical of the dehumanizing technology of his time, was prescient enough to foresee how modern technology might facilitate our continued fall from grace and distract us from the source of our redemption.
Perhaps Rossetti understands best. When birdsong begins on our farm in June at 4 AM in the apple, cherry, chestnut, and walnut trees outside our bedroom windows, I am swept away from my dreams by the distraction of wakening to music of the created order among the branches surrounding me, immersed in the beauty of dew-laden blooms and cool morning air.
Once a hundred thousand birds settle into routine conversation after twenty minutes of their loudly tweeted greetings of the day, I settle too, sitting bleary-eyed at my computer to navigate the twittering world of technology which is too often filled with fancies, or meanness, or, most often, completely empty of meaning altogether.
Yet, each morning as my heart is launched by the warbling songs outside my window, I’m determined to dismiss the distraction of the tweets and twitters on my screen.
Not here will darkness be found on this page, if I can keep it at bay. I want to answer light to light and light with light.
No darkness here.
I hear a bird chirping, up in the sky I’d like to be free like that spread my wings so high I see the river flowing water running by I’d like to be that river, see what I might find
I feel the wind a blowin’, slowly changing time I’d like to be that wind, I’d swirl and the shape sky I smell the flowers blooming, opening for spring I’d like to be those flowers, open to everything
I feel the seasons change, the leaves, the snow and sun I’d like to be those seasons, made up and undone I taste the living earth, the seeds that grow within I’d like to be that earth, a home where life begins
I see the moon a risin’, reaching into night I’d like to be that moon, a knowing glowing light I know the silence as the world begins to wake I’d like to be that silence as the morning breaks
He does-n’t know the world at all Who stays in his nest and does-n’t go out. He does-n’t know what birds know best Nor what I sing a-bout, Nor what I sing a-bout, Nor what sing a-bout: That the world is full of love-li-ness.
When dew-drops spar-kle in the grass And earth is a-flood with mor-ning light. light A black-bird sings up-on a bush To greet the dawn-ing af-ter night, the dawn-ing af-ter night, the dawn-ing af-ter night. Then I know how fine it is to live.
Hey, try to o-pen your heart to beau-ty; Go to the woods some-day And weave a wreath of me-mory there. Then if tears ob-scure your way You’ll know how won-der-ful it is To be a-live.
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Trust that there is a tiger, muscular Tasmanian, and sly, which has never been seen and never will be seen by any human eye. Trust that thirty thousand sword- fish will never near a ship, that far from cameras or cars elephant herds live long elephant lives. Believe that bees by the billions find unidentified flowers on unmapped marshes and mountains. Safe in caves of contentment, bears sleep. Through vast canyons, horses run while slowly snakes stretch beyond their skins in the sun. I must trust all this to be true, though the few birds at my feeder watch the window with small flutters of fear, so like my own. ~Susan Kinsolving “Trust”
When I stand at the window watching the flickers, sparrows, finches, chickadees, and red-winged blackbirds come and go from the feeders, I wonder who is watching who. They remain wary of me, fluttering away quickly if I approach. They fear capture, even within a camera. They have a life to be lived without my witness or participation. So much happens that I never see or know about; it would be overwhelming to absorb it all.
I understand: I fear being captured too.
Even if only for a moment as an image preserved forever, I know it doesn’t represent all I am, all I’ve done, all I feel, all my moments put together. The birds are, and I am, so much more than one moment.
Only God sees me fully in every moment that I exist, witness to my freedom and captivity, my loneliness and grief, my joy and tears, knowing my very best and my very worst.
And He is not overwhelmed by what He sees of me. He knows me so well, in Him I must trust.
photo by Larry Goldman (Gombe National Park, Tanzania)
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What’s incomplete in me seeks refuge in blackberry bramble and beech trees, where creatures live without dogma and water moves in patterns more ancient than philosophy. I stand still, child eavesdropping on her elders. I don’t speak the language but my body translates best it can, wakening skin and gut, summoning the long kinship we share with everything. ~Laura Grace Weldon, “Common Ground” from Blackbird
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ~Wendell Berry “The Peace of Wild Things”
Nearly thirty months of pandemic separation and I long to share our farm with our far-flung grandchildren who live across the ocean, to watch them discover the joys and sorrows of this place we inhabit. I will tell them there is light beyond this darkness, there is refuge amid the brambles, there is kinship with what surrounds us, there is peace amid the chaos, there is a smile behind the tears, there is stillness within the noisiness, there is rescue when all seems hopeless, there is grace as the old gives way to new.
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When I lived in the foothills birds flocked to the feeder:
house finches, goldfinches, skyblue lazuli buntings,
impeccably dressed chickadees, sparrows in work clothes, even
hummingbirds fastforwarding through the trees. Some of them
disappeared after a week, headed north, I thought, with the sun.
But the first cool day they were back, then gone,
then back, more reliable than weathermen, and I realized
they hadn’t gone north at all, but up the mountain, as invisible
to me as if they had flown a thousand miles, yet in reality
just out of sight, out of reach— maybe at the end of our lives
the world lifts that slightly away from us, and returns once
or twice to see if we’ve refilled the feeder, if we still remember it,
or if we’ve taken leave of our senses altogether. ~Sharon Bryan, “The Underworld” from Sharp Stars
I only started feeding birds outside our kitchen window a few years ago. Previously, I thought it was an activity for older people with nothing better to do. After I turned sixty, I realized I was now qualified to feed the birds.
Now the professional wildlife and bird folks tell us we are endangering the welfare of wild birds by feeding them – the rapidly dropping numbers of songbirds in North America is due to pesticide use, window vs. bird deaths, climate change and birds not migrating in their usual patterns due to artificial feeding stations like mine. Most worrisome is transmission of fatal diseases when birds flock together at feeders. And Avian flu is on the rise in our country with hundreds of thousands of farm birds being preventively slaughtered in the last few weeks.
Now I’ve become the purveyor of pandemic conditions.
Good grief.
I let the feeders go empty for longer periods in my attempt to appease both the birds and the ornithologists. If the feeders dangle without visitors for several days, I refill them, more for me than for them as I appreciate the wild birds’ cheerful presence within a few feet of where I eat my breakfast as they eat theirs.
I’m not sure who to apologize to for still wanting to feed the birds. I grew up with Mary Poppins singing “tuppence a bag” and believed every word she sang. The birds themselves seem robust and chipper, happily coming and going as they please. Yet the scientists and bird experts see me, the casual backyard bird feeder as the problem. Perhaps selling packaged birdseed will eventually be outlawed so people like me can no longer have the option to cause this disruption to our feathered friends’ life cycles.
The birds and I will strike a deal so they know I mean well and haven’t taken leave of my senses. I’ll plant more more bird-friendly bushes on the farm. I’ll dispense a treat now and then if they promise to continue to stop by to check to see if my welcome mat is still out.
After all, I don’t want them to feel forgotten…or probably more to the point, like the little old bird woman on the steps of St. Paul, I don’t want them to ever forget me.
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