Les Oiseaux

It's been a beautiful week for walking, my foot is healed, and I am much in need of solitude these days. 

 

This morning a loon floated serenely on Horseshoe Lake and a bald eagle stood guard over Lower Lake.  We're about four miles from downtown Cleveland here.

 

Pretty good morning, I'd say.


 

24-30/60

Halfway there!  What's left, today, of the end of my third decade?

Not my legal career, although it was my major focus during those years.

Birds, yes ~ although not with the intensity in which I invested most of my free time in those years in which I became completely enthralled with all things avian.  My husband and I did some backpacking in that time period, and became intent on birding as an alternative to endless groaning about sore muscles and blistered feet.  My friend Cindy, in Alaska this week, reported seeing a varied thrush, something I remember from our week in the backcountry of Glacier National Park.  We went to southwestern Arizona almost entirely for the birding,  we covered our own Great Lakes region extensively, and we had a lot of fun birding with my grandparents in Florida each spring. 

RELIGION ~ there it is.  I think I was 29 when I impulsively announced one morning that we should find a church, which we accomplished by watching a few services on local cable tv, so that we wouldn't have to visit in person without some sense of what we were getting into.  Within a couple of months I was baptized, confirmed, and attending church every Sunday.  I basically had no idea what any of the words I'd said to get there really meant, and I had no idea what belonging to a church community meant, either.  (Remember, almost all my experience of religion was in boarding schools, and more academic than anything else.)  Considering the developments of the next three decades, this little glitch in my history makes me extremely laid back about any kind of way someone wants to come into the church.  I am kind of obnoxiously traditional about certain aspects of church life, but as far as barriers to entrance or participation ~ no, I really can't promote any of those.

Which reminds me:  there's been an article making the rounds the past week or so about how churches desiring to attract young people shouldn't go out of their way to become all cool and hip.  Indeed.  I know that everyone finds his or her own way in but: at 29, a person divided between high heels in a  downtown legal office and muddy boots out in the birding field,  a person whose musical tastes were also evenly divided between rock 'n roll and the Cleveland Orchestra, there was no way I would have walked into a church unless it looked like this, with music and preaching to match:

This is in fact, an old photo of our UMC Church of the Savior in Cleveland Heights. 

 

I wasn't looking for a cozy, intimate family church.  I wasn't looking for potluck dinners ~ I didn't actually know about potluck dinners (although it turned out that we were to go to plenty of them). I did want to find some people interested in the same social justice issues that I was interested in, and my personal history told me that they might be found in a church. 

 

But mostly, I was on the trail of the mystery of God.  I just didn't know it yet.

Cooper's Hawk Day

Small Church Town is so small that my three-mile morning sojourn requires two figure-eights.  (I quickly gave up walking along the highway two years ago.  It's actually MUCH safer to walk in the suburbs and city than in the country!)  As I walk down one of the narrow roads, I almost always see bluebirds on a particular telephone wire, and red-headed woodpeckers in a particular yard.

This morning I almost missed the bird that zipped across a field and into a tree, as I was wiping the sweat from my glasses, but it kindly zipped back out so that I could get a look: a Cooper's hawk.  I suppose it could have been a large sharp-shinned hawk; what do I know?  But I'm going with Cooper's.

My friend Lisa frequently writes about the significance of birds in her life.  Mine are the gannet and the kingfisher; I have long histories of encounter and meaning with both of them.  I seldom see Coops, although the habitat around here is their kind of place, and so I wondered at one suddenly appearing.

I decided it might have some significance for me, with a big-zero birthday looming in the next couple of weeks, and so I googled "Cooper's hawk totem" and found:

"[O]vercoming/removal of obstacles, vision, rebirth, healing, spirituality, freedom, high-mindedness, speed, [and] grace."

I'm good with that.  Happy Birthday to Me!

 

 

Photo credit: colorobhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/colorob/4938497456/">colorob

> / Foterhttp://foter.com">Foter> / CC">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">CC BY-NC-ND

Noticing

Nearly everything I've read so far this morning has been about Noticing.  I'm going to take that as a hint.

 

From 31 Days of St. Ignatius

 

From A Church for Starving Artists

 

From the Pope

 

From Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge (NM)

 

All of which reminded me of Mary Oliver's poem, "I happened to be standing."

Newbies

The ostensible subject matter of this particular Mary Oliver poem is crickets, but I think it applies to my house finches as well:

 

 

Let us hope

 

 

It will always be like this,

each of us going on

in our inexplicable ways

building the universe.

 

from

 

Why I Wake Early (2004)

Hatching!

 

As of early this evening, one of my house finches is making a break for it, and it looks like there's a crack in the other egg at the top as well.

 

It's a bit chilly, so I promised myself one picture, and one only, until it warms up late tomorrow morning.  This is requiring every ounce of self-discipline I have. 

 

I'm leaving Church Town tomorrow afternoon for a few days at home, so I hope they all decide that tomorrow's a good day for hatching! 

 

 

Housekeeping

"And here again is a foreshadowing -- the world will be made whole."

 

~ Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

 

 

 

A week ago, having insistently been made aware of what I thought was a house sparrow zipping away from the porch each time the screen door slammed, I finally investigated the gutters for the nest which had to be there.

It had been carefully constructed in a hanging basket of geraniums. 

Last night, my google image research convinced me that the birds are house finches ~ the eggs are too blue and too lightly speckled to pass muster as those of house sparrows.  Male house finches are splashed with red, so if the father shows up ~ and I presume he will if all six eggs hatch, as there will be plenty of work to occupy both parents ~ I will have a definitive identification.

My grandmother maintained a small museum of birds' nests, which she used to present to school groups and classes whenever she was invited to share her store of avian knowledge.  For several summers, a pair of wrens nested in her clothespin bag.

 

I have become my grandmother!  Not a bad fate.



 

What Shall I Write About?

 

 

Let's see . . .  there was the National Day of Prayer breakfast.  I was reminded, as I sat in a banquet room with 450 people and listened to prayers that were 100% Christian and essentially included an altar call (in words, not acts) and a rousing singing of "God Bless America," that two years ago I served on my home city's committee for an interfaith commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.   These were very different experiences and events.  I could write about those.  Or not.

 

Monday I went to an outstanding program on suicide prevention for clergy and mental health professionals.  I learned some things that were immediately helpful, and heard some viewpoints that were disturbing.  I could write about that.  Or not.

 

This afternoon I am co-officiating at a funeral with a Church of the Brethren pastor.  We have some, uh, differences.  I could write about that.  Or not.

 

Last night I was told that if I were a more experienced pastor, I would know when to remain silent.  I could write about that.  Or not.

 

I am having some trouble here.  In general.  Last week someone who knows about these things said to me, in a good kind of way (I think), that I am an extremely self-actualized person.  I don't really understand what that means, but I think it explains why I am having some trouble.  In general.

 

I think what I'll write about is this: On my walk this morning, I saw a red-headed woodpecker.  Made my day.  And it wasn't even 8:00.


 

Small Things - 1

  

There are a couple of big things trying to surface in my life these days.  Should they happen to shake out their wings and emerge, I'll write about them.   In the meantime . . .

 

The holidays are coming.  I realized in the midst of an online discussion a couple of days ago about Christmas that my preference would still be to go straight from early November into January.  I am so not looking forward to that upcoming six-week period of dissociation. 

 

I don't feel like commenting upon it, however.  I think that over the past four years I've exhausted what I've had to say.

 

So: some posts about small things. A look back at each day for something small and good.

 

This evening at sunset found me walking around Lower Lake and through the Nature Center's boardwalk trails.  I stopped to watch several chickadees and a couple of white-breasted nuthatches at a feeder.

 

Yesterday's newspaper birding column mentioned an influx of red-breasted nuthatches.  One of them spent several days at our feeders at home before the hurricane came through, along with white-breasted friends who are still here.

 

It was delightful to recall our unexpected visitor as I wandered around in the early evening light.

Mother's Day 2012

Take a Look!

I have a photo on Picturing God today!

Thanksgiving Prayer

I like this one, by James Martin, S.J., from the Huff Post Thanksgiving Bloggers:

Dear God,

Sometimes my life is so rushed that
I have a hard time remembering to be grateful.
And even when I do remember I don't pause to say thanks.

So help me to remember all the things for which I'm thankful.

For my friends, who make me laugh and keep me laughing at myself.
For my family, who you chose to be with me -- sometimes for reasons I can't quite see!
For my religious community, which invites me to connect with you in new ways.
For my job, which helps me put food on the table and clothes on my back.

And if I have no family or friends, or don't have a job, let me be still be grateful.

For my country, which gives me the freedom to be the person I hope to become.
For my health, which helps me to praise you, and enables me to help others in need.
For the world itself, which you crown with your beauty.
And if I'm still not feeling grateful, increase my gratitude for little things.
For seeing a tree slowly turn red in the fall.
For the surprising cold of the first snowflake on my face.
For hearing a child's laughter on a sad day.
For seeing a beautiful sunset after a tough week.

And if I'm still not grateful,
or am too rushed to savor all you have given me,
Please increase my openness to gratitude.
Magnify my ability to appreciate life.
And help me grow in thankfulness.
For that alone I would thank you,
Dear God.

Image: Sandhill Cranes at Jesper-Pulaski NWR, Thanksgiving 2005

What Do You Want?

As I skimmed my sidebar this morning, three links (and I went looking for a fourth) caught my attention.

The title of today's Abbey of the Arts post is The Curves of My Longing. The topic does not, of course, concern the curves of my longing.  I am now in possession of  two recent incision scars  that follow the contours of my body's curves, and my immediate longing is for the pain to subside.  My longer-term wish, the desire of which I am reminded by the heavy tenderness accompanying my every movement, is that I not have to continue the journey represented by those scars.  That wish has not been granted, and so I wonder: With what do I replace it?

Second link: People for Others today references another post by another writer, who asks: 

"What does my faith give me? It gives me a love story. Not a story that explains love, but a story that gives birth to—and directs my heart, mind, and very being to—the fullest expression and fulfillment of love."

and then responds:

"Am I, because of my faith, better at love than those with no faith? Difficult to say, but I’m going to guess the answer is “No.” Am I, because of my faith, better at love than I would be without my faith? Also difficult to say. I hope the answer is “Yes,” but then I cannot answer with certainty. At the end of the day, I walk in darkness like everyone else, and I hope that this sacred story, the story of my life, and the stories all around me in what I see and hear are all one in the same, even while they are many and different."

And I wonder the same thing: Am I better at love because of my faith?  Probably not.  (Just ask anyone who lives with me.)  Perhaps I am merely better at longing to be better at love.

Some years ago as I was walking along the Little Lakes, I stopped to watch a pair of young green herons learning to balance in the small trees overhanging Lower Lake.  They were quite comical, with both their pin feathers and their legs sticking out in all directions.

This morning, the following image, of a graceful adult green heron, appears in Picturing God:

My comment was that it's inspiring to see what can be appropriated with a season of practice.

What do you want?  That's the perennial question posed by Ignatian spirituality, inhabiting every crevice of life with its assertion that God speaks to us through our desires.  I recall my astonishment at the insistence with which my spiritual director posed that question as we made our way through the Spiritual Exercises, as if what I wanted was of some import ~ not just to me, but to God.  What do you want what do you want what do you want?

What is the curve of your longing?  What does your faith give you?  Are you better at love because you have been drawn into the most all-encompassing narrative of love?  Have you been transformed from the awkward beginner struggling to maintain her balance on the slim branch in the wind to the seasoned,  grace-filled adult who knows that just below the surface of the water lie nourishment and life?

The verses of John 4:13-14 constitute the theme for my ordination service.  The words have been speaking to me since somewhere deep in Week 2 of the Exercises, and today they seem more appropriate than ever, resonating through literal scars and green herons and the narrative of all of our lives.

Monday Morning Musings

I'm stealing both title and idea from Terri as I ponder the here and now, sitting on the living room couch with our aging dog stretched out and sleeping next to me.

As indicated by the photo above, for another three weeks the Gregarious Son is in Russia, a destination that would have been most unlikely during my own law student days.  He says that some of the Russian students are going to try to help them find an American celebration. 

The Lovely Daughter is at camp in North Carolina, where I expect that they will have a small display of fireworks tonight in their little cove ringed by mountains.  

Last night we spent the evening with friends, a big group of us out on a porch on a beautiful evening.  The Quiet Husband  has been unenthusiastic about going to the fireworks tonight, so perhaps we'll just stay home.  I don't know that I've ever missed the fireworks, but perhaps last night was enough celebrating for us.

The big topic of discussion these days is the recent appearance of a flash mob of kids toward the end of a local street fair last week-end, 1,000-1,500 of them descending out of nowhere upon a small shopping  neighborhood a couple of blocks from most of our homes and generally wreaking havoc.  Most of the young people were from other places, and our city council has responded with a hasty and draconian curfew for certain areas.  Because we live in an older, inner-ring suburb, our residential and commercial districts are all interspersed among each other, with parks, libraries, and schools scattered all over the place, so public gathering places co-exist, generally peacefully, adjacent to quiet, tree-lined streets of older homes.  Our city prides itself on diversity of all kinds, so racial undertones smolder underneath concerns about businesses, pedestrian safety, and a major art festival in a couple of weeks.  How quickly careless adolescent behavior can become a complex social challenge!

Meanwhile, a pair of flickers have raised a couple of their own youngsters nearby.  The other day as I headed out for a walk, one of the young birds, innocent of feline hazards to its health, rested on the sidewalk until the insistent call of a parent atop the church two doors down encouraged a flight into a tree.  The young ones were not yet able to discern which branches would bear their weight, so there were some wobbly landings.  Last night, though, they zipped skillfully across our front yard, all grown up and ready to go.

So . . .  what's going on in your neighborhood these days?

Image here.

Holy Spirit

This morning I stopped by Josh's memorial bench in the cemetery.  I've planted impatiens and coleus around its base and, once again, it offers a splash of surprise color to anyone who steps away from the main roads and wanders into the woods.

A persistent scold of a call alerted me to the possibility that a bird had taken up residence nearby and might be agitated by my presence.

Sure enough, a house wren is nesting in the dilapidated bird house that sits atop a pole behind the bench.

Unobtrusive, nondescript, almost invisible. But insistently present and full of life.

**********

If you'd appreciate a more extravagant approach to Pentecost, this is a portion of the arrangement in the local Jesuit church this afternoon:

(The wren is a Fish and Wildlife Service photo.  The floral arrangement is from my phone.)

Chestnut-Sided Warbler

It appears that my eyesight is not going to make a complete recovery in time for the height of the spring migration season over the next couple of weeks.  Consequently, I am going to focus (ha ha) on depth rather than on breadth this year, and try to learn some new things.  

This morning I positioned myself against the bridge railing at Lower Lake so that I could use my elbows to steady my binocs for my one-eyed viewing.  I hoped that something more than than the Canada geese, mallards, and rough-winged and barn swallows would show up.  Those are all perfectly fine birds, but I wanted to see someone in transit.

Reward!  One unmistakable bird flitting around in the not-yet-green underbrush along the stream.

I came home and looked up the map.  Do you suppose he was in Guatemala when The Lovely Daughter was there in March?  Will he cross Lake Erie tonight, or will he rest a few days first?  And will he seek a mate and build a nest in Algonquin Park in Ontario, and spend the summer watching folks paddle by in their canoes, as we so often have?

Kind of makes my day, to wonder about those things.

Image by Terry Sohl, here.

.

Cemeteries: Pennsylvania

Anyone who reads this blog knows how entranced I am by cemeteries.  I've wandered a couple in this past year that I haven't gotten around to writing about, so this week I think that I'll rectify that situation.

Next door to the Wernersville Jesuit Retreat Center in eastern Pennsylvania stands St. John's (Hain's) United Church of Christ, which began life in 1735 as a congregation of the German Reformed Church on land donated  by George and Veronica Hain.  Since I spend a lot of my prayer time in motion, I have now walked through the church cemetery a number of times.   (Wayne had told me that I would see bluebirds there, which turned out to be an accurate prediction.)

The German words on the oldest gravestones, those closest to the church, are fading  into obscurity, but you can still make out birthplaces and family relationships.  Fifty-seven veterans of the American Revolution lie buried there, as well as numbers of babies and small children, so often encountered in older cemeteries.

I, of course, like that the Jesuits and a Reformed congregation are next door neighbors.

Yellow Warbler Migration

I was inspired to look up the yellow warbler's migration routes yesterday after Kat mentioned never having seen one.  Here on the North Coast of Ohio, they seem most abundant during the spring migration, but lots of them stick around for the breeding season.  We've seen them along riverbanks, where they frequently nest, when we've been out canoeing in midsummer.

As is the case with so many very small birds, one can only marvel at the feat of migration.  Many yellow warblers cross the Gulf of Mexico twice each year.  We need a boat or a plane; they require only two very tiny wings.

Spring!

I walked down into the cemetery this afternoon to look at daffodils and leave some flowers from our garden on Josh's bench.  I sat there for awhile, watching the Canada geese harass one another with much splashing and honking, and then I looked up and saw ~ a yellow warbler! 

 Migration is finally underway.

New Year's Eve (Friday Five)

Singing Owl posts the following at RevGals:

<I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions, but it does seem a good time for some reflection and planning. For the last few days I keep thinking of Psalm 90:12: So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Among other things, that seems to say that reflection is in order if we want to learn and grow.

For some of us, this has been an incredibly difficult year; for others it has been a year of many joys. For all of us, there have been challenges and questions and there have been blessings and--maybe even an answer or two! As we say our goodbyes to 2010 and look towards 2011, share with us five blessings from 2010 along with five hopes or dreams for 2011.>>

From 2010:

1.  My seminary BFF, whose joyful expression of her gifts is a wonder to behold, and without whom I would not have made it through the second two sad and agonizing years of a program to which I had looked forward with such anticipation.  She is re-taking ords in a couple of weeks, so prayers are in order.

2.  The professor who struggled to get me through an impossible independent study (Freedom and Grace?  WHAT was I thinking?); taught a couple of courses that have had a huge impact on my thinking about the church, about theology, about Scripture, and about experience; and continues to challenge and assist me in articulating the impact of my son's death for call committees.  (Are you out there, call committees?)

3.  The fact that each of my two surviving children, two years after their brother's death, have made successful forays into graduate programs and seem to be thriving in them. Their health, their energy, their hopefulness.  Their alive-ness.  Their very lives.

4.  The compassion and wisdom of the three Jesuits who spent time,  in different contexts, helping me sort through the wreckage of grief and accompanying me toward what I now see as the frontier of the life I could never have expected.

5.  My week on retreat at Wernersville and our week right now on Cedar Key: times of sunlight and prayer and restoration and re-orientation.

 Great Egret, Cedar Key FL

6.  (Five is not quite enough) The amazing friends, online and in person and both, who have shared their own life horrors and struggles and listened to mine, who have shared their thoughts and their books and their writing and their own movements forward and backward and around, so that all over the place little pools of community have grown, reflecting hope and determination.

7. The astonishing gift of a multitude of opportunities to minister, in churches and in spiritual direction, and the welcoming hospitality of so many people whom I've had the privilege of serving, when I had thought that I was completely washed up, finished, and done for.

It seems that there have been a lot more than five blessings in this year that has been so impossibly difficult.  Who knew?

Five hopes or dreams for 2011:

1. That my children and husband will continue to move forward in their own lives, integrating loss and hope and finding paths toward the future.

2.  That a call to ordained ministry is percolating out there somewhere.

3.  That another week at Wernersville is waiting for me.

4.  That I will figure out what to do with the stack of writing on suicide and loss and spirituality that has been piling up and for which a vision is beginning to form.

5.  That all of us for whom loss is so omnipresent will begin or continue to find hope.

Two years ago I could not stand to listen to music.  Really, you cannot imagine what it means to me to write about hope as if it is a real thing in my own life.

Thanks, Singing Owl, for this nudge.