Common Birds 50 - Nuthatch 5
Monday, November 13
The world has changed again. The steep sunlight glints off frost. A sheet of ice begins to tuck in the pond. I thought I might see hooded mergansers on the pond or common goldeneyes on the river, but there was only stillness.
O how I’ve longed for an ordinary day, and here one stretches out in front of me like a cat in the sunlight which just pours through a window. Last week, our son was miserable and sick and all the while we had to contend with the busy fever of work schedules and the changes of the world. So today I’ve been hoping for Ordinary Time. Easter, Advent, Christmas, and Lent are each heavy with meaning and glory. Yet the most evocative time for me in the Church Calendar is now, Ordinary Time. The holy and the usual are held together in a simple phrase as if they always were and always may be identical.
So the ducks aren’t here yet. So be it. I am with my dearest birds, chickadees and nuthatches, who live here with me all year long. Together, Mr. and Mrs. Nuthatch walk their spiraling, three-dimensional, well-worn path through the branches, chatting all the while. I’m so happy to see them. Surely, they look forward to the familiar, daily twists and turns of this riverside way, just like me.
Love is like a path. It is often the easiest, most natural way, yet it is established and preserved by daily, repeated walking and gentle care. As it is walked again and again, specific trees and bends become landmarks, memories are tread deep into the soil. Repetitions never diminish the path, no, they enhance and bring out the fullness of a place, for it becomes known in both summer and winter, when warblers fill the spring air with color and song, when the autumn leaves draw us out and gather us in like a bonfire, and even known when there is neither leaves nor snow, sun nor stars and in that darkness the way forward may still be walked. Regular attention and care makes a path and is the path. It is what allows ordinary days to be inextricable from goodness and beauty, sacredness and love.
And the world will change again. In just an hour or so the frost will disappear into the air. Hard days and glorious days and most of all ordinary days will come.
