Common Birds XX - Catching my Breath

Friday, April 28

I have been busy. Today, I was at a car dealership for three hours to change the oil. All the while I was waiting, there was a dreamlike tv show on. It was dreamlike, not in the sense that it was mysterious and gauzily beautiful, but dreamlike in the way that we are unphased by the absurd. In the show, Lil Jon, hip hop producer of the 2000s, is an interior designer, working with everyday Americans to make their household dreams come true on a budget. If, in the end, they love what Lil Jon has done, everyone says Okay! like they’re hyping up Usher.

But I am here to worship, not complain, because it is right, and a good and joyful thing always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. I am here to notice, be astonished, and tell others.

The mother Canada goose still sits faithfully in her nest. I’ve seen her leave only once, go six inches, and then stop to graze. The father goose is always near, usually just a little way up the stream. The stream has been higher this week from the occasional rain. The mother robin comes and goes more frequently, sometimes standing on a branch next to the nest to preen and enjoy the sunlight. Skunk cabbage, which used to be small purple leaves peeking out of the damp earth, are now huge, green, many-leaved banners proclaiming the persistence and exuberance of living. Fern fronds are unfurling in the light of lengthening days. A plant I don’t know, which looks like a single leaf standing straight up, covers the earth on either side of the trail by the pond. I’ve seen a muskrat pause in its swim to reach up, pluck, and eat a low hanging bud. I’ve seen a mink slip from the water like a new-moon sky, deepest black, yet glistening. Palm warblers wag their yellow tails and chickadees sing and sing.

Yesterday I saw two wood duck drakes with the one hen who lives here. They were nervous, as they are disposed to be, when they saw me. They abandoned some turtles on a log and quickly hid in the brush behind the mother goose. The great blue heron hunched in the stream like he hadn't forgotten the cold of January, then I saw a second heron in the pond! I’ve seen a heron in the pond a few times now, so I think this one is new and my long time heron stays in the stream.

I am almost confident that a pair of nuthatches are nesting in a tree cavity by the road which runs past the stream. As I approach, the male watches me as I watch him. And alongside all I’ve seen and heard, there are the beautiful moments where I see and hear nothing in particular, and the earth tenderly holds my attention, holds me, and I am.

I have been thinking about prayer. I breath in the air and taste the mulch which the business park has had spread. A merest bit of the air’s ocean eddies in my lungs, and I breathe out. It is commonplace to say that the wind of a butterfly’s wings can cause a hurricane across the globe. What of my breath? What of the whispered words which wash through the air in waves, imperceptibly crashing over humans, birds, and earth? Perhaps this is too mechanistic an image of the efficacy of prayer. But perhaps prayer is like the consecrated bread and wine which are both bread and wine and at the same time the Body and Blood of Christ. As we incorporate their physicality into our bodies, we are also incorporated into Christ’s Body. A prayer consecrates the wind of our breath, stirring the atmosphere in which we all live and move and breathe, and it is at the same time our spirit stirring towards God, in whom we all live and move and have our bearing, who gives us life and breath and everything. 

I have been busy, and I have been standing by the pond to pray.