5/22/2012

of other birds

The matter of our story should be a part of the habitual furniture of our minds.
~C.S. Lewis, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children"


Breezes buffet our west walls, a reminder of winter, even though last week nearly felt like June. The Finch nest holds just fine, apparently, with wifey carrying out fluffs and resettlings over her unseen brood. I don't know if there are hatchlings yet; if so they aren't vocal, but perhaps in a week our ears will tell us whether there are children; our eyes may appraise a couple of parents on breakfast, lunch, and dinner duty. What a time of life, the days of little ones in the nest.

From what I've read, only two weeks or so after hatching the little finches fly away. That's quick. Bird life must often be quick, I suppose. In human life, it only seems as though a fortnight passes between "hatching" and "flight."

Our fine feathered children are making plans. Both have found "other birds" to spend time with, with whom to develop patterns for building their lives.



Seasons of stories before sleep with Dr. Suess, Roald Dahl, Lewis, and Tolkien appear to have only passed days ago. I'm still so grateful for pages turned, yawning (on my part, not the children's), the rhymes, the giants, the dragons, the gems. The noble characters and their relationships to others, some good-seeking, some bad. How did our favorite authors manage to exemplify what it takes to see it through, to endure, with and for one another?

They must have carried, as quoted above, such ideals for people as part of the habitual furniture of their minds.

Nothing, of course, guarantees my dear brood won't face into heartache, branches broken and nests undone, the painful toil of adult seasons. Some or all of that is a given. So the stories told us, too, sometimes.

So the pressing in, the setting forth, in tuneful jubilation and rituals of promise, bear all the more value and weight at the start of the journey.

5/14/2012

nesting

Unclear as this first shot is, I was happy to capture the husband finch in action, early in our finch nest's progression. Thanks to our chirpy little couple, I am learning some things about bird habits in suburbia. My usual inattentiveness to such details has certainly changed during the past week.

It might look like the husband is feeding wifey a worm. Actually, that's the hook for our outdoor blind behind him. What he was up to right then was giving his mate food from his own tummy. Such a romantic gesture, yes?

Twice now I've watched the food delivery by the husband to wifey; Tim observed it, too, and he smiled when I pointed out that at least all the things he himself went through during my prenatal periods did not include regurgitating seeds into my mouth.

I very much enjoy the tuneful finch husband.

I've learned enough from the helpful information highway to confidently state he and wifey are House Finches. A bit disappointing it was to find they are the most common of finches, rather than some exotic species seeking us out. But I'll take them. It is perhaps interesting to note (though Wikipedia has yet to document) the fact that I go all motherly toward almost any creature coming under my roof (or, in this case, under my eaves). This has applied to rats, snakes, and a duck, besides the more conventional dogs and cats.

As might be inferred by the blue sky background (in Western Oregon -- gasp!), our days have been the kind that surge the mercury and the human husband's instinct to tend to outdoor work, such as keeping the sun off our west-facing walls. Saturday Tim was out lowering blinds, except for one. This isn't the first time, by the way, Tim has adjusted his efficiency for the sake of family members. Our bedroom's window-to-the-west no longer has a blind over it at all, so I can view the yard while treadmilling. Though once in a while a small sigh escapes him, my male of the species takes the cares of others to heart.

Sunday afternoon I read a book on a baking-stone-warm back step, my spine against the door. (Believe me, if I were in charge of blinds and so on, they would not be lowered each year until I had at least broken a sweat in or outside the house.) I noted wifey finch in her nest, keeping, hopefully, the correct temperature for herself and any eggs she may have laid by this point.

I hadn't heard the husband since the day before, when it looked like a few other birds (swooping sparrows and a raspy jay) were in the area specifically to aggravate our finch couple. The husband had seemed to be drawing them off. Now the yard appeared quiet. Maybe too quiet. Maybe something had happened to the father of those fledglings-to-be.

I took a long look at our Dear Sweet Westley lounging on the deck. As far as I know, he hasn't caught a birdie in ages, but in his prime he was quite the terror of the winged community. One year I even bought him a fancy bib meant to curb his hunting sense. Westley came home a week or so later sans bib, looking proud of himself, and soon after that he brought a woodpecker in to release it in James's room for an exciting morning. That, however, was years ago.

Still, the empty wire and the silence worried me. Was our little wifey now a single parent? Who would help her? Would she abandon the nestlings and would I have to hear their pitiful peeps and...

Early this morning I saw him, across the yard on a different wire. Soon he was giving wifey her post Mother's Day breakfast-in-nest. I was ever so happy.

5/12/2012

Gift

In my lifetime I have been allowed to be a part of three church communities that, if I know anything, I know I will always love.

The first, a United Methodist congregation in Tacoma, Washington, graced Timothy and me with treasured friendships and our wedding. Ah, the music in that space, Sanctus and Benedictus filling the rafters. What made it beautiful was the love of the people, the commitment to blessing anyone "that cometh in the name of the Lord."

The second, a certain church community I've referred to here, of no affiliation, not even a building to call its own, demonstrated for us an unwavering dedication to the search for truth, in humility, before God and the ancient writings known as Scripture. Oh, the diligence and care woven into each coming-together, the effort of thought and kindness in allowing dialog. Sometimes I have forgotten that in this manner the people carry out a love for one another that stretches far beyond the tiny community's borders.

The third is an Orthodox Christian parish. It is a treasure still foreign to me in several aspects, one I misunderstood pretty thoroughly at first. I have attempted to argue for its validity, and this has been natural, I guess, at least for me to do. Thanks to dear church people's examples in my past, I've sought to show love by portraying the blessing, diligence, and care I am finding. As someone has suggested to me, however, I can't really portray this; I simply must live it.

What a prospect, project, goal: to attempt to live in love and to bless. I'm not up to it. But with fervor I wish to enter into it. To enter communion and life. So I'll do what keeps coming to mind, as has through my lifetime in the three churches which gave me so much: I will continue to show up. To sing. To bow my heart. To request, "Lord have mercy." And to be grateful that He is good and the Lover of mankind.



5/08/2012

finchy dreams

Yesterday, after my venture into word and bird land, I wandered again into the kitchen, just as my daughter mentioned the finches outside were getting a good nest built.

I denied that could happen, and then I looked. Defying my published blog-post certainty, there seemed the possibility of a real nest. Wifey bird’s pointed look in my direction said, plainly, Don’t be hasty; we might pull it off this year.

This morning after a quick Windex job I updated our finchy photos. The couple had been gone since yesterday’s warm afternoon, but they reappeared early, the husband bird chittering and twirpering from the wire above, while wifey shopped the garden’s choice fabrics and brought each one up to weave in.

My camera-nosiness may have bugged her; in any case the two conferred for a bit before I left the area.



The difference this year — if there is one, if this couple’s endeavor isn’t following the same pattern as their forebears’ — if there is a difference, it may be that the blind near the kitchen window has a deeper “well” behind the rolled up part. In past springs the birds have always tried to build on the other blind near our bedroom. At any rate their production is looking more nestish today.

I find interesting our family nest population’s differing attitudes toward the finches. Daughter Victoria muses about the local ecosystem, how of course the major disrupter and shaper of that system is suburban humankind. And yet, she notes, to be a small enough animal that you don’t get in the humans’ path means to be able to take advantage of a secure place, away from cats and raccoons while inaccessible to crows. (I remind her that this nest, if it holds, will definitely be in one human’s path — her father’s. Victoria leaves a note on the refrigerator calling for no touching of the outdoor kitchen blind.)

Son James scans with interest the particular weeds brought up to the nest by wifey finch. He pulled those weeds and deposited them in precise areas per his adventure with backyard permaculture. Yet he seems to bear no ill will toward the natural home-builders out there.

Husband Tim, readying himself for work, mentions that the blind can move a lot in a stiff breeze. (But his expression upon reading Victoria’s note is one of resignation.)

For my part I continue pondering the picture of unwittingness seen in the birds who build in front of our window. Is it possible, one bird may ask its partner, that from another dimension (another sort of dwelling) beings could be viewing us at work here? That they might enjoy us, root for us, or alternatively seek to harm us? Certainly those sorts of finchy questions would be quelled by a reminder that it’s not polite to bring up either politics or heretical housing paradigms.

On the other hand — maybe in a truly better sense — I look wifey finch in the eye and cheer her. I think about attempts I’ve made to build that always have, from one perspective or another, failed. I wonder what this newest try by our feathered couple might portend.

5/07/2012

bird wishes



They’re back again this year. Probably the offspring of the offspring of the offspring. The male, his head a shade of sunset, perks his face at me, startled inside my kitchen window. A dark flutter of wings. They are attempting, as one pair of them always does, to build a nest on our rolled-up outdoor window blind.

The female perches there most often, tilting gray head, puffing patterned torso feathers. She appears the more intent on making this happen, making it work. But the rolled-up blind is only the width of maybe a double-sized paper towel roll. While I realize a tree branch is narrower still, I note the forked structure up in a maple, the lending of stability by natural woody abundance.

It simply must look so darn good to her. The inner side of the vinyl blind, shaded against the house. Perfect protection, she must think. Stability. Little hubby birdie perhaps casts a dubious eye at first, but she insists. No, I want this place.

Today a wad of grasses bunches beside her, nestish. Yet not. Even I from my human kingdom can recognize, as I always do, that it doesn’t measure up to the extent of quality necessary. The shelf is too narrow. Little she-bird, I know you know this, but you putz about, unwilling to admit it aloud inside yourself just now. After all this labor.

Boy, I understand that. I’ll feel it with you, a tiny throat lump after you’re gone, when final forlorn, twiggy grass-decor slides to the ground. Will you notice, though, I wonder, from your sturdy nest amid apple blossoms, my husband bustling out there, releasing the cord and lowering the blind in a sure movement to shade our window without guile? Leaving stable foundations to the arbors.

5/03/2012

The bright blessing of loss

Even though I have sensed to a degree the uncomfortability some friends of mine must feel when reading this blog, I have needed to continue for a while now writing these posts. I’m grateful to the friends who have stopped here and been uncomfortable, for my sake, for the sake of my grieving. More valuable than glittering treasure are these friends. They do not gleam like knives. Yay.

I have been, perhaps, coming to terms with loss for about a year. In its fairly organic way, this losing has been my unrecognized, subconscious companion. I think I now understand better the exclamations of some people I have read.

Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? (It would be so much easier for me, Lord, if everyone saw things about you the way I see them. Now.) Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. (If you would have done things differently, Lord, I would not have had to grieve.)

At the same time I can relate better to these passages, perhaps my friends can, too. In some souls, pain has accompanied watching me make a turn toward what looks like rejection of the Messiah. Their fear is something that could be true. Delusion could be the path I have chosen.

I have thought, in considering this dynamic, this situation with my friends, that things might proceed the usual way for us. Presentations of arguments could stimulate dialog, a dialectic. We could gaze together at two possible understandings and work toward common assessments of what might be true. Even though we would still likely disagree, we could debate, even have some fun. The old Ptolemaic vs. Copernican viewpoints in lively discussion. It all might happen. These were my unspoken hopes.



But there’s no easy saunter toward a water-cooler discussion about this sort of happening. Even amongst the most friendly communities, the result of differing views of Jesus Christ is people with sword-hilts sticking out of them. Penetration to the depths occurs, despite everybody’s best intentions.

Only one other time have I grieved this way, thirty years ago. And, really, it was for the same reason, though the situation greatly differed. In my life, at that time, Light shone. The Light didn’t force itself on me, but when I cracked the window blind, there it was, and when I said all right, in it came. It divided and sundered and caused great grief in me, by the simple fact of its is-ness, its being, its illumination. I had nowhere to hide.

Yet amazingly, back then and (if I’m at all correct) now, the brilliance and uncompromisingness of the Light was gentle and kind. With illumination came the first steps toward true health, toward leaving a self-imposed exile. As if what I had done to bring exile had been to recognize some real aspects of unhealth in me, of a sort of cancer, and the exile, the closing off in darkness, had been a form of chemotherapy. The treatment a necessary thing, yet nearly as bad as the disease of ignorance, of not living prepared to awaken.

Even though some dear friends see things differently than I do, I am stepping forward today beyond my treatment. I’m knowing I am loved by these friends, though we can’t go into the dark together anymore. I’m grateful they are wishing the very best for me. I wish only goodness for them. I accept their need to travel their own distinct paths in the Light, in the ways they have been given to truly apprehend it.

5/01/2012

A sense of this possibility

I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

What if there is a fuller understanding that has been with Christians from the beginning? Foggy and lost it has become for many people, but upon digging deeper, what if there is Jesus, meeting with his disciples still, by means of the same Spirit that worked in a virgin’s womb to bring Christ physically to earth? Not that Jesus has returned yet in the sense that the angel expressed after he ascended, in the sense that I need to be ready for (because it will be BIG), but that in a real sense he never left his followers as orphans.


I came to see how foolish it was for me to believe that God's full illumination ceased after the New Testament books were written, not to resume until the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, or -- to take this argument to its logical conclusion -- until the very moment when I myself started reading the Bible. Either the Holy Spirit was in the Church throughout the centuries following the New Testament period, leading, teaching, and illuminating her in her understanding of the gospel message, or the Church had been left a spiritual orphan, with individual Christians independently interpreting -- and often, teaching with an assumption of authority -- the same Scripture in radically different ways. I became convinced such chaos could not be the will of God, "for God is not the author of confusion but of peace" (1 Corinthians 14:33).
~ Rev. A. James Bernstein, Surprised by Christ: My Journey from Judaism to Orthodox Christianity

The Church itself was the new and heavenly Jerusalem: the Church in Jerusalem was by contrast unimportant. The fact that Christ comes and is present was far more significant than the places where He had been. The historical reality of Christ was of course the undisputed ground of the Christians' faith: yet they did not so much remember Him as know He was with them. And in Him was the end of "religion," because He himself was the Answer to all religion, to the human hunger for God, because in Him was life that was lost by man -- and which could only be symbolized, signified, asked for in religion -- was restored to man. ~ Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World

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