May has been a bundle of busy and ever since we returned from our trip to Northern Ohio, I have been struggling to keep up with the things of life. Work has been exceptionally busy, and I return home in the evenings exhausted and wrung out. I find when life is crowded this way, my spirit feels thin. I tend to get grumpy and shut down a bit. I have been feeling some like the prophet Elijah who collapsed from exhaustion under the broom tree. “I have had enough, Lord…” he said, before falling asleep. I have been feeling a small piece of this kind of drama and keep reminding myself what happened next: he was fed and tended by angels who gave him these clucking words, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” That’s how life has been feeling lately. This journey is too much. I have had enough. And while I do not pray to die as Elijah did, I long for bread from the hands of an angel—to drink wells of living water from a flowing stream.

To listen to this post:

This is when I need the slow lesson of birding more than ever, for this is the bread of angels for me. But there has been little time to plan special outings, so I have been spending stolen moments looking out the back window, enjoying the many fledglings who have made our yard their home. A true birder is always birding, after all, and I cannot keep my eyes from wandering to the trees and bushes, looking for any telltale sign of life. So far, I have seen baby Carolina chickadees, American robins, Northern cardinals, mourning doves, common grackles, European starlings, house finches, bluejays, song sparrows, and Northern mockingbirds. We have also had our share of tiny squirrels and bunnies to delight us with their quick-moving antics. The baby rabbits are the cutest little ones ever and I find myself worrying over their survival more than a healthy person should (I guess). They are so, so small but the springy way they bound off into the bushes is a thing of magic. We have gone through various seasons of many bunnies and few bunnies, based on the population of foxes, feral cats, and coyotes. I think the foxes have moved on, I’m sad to say, and we haven’t seen a coyote in the neighborhood for a while, but unfortunately, we still have a few feral cats that seem to keep coming around. You may know that cats are the number one killer of birds in the US and Canada (probably worldwide?) and as much as I love a kitty, I am always the crazy woman chasing them away. Whenever I hear the alarmed chatter of a parent bird, I run outside to see what is going on. Sometimes there is no discernable problem, but sometimes … there is. It is a problem we haven’t found a solution for yet, except my wild scatter-rants. Our local shelters will not take feral cats, only to put them to sleep, and I cannot reconcile myself to that. They are beautiful creatures too and I wish someone would take them in and love them into tame, care for them in a way they deserve, keep them indoors. It’s safer for them and the birds.

In other news, I am behind on getting my garden in. I usually have this done by Mother’s Day, but our trip to Ohio, uncooperative weather, and a busy few weeks have slowed me down. I have a new metal raised bed I need to assemble to replace one of my old wooden ones that is falling apart. The other day when I started clearing out the leaves to get it ready for the switcheroo, I uncovered a rabbit’s nest. The mama took advantage of our time away to create a birthing room complete with raised sides for protection. What’s a gardener to do? I covered them back up and have stayed away. I was scared my intrusion would frighten the mother away, but my reading tells me she only comes at night so as not to alert predators to the location of her babies.

This world is full of wonders.

I promised you more posts on our trip to Lake Erie, but as time goes on, those sweet days of doing nothing but chasing birds feel more and more like a dream. I still haven’t finished going through all my photographs and have found myself savoring this opportunity to recall our adventures. I’m still sharing some of the photos on notes, too—I cherish that community of bird and nature lovers so. Have you ever met kinder folks?

One thing I do want to do is share the list of species we saw over our week of vacation. As I mentioned last week, we did not see as many different species of warblers as we did on our previous two visits, but there were so many lovely moments it’s hard to complain. Our favorite place to bird on this trip was by far the Metzger Marsh Wildlife Area. We were there when the purple martins arrived in droves and I will never forget the feeling of being carried along on those swooping, swirling wings as they dove with the wind over the water and the trees. We saw a hermit thrush and an ovenbird there, a scarlet tanager, and there I saw my very first black-throated blue. So much magic. The small woodland lot adjacent to the parking lot was a wonderland of migrants. The boardwalk at Magee was rich as well, but a bit more crowded with less diverse species.

But I am rambling a bit, so it is time to share the list. Here we go:

1. American Redstart
2. Prothonotary Warbler
3. Northern Yellow Warbler
4. Black and White W.
5. Yellow-rumped W.
6. Palm W.
7. Black-throated Green W.
8. Cape May W.
9. Blackburnian W.
10. Nashville W.
11. Tennessee W.
12. Ovenbird
13. Chestnut-sided W.
14. Northern Waterthrush
15. Louisiana Waterthrush
16. Black-throated Blue W.
17. Magnolia W.
18. Common Yellowthroated W.
19. Northern Parula
20. Pine W.
21. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
22. Golden-crowned Kinglet
23. Rough-winged Swallow
24. Tree swallow
25. Barn swallow
26. Purple Martin
27. Chimney Swift
28. Common Nighthawk
29. Eastern Whip-poor-will
30. Blue-gray gnatcatcher
31. Eastern Kingbird
32. Great Crested Flycatcher
33. Warbling Vireo
34. Blue-headed V.
35. White-eyed V.
36. Baltimore Orioles
37. Orchard Orioles
38. Red-winged Blackbirds
39. Rusty Blackbird
40. Common Grackle
41. Brown-headed cowbird
42. Gray Catbird
43. Brown Thrasher
44. Northern Mockingbird
45. Eastern Meadowlark
46. Rose-breasted Grosbeak
47. Northern Cardinal
48. Scarlet Tanager
49. Blue Jay
50. American Crow
51. European Starlings
52. House Finch
53. American Goldfinch
54. Tufted Titmouse
55. Carolina Chickadee
56. Black-capped Chickadee
57. Red-breasted Nuthatch
58. White-breasted Nuthatch
59. Carolina Wren
60. House Wren
61. Mourning Dove
62. House sparrow
63. Song Sparrow
64. Swamp Sparrow
65. Chipping Sparrow
66. White-throated Sparrow
67. American Robin
68. Wood Thrush
69. Hermit Thrush
70. Red-headed Woodpecker
71. Red-bellied WP
72. Northern Flicker
73. Pileated WP
74. Downy WP
75. Great Blue Heron
76. Green Heron
77. Great Egret
78. Sandhill Crane
79. Mallard Ducks
80. Trumpeter Swans
81. Common Tern
82. Canada Goose
83. Laughing Gull
84. Ring-billed Gull
85. Kildeer
86. Double-crested Cormorant
87. White Pelican
88. A shit-ton of other gulls
89. Belted Kingfisher
90. Bald Eagle
91. Osprey
92. Red-tailed Hawk
93. Black Vulture
94. Turkey Vulture
95. Red-shouldered Hawk
96. American Kestrel Falcon

I know I’ve missed some, mostly because we don’t know our water birds very well, but there you have it! Thanks for indulging me. I’m not a very good listkeeper, but it was fun to record all the birds we saw on this trip.

At night, I dream of warblers. I hear their songs in strange places, and my ear feels lonely for their calls. I cannot stop searching the treetops, combing my eyes through the brambly understory, peering past leaves at every shiver of limb. This is what happens when you spend an extended time devoted to looking for them, memorizing their voices, learning their habitats. On Saturday, we returned from our birding adventure in Northern Ohio, but my heart is still there. This was our third trip up to Lake Erie to that famous migration trap. Every trip has been a little different than the last. This year we decided to go a week earlier than the scheduled festival, in hopes of beating some of the crowds. We knew it would be chillier in early May, but we weren’t anticipating how much that would impact the birding. But I get ahead of myself.

To listen to this post (and Bonnie snoring):

On the way up to Lake Erie, we have always stopped in Athens, Ohio for a day of birding at a little trail along a wetland that we have come to love. So far, the photos from that part of the trip are the only ones I’ve gotten through (I may have taken over 2500 pictures during this trip), so I may do more than one post on the trip (as I did last year). I hope you don’t mind, dear readers.

It was interesting to note that because we were a week earlier than usual, the birds were behaving differently. They were still building nests, rather than protecting them, and some were still doing the randy work of mating. They weren’t as out in the open as they’ve been for us in the past, and there wasn’t quite as much diversity. We were a little disappointed in this at first, but it’s hard to remain that way when a prothonotary warbler is busily gathering materials for a nest right in front of your eyes. Every bird is a gift. It wasn’t long before I realized that having to look a little harder for these beauties made me treasure each encounter all the more.

The Northern yellow warblers were everywhere, as they are early migrants and seem to hang around a little longer. As soon as we got out of the car in Athens, we heard their sweet-sweet-I’m-so-sweet song singing us a welcome. Even though they are one of the most common warblers to see during migration, I will never be blasé about the yellow warbler. This little bird was one of my gateway birds, one who opened my eyes to a beautiful world of color and flight and song I had never paid attention to before. Just three short years ago I saw my first and I will never forget the magic of seeing those beauties everywhere after my eyes were opened to their presence.

This trip was different in that we saw fewer species of birds. I only had two lifers: the black-throated blue warbler and the Northern waterthrush (we saw a Louisiana waterthrush in Athens and a Northern waterthrush at Magee marsh. An embarrassment of riches)(correction: I had three lifers. I forgot about the Eastern whip-poor-will, which I have heard but never seen before this trip). But we had the opportunity to observe so many species in new ways that it was a different kind of wonderful.

We returned home to the nestbox filled with Carolina chickadee chicks, who made such a fuss every time we came near that I knew they were close to fledging. They were gone the next day, leaving the nest on Mother’s Day, no less. We were at a family luncheon when they flew, and I was sad not to witness at least one little one take flight, but as I sat on the porch near the empty nestbox, something wonderful happened. A tree swallow couple brought their soaring flight dance over to the box and checked it out. I hope they find it an accommodating home.

There were tree swallows all over the marsh during our trip, but there is something special about hosting them in my own yard. I’m still listening for warbler song. But I am grateful for the robin and cardinal fledglings I see hopping around my own little patch of garden. I am grateful for fledging chickadees and tree swallow nests. I am grateful that I live in a world where the beauty of nature is as close as a step out my front door. I say “nature,” but in her beautiful book Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth, Debra Rienstra points out that referring to the parts of the world that are not human or human made as “nature” is a false definition because “humans are inarguably part of ‘nature.’” We are inextricably intertwined with all creatures and all creation. God gave us the earth as a gift, entrusting us with her care. And so I will say I am grateful for the ways this more-than-human-world soothes and heals and gives hope. It makes me want to take better care of this part of the Garden I have inherited. It makes me want to walk softly across the earth.

To read about last year’s trip to Northern Ohio:

The Biggest Week, Part I
The Biggest Week, Part II
The Biggest Week, Part III

And our very first trip there:

Everything is Yellow

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This morning, when I walk Bonnie around the house, I see that my peonies are just beginning to open to the light. I watch and wait for this moment all spring, a cause for celebration. It rained overnight and we awakened to a dusty sky, rumors of more rain, and poplar tree leaves blown all over the back yard. The world is wet, glistening around the edges and I look up to see a perfect gibbous moon dangling over me.

This sky. Under its canopy we have danced and loved and fought and breathed life into every moment. This sky cradles the ones I love and the one I desire most and the ones I have yet to meet. I look up at this sky now and follow its curvature, bear witness to how it hugs the earth.

To listen to this post:

I remember how, when he was a teen, my youngest set an alarm on his phone to remind him to look at the sky at 8:40 p.m. every evening. He tagged the alarm “beautiful sky” after studying the sunset for days to find its most glorious point in time. This boy read a book and he wrote “practice” on his right hand and “noticing” on his left in permanent marker. He was only fifteen and already recognized we need reminders. Every time I took his hands I noticed something new, something beautiful. Now he is twenty-seven and has forgotten that season of noticing. I am fifty-seven and cannot seem to remember either.

The past few weeks have been busy ones, with two trips out of town and a constant feeling of falling behind at home. I haven’t had time to walk around the yard, to notice what is pushing up through the soil. My maple trees are almost fully leafed out. The lilac bloom has already faded. As I walked Bonnie on the edge of the yard a robin ran across the driveway with her beak full of twigs. I don’t want to miss the miracle of these things, but … life. Who was it that said saying “yes” to something always means saying “no” to something else? We must choose wisely.

So many things I need to do today. We are getting ready for another trip, and I am still gathering my thoughts from the conference I attended over the weekend. The way I make sense of my world is through writing and I haven’t had the time to even journal. I have kept the hummingbird feeders clean and full. I have changed the water in the bird bath. I have made sure the Carolina chickadees have suet to fatten themselves for all that nesting requires.

This weekend, author Gary D. Schmidt spoke to us about writing. He told us that his church has a saying that goes something like this, “Nothing matters but the kingdom of God. But because of the kingdom of God, everything matters.” He reminded us of a quote from Ruskin: “If you’re going to be a writer, you must first love the world.”

Yes to one thing means no to the other. Maybe this is all I need at present: loving this good world right outside my door.

Today, I practice noticing. The way the sun breaks through a white sky and falls on the wooden floor, dew clinging to the glass on the French doors, the way Bonnie’s nose twitches when I stir, scent of sleep on her fur.

And tomorrow, I will look up at the sky, trace its soft curve with my blue eyes, and know this same sky holds us all.

This morning: the first yellow iris bloomed. I saw it under the maple tree when I took Bonnie out at first light—the showy petals yawning open to the sky. It made me catch my breath and move closer; it made me blind to the all the ground ivy that needs pulled around it, the lilac that needs trimming, the general mess of my yard. For a brief moment it made me forget all the trouble in the news.

We do have some native species of irises in West Virginia, but I don’t believe the ones in my garden are. I love them anyway and take comfort that these lovelies are not likely to spread unless I do the spreading. The irises bloom by species but we know them only by color. In my garden, the white ones come first—these originated from my sister-in-law, who collected them from an old cemetery behind her house and gave some to my mother-in-law, who then gave some to me. At least I think that’s the story. I missed their bloom while I was in Michigan. But never mind, when these flowers first appear in the spring I feel my roots tunnel deeper into the soil of my life.

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But sometimes I forget to look. Jesus said that Solomon in all his glory was never so arrayed as one of these. I stood over the soft cascade of her ruffled petals and let myself be ravished by beauty—the morning light spilled from the sky all over the yard and I held my breath for the moment it flowed over that one blooming iris—light on light.

Light on light.

Since my return from Michigan, I have felt like I’m walking in a dream. Is it like that for you too? When you are in a place that feels aligned with your purpose, rubbing shoulders with people who understand your crazy longings, learning new ideas and ways to pursue your dream … and then you must return to real life. Down from the mountain, as they say. To make matters worse, I returned from the Festival of Faith and Writing with a terrible head cold. Maybe it’s just all the cold medicine giving me this floaty feeling.

I haven’t had much time to process all the goodness I found there, but this morning I am sitting with some of my favorite moments from the weekend. Like when Kyle Meyaard-Schaap asked Robin Wall Kimmerer if she could be any other “more-than-human creature,” what would she choose? She thought about it for a little bit and then said, “I would like to be a white pine.” And when she said those words, the guy behind me yelled, “Yes! Me too!” We all laughed, and Robin’s eyes were so kind when she looked at him and the moderator asked everyone who wanted to be a white pine to raise their hands, chuckling. Then Robin said, “Those outstretched arms, taking care of everyone.” And we all nodded and smiled.

There was the conversation between Ross Gay and Patrick Rosal, friends for nearly 30 years in which they talked about losing a dear friend to suicide and Ross asked Patrick how he views his body in terms of mercy. Mercy. And we were all floored. And Patrick was too. And these guys talked about aging together and laughing together and dancing. It was so beautiful. Afterwards, I was standing in line to have Ross sign the Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude and the woman in front of me had no book for him to sign. But she was crying and telling him about the loss of a longtime friend and how she has never thought of this in terms of mercy. And she was crying and I was crying and I put my hand softly on her shoulder and Ross was a gentle steadying presence.

There were so many sweet moments, but I think my favorite ones were ones that took place off-campus—while getting ready to go there for the day or gathering my thoughts afterward. I stayed with a dear friend and one morning, while we were having coffee, we stood at her window and watched five or six brown creepers fly from tree to tree in her yard, making their slow, winding climbs up trunk after trunk, delighting us both with their beauty. I’ve never seen so many brown creepers at once! And so close. I didn’t even need my binoculars. At the end of each day, we would sit in her living room with a glass of wine and tell her husband about what we’d learned, what we’d seen. I got to see her hug her grandchildren. Is that not a poem?

I want to hold on to this feeling.

I am reminded of how, when he came down from Mt. Sinai, Moses’ face was radiant with the glory of the Lord (Exodus 34:29). Over time, however, the brilliance faded (2 Corinthians 3:7-8). Each time he met with God his face would light up all over again.

I am going to keep meeting with God. Here. There. Everywhere. Sometimes I forget to look. But this is the beauty of this life we are given. God is with us.

Light on light.

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Yesterday morning when I walked the dog around the house the moon was a thin, lopsided smile in the sky. I saw Orion tipped over above me, candling the dark. The spring peepers were in full strum and I listened to their morning song as we bended around back. The day began soft, sweet, and I felt spring breaking through the edge—scent of lilac on my skin.

This morning the sky was white with unshed rain and Bonnie and I hurried with her business. The air was wet against my skin, heavy. Without the stars to capture my eye, I lost my center. My mind flitted through one thousand things I am doing or need to do or want to do. I felt like a mist-person—half here and half somewhere else.

Some days I long to be under a different sky. This place I toil in feels tired and I can’t help but agree with Solomon, “Nothing is new under the sun.” The days blur together and moments lose meaning. Time dissolves like sugar in water, but leaves behind no sweetness.

To listen to this post:

I’ve been re-reading Run with the Horses by Eugene Peterson, an old favorite. It’s a book about the prophet Jeremiah, the one we know as the weeping prophet. Peterson talks of Jeremiah’s creativity, seeming to describe him as a performance artist. This prophet went to alarming extremes to communicate the message of the Lord to his people. Yesterday, I read this:

“The great masters of the imagination do not make things up out of thin air, they direct our attention to what is right before our eyes. They then train us to see it whole—not in fragments but in context, with all the connections. They connect the visible and the invisible, the this with the that. They assist us in seeing what is around us all the time but which we regularly overlook. With their help we see it not as commonplace but as awesome, not as banal but as wondrous. For this reason the imagination is one of the essential ministries in nurturing the life of faith. For faith is not a leap out of the everyday but a plunge into its depths.”

For faith is not a leap out of the everyday but a plunge into its depths.

When life gets busy, this is what I tend to do: compartmentalize. I put my everyday life in one box and my spiritual life in another. Don’t we all do this? Our minds need to simplify for efficiency. Compartmentalizing is one way of doing this. But this can lead to a smaller life and narrow vision. Psychologist Ellen Langer, Ph.D. tells us this is one reason why adults lose their ability to stay present in the here-and-now—therefore losing that sense of wonder that so captivates children. We compartmentalize. We label. We oversimplify.

This is good, this is bad. This is sacred, this is secular. This is black, this is white. This is necessary, this is beautiful.

“But there have been times in history,” Peterson tells us, “when these things were done better, when the necessary and the beautiful were integrated, when, in fact, it was impossible to think of separating them.”

What if everything that is beautiful is useful? What if it inspires and unveils and pulls us deeper into relationship with God and each other? And what if everything that is useful was beautiful too? What if crafters of the utilitarian began to see their work as art? As a way to leave a mark on this world? What if?

I am working on my imagination, dipping into some of those great masters Peterson describes. I read poetry out loud every day—rub the lines between the fingers of my mind like prayer beads. I’m listening to music more, letting stories carry me away. I have found these do not take me under a new sky, but they open my eyes to the beauty of the one I am living under.

Imagination opens up the sky and reveals the holy beyond.

The past few days I have been feeling a little lost, unfettered, and wild. The lilac blossoms are fading in the vase on the kitchen table, a memory of Easter. When the afternoon sun shines through the window their rich scent is warmed to life again, thick and breathing, and I can almost cup it in my hands. Lately, I only want to be outside—to breathe in all that sighs and groans. I want to wake with the sun and sleep under the stars, dew and lilac perfume on my skin. Somewhere, deep in the woods, the doe beds down on a moss-covered thicket; the wood thrush sings her flutelike song. Don’t such things require a witness?

I think, mostly, it is time.

There is never enough and I hate feeling rushed. On my days off, I want to write and read and watch the birds and catch up with friends and get caught up on housework and take long walks and move at a pace this old body finds comfortable. Before I even get out of bed I am filled with dread for all the beautiful things I want to do.

To listen to this post (and Bonnie snoring):

This morning, when Bonnie woke me up, I was dreaming about birds. Dozens of red-bellied woodpeckers gathered in one tree, launching and landing and delighting my eyes. I was trying to sleep in a little, I’ve been so tired lately. But on the edge of my consciousness was Bonnie and she wanted me up. I was aware of her sneezy-faced presence, her waggling butt, as I watched the birds with one eye. In the end, she won out—she is my little creature, after all, and she likes company when she eats her breakfast. So, I lumbered down the stairs to make the coffee.

When I looked out the window, there was a little white-throated sparrow on the birdbath. This is the longest into breeding season I have known them to stay. I can’t say I mind at all. The little one took flight, and I saw the bath needed cleaned and filled with new water. The maples are shedding their tassels everywhere and they color the water brown quickly. The seed feeders also needed filling so I pulled a jacket on over my robe and stepped into my boots to do the jobs. As I worked, I talked to the birds, as I always do. A Carolina chickadee scolded me from a high branch. Do not worry, I told him. This won’t take long. I know they have checked out all my nesting boxes but I’m not sure which one they settled on. Maybe later I will peek through to find out. As I packed suet into the tube feeders, I remembered my plan to put out my hummingbird feeder today. A ruby-throated was sighted in a neighboring county and I want to be prepared. April is the month they traditionally arrive here. There was a thick frost on the grass, so I decided to wait until it warms up to ready that sweet welcome. It’s supposed to be a beautiful day, and I want somehow to enjoy it, despite all the things on my to-do list.

Sometimes the waiting can feel unbearable. Waiting for warblers and hummingbirds, waiting to see my boys, waiting for answers to hard questions about fiscal health and health insurance, waiting on wars and rising gasoline prices.

I thought of how quickly things can change, how quickly the years have flown. I thought about the ways we wait for certain milestones, how it never feels quite like we thought it would when they arrive. Somewhere over the years of Bible study, I remember learning one of the Hebrew words used in the Old Testament for “wait”: qavah. It means, “bind together.” As in the twisting of strands, like when rope is made.

Yes, this is what waiting does. It binds us together.

I thought about this as I sprinkled seed along the edge of the flower bed.

The morning light came, sweet and pure. I didn’t know I’d been waiting for this particular quality of light—the warm of the sun buttering the coming day. I didn’t know I was waiting for it until it came.

Last night, when we took Bonnie down our street for a short walk—night whispering all around us—the neighbor children ran bare-armed and barefooted through their yard. In their fast-churning legs I found a memory of younger springs, the cool scent of night settling into skin and dew-soaked grass between naked toes.

I am thinking about planting. My raised beds sleep, dreams of embracing leafy greens and plump fruit. The heart swells with love at the thought. Isn’t every act of hospitality an act of love? When I feed the earth with seeds I feel the gratitude of the soil. What better way to give than to cultivate the earth? It’s a hard thing, to shift the gaze outward when the news of the day is filled with an urgency to think only of myself, about the next need. But more and more I hear God calling me to this. Shift your eyes, Laura, he says. Plant the seeds. I don’t mind the planting so much as the time it takes to nurture; this waiting.

I can feel the moments passing braid my being into one with this little patch of earth, this little community, this waiting life of mine. So I offer up my heart like soft clay. I don’t know what the kiln will yield. But this surrender feels like running through the liquid air of a soft spring evening, bare-armed and shoeless.

Wild and full of hope.

To choose the little people, the little joys, the little sorrows and to trust that it is there that God will come close—that is the hard way of Jesus. ... Something in me always wants to turn the way of Jesus into a way that is honorable in the eyes of the world. I always want the little way to become the big way. But Jesus’ movement toward the places the world wants to move away from cannot be made into a success story.” ~Henri Nouwen

Palm and Passion Sunday broke into the quiet of Lent and every year it surprises me. I read every version of the triumphal entry and Gethsemane to prepare for it but there is nothing for it—by the end of the service I am always a tender reed, bent taut and ready to break. It is our church’s tradition to begin the service outside in our memorial garden and as Father Aaron was reading all those Hosannas! I heard the bubbly song of a house finch. I followed his voice and found him sitting on the Celtic cross that adorns the roof, singing his heart out. As I watched, he hopped closer to us, along the slanted line of the roof. He was watching us, warning us away, and I knew his nest must be near. When next I looked up, he was joined by a female finch. They touched beaks and he nuzzled her neck just as the whole city of Jerusalem was asking about Jesus, “Who is this?” And when those two little finches leaned into each other, cuddling against the chill of the morning, it almost did me in.

to listen to this post:

I had read all the scriptures to get my heart ready for this day but it turns out, for me, the birds are the thickest text. I know how important it is to withdraw to a quiet place when life thrums like a bass drum in my ears. This is the only way to feel the full weight of Palm and Passion Sunday. But it takes birdsong to turn this knowledge into action—to heed the still, small voice that beckons me away from the triumphal parade into the olive grove.

When I step away from my schedule, my obligations, my worries, my deadlines—this is when God comes close.

After the Liturgy of the Palms, we promenaded back into the church, waving our fronds and I couldn’t help feeling a little sad to leave the finches out of the rest of our worship. For the next hour my ears were tuned to the birdsong outside the door. And I couldn’t help wondering, were there birds in the Garden of Gethsemane that night? And did they keep watch over Jesus where his disciples failed to?

The congregation played our part, shouting, “Free Barrabas!” And “Crucify him!” and my voice caught in my throat the second time we said it.

And now it’s Holy Wednesday and I still can’t swallow the lump that’s stuck there.

Holy week has never felt so desperate, so full of questions and worry. Every day the news is filled with stories that shake my humanity and the ways I try to speak into this place feel small and hopeless. Sometimes it feels like this one thing, this one action—everything rides on this.

The greatest joy for me comes wrapped in birdsong. I look out over our back yard, still littered with last year’s leaves, the dried stems of goldenrod and ironweed breaking up the neat story my flower beds once tried to tell, and I think, isn’t this what Lent is? Opening the hand this way? Fully seeing the mess of this world and not looking away? Understanding the world is a broken and violent place, but we have the Hope of Easter morning. This morning, I read about pride and theologian John Stott says, “The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.”

I will keep doing what I’ve been doing to change the injustices I see, but I must regularly remind myself that there are no guarantees, that I am not God, and God can use even the harshest, most tragic of circumstances for something bigger. This reminder is the only way I can keep going, not give up under what feels like a monumental task. Sometimes this lack of control feels like the heaviest of weights pressing down on me. Sometimes it feels exhilaratingly like freedom. I do not have to do anything to stand up for the least of these. But I can. Oh, dear friends. Where would we be without each other? I keep seeing those two finches leaning into each other against the cold.

This week I have been watching the red leaf buds on the Maple tree unfurl slowly, like the fingers of a fist opening up, one by one. We’ve had some strong winds lately and some of these fledgling growths have been pried loose and are strewn about the yard. Even on the ground they give color to my day. Today we will begin preparations for our family Easter dinner on Sunday—tidying the house, finalizing the menu. It will be a small affair this year. No boys around the table. A friend recently sent me some information about proposed data centers in my area. I am worried about the impact they will have on the wildlife. I am worried about the birds. I will do some reading about the issue and try to educate myself. There is a petition circulating to try to give the local government more power in such issues. I will continue the work I’ve been doing with the 5 Calls app. I will go out and buy some more sunflower seeds for the birds. I have a to-do list.

But inside of me? I am taking my cue from the Maple. A slow, opening of the hands, over and over… never giving up. Despite data centers, despite wind-shaking violence, despite all the brokenness of this tired old world … We will keep going. And one day? The tree will become a thing of utter beauty.

I try to put myself in the wonder as often as I can, which sometimes looks like moving my body elsewhere and sometimes looks like standing still. I learned a long time ago about the many worlds that live inside of me. As a young girl and after my parents’ divorce, I would cry myself to sleep at night, close my eyes and pray. There were losses and sorrows and empty places galore and so often I let myself disappear into my imagination. Even then I would take off walking in the woods, alone, try to lose myself to find myself again.

With no one to teach me, I made up my own names for the terrestrial flowers, the sheltering trees. I would wander in their company, awakened to life in their deep stillness, alert to the silent music my heart seemed tuned to hear. To walk in the woods alone is a gift of quiet ecstasy, to sit under the whispering of the papery leaves of the beech trees is to become one with the forest. When I sit just so and feel my entire being harmonize with the sounds of water bubbling against stone, I am not thinking about all the research that shows the health benefits of time spent in the forest. I have read about how this company boosts the immune system, lowers blood pressure, improves mood, and makes space for our brains to attend more efficiently. But I am not thinking about these things.

To listen to this post:

On this, the day after my 57^th birthday, I am thinking about all the ways the forest has made me … and all the ways it is unmaking me. And my thoughts are a forest today—lonely and wild.

I look in the mirror and try to love this thing I am becoming. I think about the dying tree. How her slow decay gives life to so many creatures and organisms. And automatically the hand goes to the hair, the face. I feel my body against my bones, soft and pliant. I stare in the mirror; pull the skin back from my center, suck in my tummy, lift my breasts up to where they used to be. Where has time gone? Who is this person looking back at me?

Who decides what is called beautiful, anyway? Shouldn’t I speak up for a few things? For crow’s feet and stretch marks? The chicken pox scars in the corner of the eye? And this loose skin that used to house another—that carried a heartbeat underneath its swelling curve. Isn’t this beauty? I thought I was too smart for this. To get caught in this trap of regret, of longing for the particular beauty of youth. But there I was, casting aside all the years this body has been faithful. Shouldn’t this count for something?

On Sunday, under the cloud of a memory of smooth skin and laughing eyes, I went on my annual birthday walk in the woods. It always feels a bit strange, a bit lonely at first, to go alone. But soon my mind forgot how my body feels like a loose-fitting sweater and drifted away from that new ache in my knees.

I checked the vernal pools on my way into the woods and was pleased to see them teeming with tadpoles. A tufted titmouse scolded me from a nearby tree as I took some pictures of all those little squiggles swimming over top of each other. I heard the drumming of a pileated woodpecker in the distance, followed by his laughing call. There were daffodils blooming in every open space, remnants of another life for the door into the forest.

I walked deeper in and stood under a white-limbed promise of canopy, just beginning to green on the tips of the sycamore branches. A white-tailed deer peered at me over the hill, curious. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Were those tiny antler buds on the top of its head? All at once, my brain clicked into a flurry of movement all around me—tiny songbirds flitting through the brush and trees—above, beside, in front, behind. I could hear the high pitched tse-tsee-tse-tsee descending song of the golden-crowns as they made their quick-flutter gleanings.

How to explain how bird song reaches into a body and reverses the flow of time, erasing the wear and tear of so much good living? I stood under that flickering, winged dome of life and love and let it work the magic of forgetting myself.

Happy birthday, the kinglets seemed to sing. We are glad you are here.

The trees stood witness to this transformation, and I felt their voices as I once had as a girl. I rested my palm on the smooth bark of a thick beech tree and closed my eyes. She poured her wisdom into me, her generosity, all she has given over the long years of her life and understanding flooded through me. This is the richer beauty—the rings hidden inside the trunk of each tree, each layer of growth speaking the stories that hold witness there. She asked me, Do you dare look deeper into your own skin? Do you dare to name yourself beautiful?

In the dark forest of thoughts this is the singular tree that stands erect. The years grow on her like skin, layer after layer of time wrapping around her boney skeleton as she becomes. This is beauty—this becoming, this constant growing, never staying the same.

This is freedom. To step softly into the beauty of time. To don it like a gown. Let it fall swirling around the ankles; let it halo around the brow.

This is beauty.

Dear March,

Why are you so mean to me?

I was just getting my heart ready to receive all those yellows and pinks, purples and greens, the opening of new buds and petals everywhere, when out of the blue, here come four inches of snow. Last week I planted my cold weather crops. The spinach had only just started poking up through the soil. All the lettuces are still sleeping in frozen beds and now I don’t know if they will awaken. I spent all day last Saturday clearing out last year’s maple leaves from around the base of the slow awakening yarrow and salvia—making room for them to breathe. My vining flowers have already begun to twine. In early March, we had nights so warm we uncovered the deck chairs and sipped wine outside well into the night. A week ago I saw the first yellow-rumped warbler kissing up the maple branches out back. She was as pleased as I about all the blooming pear trees, the flashing yellow of the forsythia, the unfolding pink of the quince buds. My blood had already begun to thin, and now I have to dredge out the turtlenecks and puffy coat again?

To listen to this post:

Seriously, March? I should be used to your fickle ways by now. You are the greening grace of spring and the month of my birth and even though you’re named for the Roman god of war, I have always found you to be a hopeful month. You bid us wait for green to shoot up from the earth and blossoms to loosen their grip on the bloom and for beauty unfolding. You awaken us to robin song each morning and draw our eye to the house finches as they begin gathering moss for their nests. Light stays later and the spring forward seems like a lie as we rise in the dark again (does it really save the daylight?). I know, if we are patient, soon you will give us more light at the edges of the days.

You fill our hopes with birdsong and growing things and then you dump a pile of snow on all that is waking up. Every year it happens the same way. What are you trying to teach me, March?

There have been bigger things to worry about than the frozen beginnings of flowers but it’s the little things that make the big things bearable sometimes and I am trying to remember what happened last year. And the year before. And further on back.

Seems like there were always flowers.

I am thinking about Resurrection. Is that what you are trying to teach me, March? That holding hope always brings the flower? Whether that’s in the garden or inside of me, I can choose.

I’m thinking about how Jesus walked through that locked door—not once, but twice—to find those who belong to him. And I know my heart has been a locked door. I know I’ve been clutching fear and anger.

Blessed are those who don’t see and still believe, Jesus said, but I am Thomas and I want to see the nail holes. I want to touch his side.

I clutch onto the days with balled fists and chafe against the tight corners of my life and it feels like spring will never come and when the sky opened up to all those wet, heavy snowdrops… well, it just seemed like confirmation.

March? You have been both lion and lamb. I hear you telling me that things are the way they are. I must choose how I will live here.

This morning I look out the window at the quick-disappearing snow. The ashen sky melts into a dusty blue. A rabbit nibbles at the grass on the corner of the yard. Robinsong drifts through the glass pane. And I feel a small shift inside of me. The lock turns in silence and my heart is opened. Not wide, just a tiny crack, enough for the light to get through.

And I sigh. There is work to do. The lilac may not bloom this year, but I have more seeds to plant.

Thank you, March.

The days are growing longer, and the return of the light brings with it a new kind of hope. This morning, we sipped our coffee outside and I glimpsed the first Eastern towhee of the season hopping around the yard. I studied him through the red budding tips of our maple trees, breathless at the world waking up to color. It was a male, handsome but shy, and I thrilled to watch him balance on a dried stalk of last season’s ironweed. Eastern towhees stay in our area year-round, but they rarely venture into the yard until spring and summer. I am happy to mark his visit in my journal this morning, glad to welcome him with black oil sunflower seeds and suet.

To listen to this post (and some Bonnie snores):

I have been wanting to clear the maple leaves out of the flower beds, cut back the dead things, make room for a new season of growth—but they call for storms up and down our little valley today, with hail and dropping temperatures. Maybe I will wait a little while longer, give the creatures who overwintered in the hollow stalks of my growing things a little more time to wake up. There is no hurry. Things take the time they take, as Mary Oliver said.

My week-long furlough from work ends tomorrow (thank you to those who have asked and prayed) and I am both relieved and saddened. I tried to put the time off to good use, though it was haunted by the usual anxieties that accompany such things—worry about lost income, questions about my job going forward, fear of financial ruin and the lot. I’ve been tethered to home by a leash of worry. I’ve had to keep doing CBT on my thought processes, ignoring the sick feeling in my gut and replacing fear with gratitude. Yesterday, I read about the birds and it was a lesson I need to hear: how Jesus said God cares for the birds so why wouldn’t he take care of us? As I read those words, I believed them, yet once again this morning I awoke at four o’clock a.m. with thoughts spinning like planets through my head. I can create entire worlds out of worry in the wee hours of the morning and am spent before the sun fully lifts the horizon. There’s nothing to do but press my forehead to the window and watch light announce her arrival with glisten over the meadow grasses behind our house.

All that said, I was able to accomplish a good bit during this week off: spring cleaning, a little birding, monitoring of some vernal pools, made some small art projects, took Bonnie to the vet for some routine maintenance, planted my spring greens, caught up with some friends and my sons, and read more poetry than usual—something that I find is better when not rushed.

I kept finding things to do. I asked myself a few times, Is this what retirement will be like? In some ways, I think, the answer is yes—I will always find more things to do. But mostly (I hope) this is a big no, praying retirement is not haunted by anxiety. Even gifted these extra unfettered moments, I am still left with that dogged feeling that there is never enough time. And I’m not talking about just window cleaning and leaf raking and rose trimming moments, but bigger things, like sipping coffee with my husband out back, watching an Eastern towhee refamiliarize himself with our feeder grounds, reading poetry out loud while a candle flickers on my desk. These are the kind of moments that get sacrificed when the calendar is full.

I always ask my patients what they are learning through their season of illness and loss, try to nudge them closer to seeing the small bits of beauty that fall into a life every day. Most of the time they are still too close to the trauma to make much sense of it, but the question gets them thinking. I told my son the other day that I cannot help wondering what I’m supposed to be learning during this season of little deaths. I told him I feel something big shifting in my life, even if just inside of me. This feeling of expectation is keeping me more alert, more awake to what’s going on in the world around me and inside my heart.

This morning I read the chapter on Imagery in Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook. She says this, “The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he or she has taken for subject. If the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers—has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way.”

After reading these words I sat for a long time and listened to the Carolina wren sing his loud teakettle song outside my window.

Scrutinize intensely ... stand long among the flowers ...

Waiting is hard, but it doesn’t have to be passive. It can be a watchful, effortful thing; like the song of an Eastern towhee shaped into a prayer.

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March is coming in like a wounded lamb—not the meek bleat or the roar, but something in between. It has been raining for three days straight and the sky is white with the promise of more. This morning, I was awakened by a cooing dove on the windowsill. A gentle parting of the curtains revealed the courting pair. Every year they return to this ledge and make my dreams a partner in their love. Since I last wrote here, I’ve witnessed the burial of an old friend, my work contract continues to be in question, we paid our third installment of outrageous medical insurance premiums, and our country has started a war.

Maybe March is coming in like a lion after all.

Lately, my dreams are filled with flowers strewn, clutches of light blue eggs with smooth unbroken shells, green poking through dark soil—scent of sun on earth. Right now, the world is a contradiction, and I am struggling to reconcile too many things.

In the meantime, my cloud storage was automatically renewed last week and somehow all my documents are in a jumble. When I opened Word this morning, the first thing that popped up was an essay I wrote thirteen years ago—when my now 27-year-old was fourteen. I read with tears in my eyes, remembering him as a boy, longing for simpler days. But also, with an awareness that some struggles persist but that does not make my small life any less meaningful. Those hard days of parenting two young boys held a value I failed to fully realize at the time. It reminded me not to miss the value in the moments now, to overlook the beauty for the longing for something more. So I thought I might share that blast from the past today. If only to indulge my sentimentality, but also, in hopes it might offer some encouragement to you, my dear readers.

Read more

We have had more snow this week, a thin crust of white to brighten up the tired days of winter. Thankfully, we were spared the blizzard conditions and heavy snowfall that much of the northeast has suffered—narrowly kissed by the storm. The last remnants of the ice storm from earlier this month had only just melted away when this kinder, gentler manna came, as if an attempt to soften our hearts to the cold beauty of whitewashed hills and blue-gray sky once again.

It’s working for me.

To listen to this post:

I am home from work today, an un-asked-for furlough of sorts that has something to do with contract negotiations and poor management of such things. It is all well and good to have an unexpected day off but for the fact that, as a contract employee, if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. Not to mention the strain we are still under due to the increases in health care premiums, the stress of which our current government representatives seem to be callously disregarding. Wait until the mid-terms, we keep saying, but this feels like fairy tales and wishful thinking at this point.

We just keep waiting. It feels like I’ve been doing a lot of waiting lately.

Today, I am thinking about how this kind of waiting feels an awful lot like grief. It’s been a tender kind of Lent so far, marked with loss and mystery. Last week I attended a funeral for a very dear person and tomorrow I will drive to my hometown for another one. I remember reading somewhere that in Jewish tradition, it is considered a good sign if one passes away on the Sabbath—that this person must have been very pure and holy to enter into rest in such an auspicious way. It makes me wonder about those who pass during Lent … what type of unseen celebrations might that one be entering? Lent is often described as “a season of little deaths,” but I am holding on to the small bits of life I’ve seen lately. The yellow crocus popping up in the garden, sunshine fallen down. A friend I haven’t seen or spoken to in years reaching out in grief. The chickadees popping in and out of my nesting boxes, house-shopping. There is a sharp edge to these kinds of beauty, leaving me with a wound I cannot explain—a tender place in my heart that feels like a bruise.

This morning, during my reading time, I picked up a book that helped me slog through the season after my dad passed away. It’s called The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief by Francis Weller. Weller’s tender, beautiful words helped me not only to recognize myself during that season of loss, but to welcome the feeling of slow emptying that made room for something more inside of me.

“…grief is not here to take us hostage,” Weller says, “but instead to reshape us in some fundamental way, to help us become our mature selves, capable of living in the creative tension between grief and gratitude. … There is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness, some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive.”

In my work in rehab psychology, one thing I have noted through the years is that a new loss often brings old losses closer. It is my job to midwife my patients through the tangle of emotions that often accompanies physical loss—loss of a limb, loss of mobility, cognitive losses that accompany brain injury or stroke. More often than not, this involves walking with them through old traumas—losses they have never allowed themselves to grieve. Our culture has a way of shying away from sorrow. It makes us uncomfortable, reminds us of our own vulnerability. But grief, unexpressed, says Weller, “…hardens, becomes as solid as a stone. We, in turn, become rigid and stop moving in rhythm with the soul. When we are in touch with all of our emotions, on the other hand, we are more verb than noun, more a movement than a thing. But when our grief stagnates, we become fixed in place, unable to move and dance with the flow of life. Grief is part of the dance.”

When I help my patients walk through their old grief, I am always surprised at how this helps them arrive at a place of acceptance in their current trauma. Grief requires space. And time. When we accept this truth for ourselves and others, we are extending a kindness that creates a new balance in our world.

The losses I’m grieving this week are bringing some old losses near. I find myself crying at odd moments, missing old friends, regretting years of silence and distance. There is nothing for it but to sit in this sadness for spell, hold sorrow and joy side-by-side in my heart, let time and faith do the work of putting my world back together. Hopefully in a more beautiful way—more exquisitely alive.

I’ve shared this poem before, but today I need it today. Maybe you do too.

For Those Who Have Died

Eleh Ezkerah—These We Remember

‘Tis a fearful thing
To love
What death can touch.
To love, to hope, to dream,
And oh, to lose.

A thing for fools, this,
Love,
But a holy thing,
To love what death can touch.

For your life has lived in me;
Your laugh once lifted me;
Your word was a gift to me.

To remember this brings painful joy.

‘Tis a human thing, love,
A holy thing,
To love
What death can touch.

--Judah Halevi or Emanuel of Rome
(read in The Wild Edge of Sorrow)

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The evening light this time of year is liquid. It ribbons down through the naked trees like honey, sweetening everything in its path with its soft, gooey pouring. I can feel the days opening earlier and earlier as we move closer to spring: light. Morning moons and late-afternoon shadows remind of earth’s tilted journey around the sun. The world outside my window is gathering itself together, preparing for a grand awakening. For now, it seems to sleep without dreams, on the edge of consciousness. We are in this in-between time—this already-but-not-yet time—and, as with all liminal times and spaces, I can feel the membrane between the seen and the unseen thinning. Several times this week I have felt a shadow pass over me, like a bird flying through the sun. At first, when I looked up to nothing there, I thought I should take my temperature, lie down for a while, hydrate myself better…but I have come to recognize this haunting like a hand on my shoulder, an assurance that I am not alone.

Last night we opened the windows and let the song of the finches soundtrack our after-work nap. I lay on my belly beside my husband and listened, listened, listened. Who could sleep in the presence of such magnificent composition? I had to get up and part the sheers to see: one male house finch in the tippy top of the flowering crabtree, his red face a beacon for my wandering heart. The weather has been lovely for birding and on Valentine’s Day we went to see the short-eared owls and the Northern harriers. My husband knows my love language, punctuated and modified by these long-winged ghosts who will soon be leaving our area for mating and nesting season. I stood in the middle of that spent cornfield and watched their silent winging, a willing target as cupid shot arrow after arrow straight through my heart. These moments will carry me through their abandonment until they return after breeding season.

To listen to this post (and some Bonnie snores):

This week I also I discovered a pair of Carolina chickadees checking out my old nesting box. They were so cute in the way they kept popping in and out, as if trying it on for size. But it is the goldfinches who are breaking my heart lately. They still wear the green-gold feathers of winter but when I look closely, I see evidence of the new bright yellow plumes coming in. They charm with the way they sing their “potato-chip” song in time to an undulating flight—each syllable coinciding with each undulation. I hear the soft glide of their wings in my dreams at night, where I know the words to their happy song.

Watching the birds in silence feels like prayer to me.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent, a season on the church calendar that echoes Jesus’ time of testing in the wilderness and as I’ve watched the news of the world this week I can’t help thinking, we live in a world of ashes, a world where war and hate lift hands and try to snuff out the most precious parts of being human. Lent is supposed to be a time of fasting and repentance and contemplation and solemn meditation and how can we step any deeper into the frailness of our own humanity when every day feels like a fast right now? It has felt like we are in our own sort of wilderness for so long now. I mean, I can’t think about the state of our world without a sense of dread creeping into my heart. This place we are now … it can feel so overwhelming, so dark, so … utterly untenable, untamable and wild.

The word Lent itself is derived from the Anglo-Saxon words lencten, meaning “Spring,” and lenctentid, which literally means not only “Springtide” but also was the word for “March,” the month in which much of Lent falls.

I don’t know about you, but when I think “wilderness” I don’t typically think “spring.” I think desert. I think dryness. I think bleak, dreary, desolate landscapes. Why in the world would the fathers of our faith name this season a season of springtime? On the surface, it doesn’t make sense, does it? But anyone who has been through a wilderness season knows the rich fruit, the new life, the spiritual awakening that comes from such a time in the desert.

Biblical scholars say that God’s truest, deepest purpose in taking people through wilderness times is not punishment. No. The real purpose is to call them into a deeper relationship with the Holy. It is in this wilderness time that God draws us closer. In fact, scripture indicates that God sees our time together in the wilderness as a kind of honeymoon. (Hosea 2:14-17; 19-20) These deep valleys in our lives, these unsettling troubles, these wilderness times … they open a gate, a doorway into hope, into a deeper love and compassion, into a deeper intimacy with God.

Does anyone know what I’m talking about here? How, during the darkest times of our lives, when we open our hearts, when we prepare the way, make the path straight, our good God comes and dwells within us, as close as skin, as much a part of us as the blood coursing through our veins, and gives us such deep joy, such bittersweet kindness, such holy presence that to give word to it is impossible. How does one describe holding grief and joy side-by-side at the same time? It’s a thing that changes a person. It turns our sorrows into a way of expanding our hearts such that our lives become richer, our love more lovely, our hearts more tender, our joys so much more a kaleidoscope of color.

Lent is a paradox. The Greek Orthodox church has a beautiful phrase to describe Lent. They call it “the bright sadness.” The original Greek word [charmolypê] is translated “bitter joy,” “joyful mourning,” or “affliction that leads to joy.” It expresses what the Fathers of the Church call an “antinomy,” a truth that defies logic. It’s an oxymoron, describing a spiritual state characterized by a profound mingling of joy and grief. Joy and sorrow, beauty and grief. Side-by-side. One. This is the wilderness of Lent.

A poem for you:

Lenten Murmuration

I watch the clouds
give birth to sky
and this swirling,
shifting mass of mist
and wing that grows
from within, thousands
moving as one to
become life;
become prayer:

make me small—
enough to enter,
a second time, my
mother’s womb. let
Spirit give birth to
spirit. and then stretch
me out, grow me wider;
give me breath and
eyes and wings

to lift and die
a thousand deaths
and then be born
again.

The past two days we’ve seen temperatures above freezing for the first time in a couple weeks. When I went out to fill the feeders this morning, the snow in the back yard had melted and re-frozen into a thin, slick layer of ice overnight—not unlike the rinks we’ve been watching Olympic skaters soar across all week. I gingerly scooted my booted feet across the surface, wondering about the courage of Ilia Malinin and the like as I went. It was time to put out my new cage feeder, replacing the tired and worn 20-year-old globe-like one—the one the squirrels have figured out how to remove the broken lid and boldly raid, despite my attempts with zip ties and baffles and throwing snowballs at them repeatedly. The sparrows watched me move from feeder to feeder, making tiny, questioning chirrups as I worked. The fox sparrow is still hanging around, as are the two red-breasted nuthatches who have haunted the suet all winter, and I have doubled down on my diligence with the feeders to encourage their generous presence as long as possible.

To listen to this post (and some Bonnie snores):

I have had a mild cold the past few days—just enough symptoms to make me uncomfortable and zap my creative inspiration. Mostly, I have felt a deep-bone tired nagging at me and dampening my motivation for just about anything except sitting and reading. I want to blame the cold, but these days, it’s hard to say where such a thing comes from. It goes away when I look at the birds.

After all these years, I have realized that evening church services hold a special place in my heart. Last night, my church held our annual Feast of Saint Blaise service that was postponed from last week due to weather. As Father Andy explained in an email, “St. Blaise was a bishop and martyr who lived in the fourth century in what is now Turkey and Armenia. ... The Church remembers him for a miracle in which he saved a boy who was choking on a fish bone. Because of this story, St. Blaise is associated with healing and protection from illness—particularly illnesses of the throat…”

I was exhausted from a busy work day and: cold, and was worried about sharing my germs. But as Saint Blaise is associated with healings of the throat, it seemed a personal invitation to attend. Plus, our bishop was coming for the service, which is always a treat. I donned a mask and sat in the back away from the others, flashing the “peace” sign in lieu of shaking hands during the passing of the peace.

I am realizing it may a ghost from my childhood, this love of nighttime services. Growing up a Jehovah’s Witness, every Thursday night my mom would load her four children into the station wagon and head to the Kingdom Hall. It was a long service and more often than not, we would fall asleep in the car on the way home, let the hum of the road beneath us be a lullaby, the steady motion rocking us into the night as the moon watched on. What a feeling of love to be gathered up in my mother’s arms when we returned home, body heavy with sleep tucked in just so. So that now, well into my fifties, something about the fast-approaching dark wrapping around us as we worship feels like a hug, a tucking in, an embrace gathering us closer into the breast of God. Exhaustion helps, and beneath the anonymity of my mask, tears came easily, and I leaned deeper into that feeling of holy and felt the full surrender of my body. I cued up with the others to receive what was freely given. The bishop held two lit candles in the shape of a cross around my neck and uttered this blessing:

O GOD, deliver us through the intercession of Thy holy bishop and martyr Blaise, from all evil of soul and body, especially from all ills of the throat; and grant us the grace to make a good confession in the confident hope of obtaining Thy pardon, and ever to praise with worthy lips Thy most holy name. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

I left quickly, to avoid sharing my germs, and found it had rained while we were inside under the soft candlelight. This morning, I still have my cold, but also? A sweet sense of being seen.

After services like these, I sometimes think of my friends who object to such ceremony. Those who disdain these traditions—the implication we need someone to intercede on our behalf, the veneration of these saints, all the fanfare. But there have always been people praying for other people, some especially gifted with intercession. Why not one who is in the church triumvirate? The ceremony of such things serves to elevate my worship sometimes. I do not think this is required, nor do I think it more holy than times I spend alone approaching God. But I have been around long enough to hold these things loosely.

The world has felt especially broken lately, and last night the very air we breathed seemed to cry out for healing. But today, the thaw continues and I am watching out the window as some house finches cautiously try out my new cage feeder.

We keep going.

**

Some things that have helped me keep going lately:

I’ve started a new devotional that is helping me process the events of our day. It’s called For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional by Hanna Reichel. My friend Maureen recommended it and I’m so glad she did. Today, the author exhorted me, “Empathy is a muscle. Strengthen it. Allow yourself to be affected by the world around you. Allow yourself to sit with the discomfort and scariness of being affected. Give yourself permission to feel your feelings …”

I am trying. One way I work my empathy muscles is through reading poetry. This morning, a poem in this book (generously gifted to me by my friend Susan), had me weeping. It’s called, To a Farmer Who Hung Five Hawks on His Barbed Wire, by David Wagoner. You can read the entire poem here, but here is an excerpt:

…

Tonight, I aim this dream straight at your skull
While you nestle it against soft feathers:
You hover over the earth, its judge and master,
Alert, alive, alone in the wind
With your terrible mercy. Your breastbone shatters
Suddenly, and you fall, flapping,
Your claws clutching at nothing crookedly
End over end, and thump to the ground.
You lie there, waiting, dying little by little.

(I am reading the entire poem in the recorded version of this post. The last stanza so powerful. It is so heartbreakingly convicting. A true gift of empathy.)

Here is another poem I read this morning that made my heart ache and grow. (Thanks again, Maureen).

Sending a humble thank you to all the poets and word smiths out there. We need you so.

Other inspirations this week:

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show. I have no idea what he is singing, but is this not a beautiful picture of community?

Max Naumov’s Olympic debut. This brave skater lost both his parents in the crash of American Eagle Flight 5342 last January.

This moment I had before work on Monday morning.

**This post contains affiliate links which is one small way you can support my work.

I am having trouble corralling my words today.

To listen to this post:

This morning when we rose there were three more inches of fresh snow on the ground, flocking the trees, burying the secrets of the soil and the turning earth. When I took Bonnie out, we followed the tracks of a feral cat skirting the warmer outlines of the house foundation. I went back out to fill the feeders, and saw the loping trail of rabbits, the deeper step of deer hooves, and something unknown, with tiny paws and an elongated stride, that came in the night to glean seeds in the cold (could it be the Northern short-tailed shrew I saw all those months ago? I do hope he is still finding hospitality here.)—all these messages imprinted in the clean press of the white.

I want to write about the full snow moon on Sunday—how it rose high in the night sky, sending gleaming rays of light bouncing off the ice-gowned trees in the front yard, washing everything hard and cold in kind, soft light. I want to write about the bald eagle who flew directly across my path as I drove over the Kanawha River on my way home from work on Monday—how he coasted like an arrow, straight and true, over the interstate bridge and took my breath away. I want to write about the sound of water dripping from the eaves and edges of our roof—ice melt in jagged downward peaks, stalactite artifacts of the ice storm last week, water frozen in time, slowly warming and becoming one with the earth again. I want to write about the cinnamon-flanked fox sparrow, finally returned to me after I have waited all this long winter for his appearance; or the way our two resident red-breasted nuthatches feast on suet side-by-side, making a dance of dining and causing my heart to sing.

All these things medicine for my soul.

And much needed medicine, because, I also want to write about how I gave into despair Sunday night after trolling through job-postings on Indeed for the better part of two hours, looking for the solution to our health insurance problem—a problem that presented itself at the first of the year after congress let the ACA appendices expire, with promises of a forthcoming solution, before becoming preoccupied with putting out the fires of chaos and hate-trump-eting campaigns against peaceful protesting American citizens who are exercising their rights under our constitution. I want to write about how I am in that forgotten middle class of citizens who have worked hard all their lives and now are being lumped in with millionaires and billionaires and being told I make too much money (just barely) to qualify for affordable health care. I know I am not alone, roughly 24 million Americans face higher, more expensive healthcare costs in 2026, with many premiums doubling. I want to write about how my premiums have more than quadrupled (much more) and how my age is such that I cannot afford the risk of settling for a cheaper, junk-care policy with no guarantees of payment for unforeseen health issues. I want to write about the breast cancer scare I had at the start of the new year and how much it cost me in money and fear to find out the truth of what is going on in my body. I want to tell you about the hours of imagining loss of health and my body as I know it, and of our “safe” retirement plan. I want to tell you how it feels to worry more about the costs of these things than the test results. How it feels to have a kind stranger—someone whose name I do not know (why did I not know her name?)—handle my body like an intimate and speak tenderly to me as if I am something—someone—who might easily break. How my body felt tender and sore the next day and how I carried a shakiness inside of me as I awaited the results, which were good. I want to tell you the sweetness of relief but how I didn’t—how I still don’t—want to forget that fear, this tenderness for my life, how this vulnerable feeling gilds the ordinary world in beauty. I want to write about how my calls to my representatives have fallen on deaf ears and how this administration is too busy chasing down Greenland and peaceful immigrants to worry about my healthcare costs. I want to tell you that I am grateful we have the resources to pay the outrageous price of our health care benefits, at least for a short time, because I know there will be those who will simply do without. I want to write about how I keep praying our government will turn their eyes back to these things, and soon. I want to tell you about our small dreams, the dreams of traveling in the winter season of our lives, and how that is unlikely now.

I want to tell you about this kind of grief—small when compared to loss of life, loss of health, the forceful separation from family—but grief nonetheless.

The other night, I dreamed a man brought me some shoes. He was a man I used to know and the shoes, he told me, were ones I wore when we were friends, many years ago when I was seventeen. I took the shoes from him gingerly, and when I tried them one, I was surprised they still fit. I was awed into silence by this artifact from my past, grateful for shoes that fit.

Despite what my dreams tell me, I am no longer seventeen. There are certain things I was counting on our elected leaders to take care of, to care for me as I get older. It seems there is nothing I can count on them for now.

So, yes. I am having trouble corralling my thoughts today. In some ways, it feels like we are thrust back into the pandemic, when our brains had to sort through so many choices and consequences and worries that we were constantly in a state of fatigue and brain-fog. Too many things to consider. Our minds were not meant to hold this much.

Right now, I am watching two white-tailed does nibble the seed I dumped over the fence for them. I spent longer than I should have this morning securing a twisty-tie to my globe feeder to keep the squirrels from taking off the lid and dipping down into the tube to rob my little sparrows. It doesn’t stop them from trying.

I will keep trying too. Nature gives me this example, this strength. For this I am eternally grateful.

This morning, when I took Bonnie out, the front yard was a batting of white wool, seamless, dropped down overnight. It was a deep breath—unblemished, save for one set of paw tracks that, when followed, led us to the hedgerow, where I know a big grey feral cat shelters sometimes. I have chased him off our property more times than I can count. He has learned to stay away from the back yard where my feeders are, lest he feel my wrath. Yet he keeps coming back to the front of the house in these cold winter months, seeking a warm place to hide. We all know that cats are the biggest cause of bird mortality, and this I cannot abide. I bent low to look under the bush, but he is stealthy and will pad away at the slightest hint of the front door opening. Nothing was there but a bowl-shaped indentation in the snow. He enjoys leaving his scent behind to drive Bonnie mad, who then drives me madder still with her incessant sniffing. It is not supposed to get above freezing until mid-next week and I let myself worry over this cat for a moment. Despite our differences, despite the fact I wish this cat would move to another place, despite what I consider misbehavior on his part … I do not wish this cat dead. He is a living creature, beautiful in his wildness, and I will keep looking for another solution. I will keep chasing him away for now. I do not want him to die. And he is just a cat.

It’s the last Wednesday in January and I find myself struggling for words. January has been a mix of joys and sorrows—birthdays and deaths—love and murder. And I don’t know how to reconcile the things my heart is holding.

To listen to this post (and Bonnie snoring):

After I tucked Bon safely back inside, I got my seed bucket and went out back to replenish. The birds have been in a frenzy in this frigid weather, and I am trying to keep them well-stocked. The yard was tucked in under a blanket of snow, the trees still frocked in ice. There is something so peaceful about a world covered in white and I stood for a bit to let the peace inhabit me. I counted eleven Northern cardinals in the quince bush, their red feathers a shock of beauty against the snowy backdrop. I closed my eyes and breathed deep the quiet and, as usual these past few days, a face appeared in my mind’s eye. Glasses, warm smile, dark beard, slim form. I cannot stop thinking of Alex Pretti. The same thing happened after the murder of Renee Nicole Good. Flashbacks and bad dreams. Ruminative worry, rehashing what has been shown and shared and lied about. After her death I told myself it was (maybe?) an isolated incident. One bad guy, a trigger-happy bully, someone unfit for the job he was charged with. These are the things we tell ourselves when we don’t want to face a difficult truth.

Jeff and I recently watched Ken Burns’ documentary series on the American Revolution. The reasons for the foundation of this country have been on my mind anew—a break with a government that does not represent the people. Our country began as deeply divided colonies but overcame these differences to unify against a monarchy that was willing to kill to impart its will on anyone who stood in the way. This is an oversimplification, of course, and there are many complicated and disturbing caveats (especially slavery) in the story, but it feels like we are entering into another revolutionary war.

I told a friend recently that I feel like I’m waiting for a hero to stand up and put a stop to all these injustices and blatant defiance of our constitution. Where are all the George Washingtons of today? My friend told me that we all need to be the hero. We all need to speak out.

I am not good at this. I was raised in a religion that practiced a strict separation of church and state. Voting was not allowed. Paying attention to politics is like learning another language for me. But I know right from wrong. I know what I see with my own eyes. No governmental lies will ever convince me that what happened in Minneapolis is okay.

One day, these events will be in the history books. They will be read about by future generations. I want to be on the right side of history. When my great-great grandson asks, as many now do about Hitler and the Holocaust, “Where were you?” “What did you do?” “Why didn’t someone stop this?” I want to be able to say I spoke up. My faith demands it. History has its eyes on all of us.

I will keep sharing beauty here, trying to give you all a safe place, a deep breath and respite from the battering of current events. But I will also be calling my representatives. I will do my best to stand for light and life. Even the life of a stray cat who sleeps under my bushes.

If you’ve been feeling lost and overwhelmed, you are not alone. Keep making your art, keep feeding the birds, keep holding you hand out to your neighbor. Close your eyes. Whose face do you see? What do you want to tell your grandchildren about these times when they ask?

In the quiet of a snow-muffled yard this morning, I re-filled my bird feeders and sprinkled some seed behind the fence for the rabbits and squirrels. Then I tiptoed back inside, stepping in my own foot prints on the way.

A poem by my friend Maureen to companion this reading.

And one by Tania, AKA, Poet Jesus.

And one from John.

5 calls.

Keep the poems coming. Please.

This morning, before I even opened my eyes, I heard our resident song sparrow singing outside my bedroom window. I lifted myself out of bed like a ghost and gingerly parted the curtains. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the tangle of branch and bleached out leaves and tease out his plump form on his usual perch in the Japanese maple at the corner of our front yard. When we planted that tree almost thirty years ago, its trunk was barely wider than my thumb, its limbs soft and willowy with the elasticity of youth. Now its branches reach the second floor of our house and often hold conversation with the window panes that guard my sleeping. This one faithful song sparrow favors its network of webby branches and I can always count on him for a smile, no matter what time of year.

When I took Bonnie out in the dim light of dawn, the grass shimmered with a heavy lace of frost. The weather man tells us to brace for dropping temperatures and snow throughout the day. It has been too cold to get out and look for birds (well, for me anyway), so I have had to be content to watch my regulars from the window. I don’t mind, there is something so comforting in the familiarity of their presence and, as always, when things in the news feel dark and filled with fear, the natural world gives me hope in the ways it continues to turn and churn and spin about the usual business.

To listen to this post (and Bonnie snoring loudly):

Later, as I sat in my reading chair under the electric blanket with Bonnie, two plump mourning doves landed in my new window feeder. There was barely room for both of them, but they did not seem to mind the rub of feathers and arcing necks. Those of you who follow me on Notes may remember the mourning dove was my first bird this year and seeing their elegantly shaped heads bent over a seed feast made me smile. I closed my eyes and whispered, “Welcome, Peace. Welcome, Love.” One of the doves gave a soft coo and I felt the cold parts of my heart shatter like a thin plate of ice.

I have been distracted by some writing projects lately and my spirit feels the neglect of lack of time outside. I stand at the window and watch two white-tailed does move through the trees behind the house and my heart moves with them. There never seems to be just the right kind of balance to sustain this writing life—just when I feel inspired to write something down the dog gets sick, or I do, or some household catastrophe calls for stopping all creative endeavors and attending to. Julia Cameron has said that writers must take time to “fill the well,” and I have been empty, empty, empty.

“As writers, we draw on an inner fund of images that I call ‘the well.’ I think of this well like an inner pond, one that must be kept both stocked and feely flowing.” ~Julia Cameron, The Right to Write

Cameron’s method of keeping the pond filled is something she calls an “Artist Date” –a weekly field trip taken alone to places or events that inspire. I wrote a book inspired by a period when I regularly engaged in such. But these days, my Artist Dates are less tangible, less visibly definable. Like the way I stand at the window for endless moments, studying the outline of naked trees against the white horizon.

These moments are no less filling for their seeming (from outside eyes) passivity. Perhaps this has more to do with the years added to my person—the richness of an interior life cannot help being embellished as life experiences add up—than an abundance of wisdom or imagination. But perhaps these things are one and the same if I pay attention.

This week we celebrate both of our sons’ birthdays. Their presence in this world is something I never tire of rejoicing over. Their presence in my life is a song I never want to stop singing—one that keeps changing melody over the years, never mellowing with time but growing richer and more urgent as I feel my own time waning.

When we planted that Japanese maple in the front yard, our youngest was not yet born, our eldest a mere infant. When I measure the passing years in memories of trees, time seems so much kinder. My skin, like the branches of the Japanese maple, no longer holds the elasticity of youth and it is much thinner than it used to be. It doesn’t take much to penetrate the surface, prick the heart and the blood running beneath. It is a mystery how, to fill my creative well today, I can sit here with my eyes closed and remember the curve of a babe’s cheek, sparkling infant laughter, a gentle tugging at my breast in the middle of the night when all the world is asleep…

Isn’t life a miracle? Be it the ways of trees or birds or blue-eyed boys, I cannot stop these tears of gratitude for the beauty of it all.

How do you fill your inner well? I would love to hear.

your dad and I
went to the mountains
at the new year
a way to say good-bye
to all the ways we
were destroyed
and re-birthed by 2025

we stopped at Hawk’s Nest
on the way—looked out over
the New River, cupped
by hills purpled in fog,
the water a turquoise ribbon
misting into the sky, becoming
the father of clouds
and stars and rainstorms

just then a shadow flickered
over me, like a bird flying
through the sun. and I was half-
dreamed, caught between the river
and a memory lit from within:

you left him on a picnic
table, the stuffed dog—your
faithful friend. he rode the ariel
tram with you down the mountain
all those years ago. how you cried
when we retraced our steps in vain …
a little boy’s grief, a mama’s heart
breaking

in this place where worlds are found
we lost something precious to you

remembering, the ache was new
and I wanted to be where you are—must
we all become orphans now? I texted
you. Was it Peter-Sam, I asked.
That the mountain stole from you?
The reply was quick, like a stone
sinking in water. No. You said.

It was Paws.

This morning, I fill my feeders to the brim with black oil sunflower seeds, whispering a blessing over my feathery visitors as I move silently through what Frédéric Gros calls “the undecided blue hour.” I have been watching through the window for the better part of an hour as a downy woodpecker creeps and clings to the naked, wispy branches of one of the dying walnut trees behind our property. This winter our yard has been littered with similar branches—a sad reminder of the harsh winds that have seemed more prevalent this year; but still, the trees stand—naked branches slowly giving way to the brittleness of time. The woodpeckers have found them inviting and for this reason I am not sorry to bear witness to their slow dying.

To listen to this post (and some Bonnie snores):

The downy flits away to the meadow-woods as I draw near. I watch his retreat—that undulating flight the woodpeckers are known for. He disappears into a nearby tree and I can hear his familiar pik, pik, complaining about my invasion.

“I’m sorry,” I say, into the trees. “I hope you like this little treat.” I fasten a suet cake into the holder that dangles from a shepherd’s hook.

My Audubon Field Guide tells me the downy is recognizable by “...its habit of tapping on branches hardly thicker than itself.” I smile as I pass under the thin branches of the walnut. It feels like walking under the broken spokes of an umbrella, the brittle branches drooping down over the earth it grew out of.

The sky is an ashy blue with the memory of last night’s rain. Something about the color of the world waking up all fresh and clean opens a well inside me. January light is “weak and watered,” as Niall Williams says in his beautiful novel Time of the Child, and the sky still carries the promise of new beginnings. But, standing in that pale light, I cannot help feeling the shine of these things is beginning to fade mid-January.

This coming Monday is Blue Monday, dubbed thus by psychologist, Cliff Arnall in 2005. He used a formula that considered the bleak weather, post-holiday blahs, lack of daylight, financial worries—and who knows what other variables—to name the third Monday in January as the most depressing day of the year. Add to that … well, you know…all the other things going on in the world today and. it. is. heavy. Do you feel it?

In church on Sunday, we renewed our baptismal vows. It was the feast day of the Baptism of Our Lord, on the liturgical calendar—the day we celebrate the baptism of Christ in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. It was also the first Sunday after the Epiphany and Father Andy reminded us that each of our lives should be a tiny epiphany, a light that shines through the darknesses of the days. I recited my baptismal vows, pledging to “resist evil,” “to serve Christ in all persons,” “strive for justice and peace among all people,” and “respect the dignity of every human being.” Before the last “amen,” I was openly weeping, tears of grief too immense to hold inside.

This morning, I stand under these dying trees, under this ashen blue sky, with life singing and taking wing around me and I tell the Holy One I want to see all the blues. The early morning light whispered blues, the ghosty midnight blues, the storm over the ocean blues, the blues slashed with pinks at sunrise, the blues on fire at sunset... the blues of the dying walnut and the disappearing wing of the downy. The blues of the broken hearts. All the blues. All.

This is what it means to bear witness. To not turn away. To trust the truth in what my own eyes see and not what others tell me. This is one way to honor my baptismal vows.

Bearing witness this way says that every life matters, every human being is worthy of dignity.