We are traveling today for a visit to Ireland–a long planned adventure! I just discovered they do not have cardinals. I was looking at a listing of birds in Ireland, and when I saw how many birds I did not recognize at all, that was when I realized that we are going to a very different place. Yes, they have oak trees and beech trees, and so do we. And a few bird species will be familiar. But there will also be whole bunch of different birds. I wonder what the mornings will sound like?
Tag Archives: Birds
Life and Death in the Back Yard
Yesterday I was sitting in a recliner in our back yard, just soaking up the sun, and listening to the birds and other critters. Suddenly, a hawk flew to the ground about 20 feet away from me and landed awkwardly. Its wings seemed to be splayed over the ground, and it was facing away from me. I didn’t have a chance to get a good enough look to identify it, but got an impression of a light color. I was surprised it was so close to me. Then it flew away toward the back of the yard, and I saw it was carrying a chipmunk in its talons.
I was astonished and humbled to witness this moment of life and death in the world of nature. Perhaps the hawk was taking food to its young. Perhaps the chipmunk was the one who, earlier in the day, had been startled to see me in the screen tent, when it poked its head under the fabric at the bottom. I thought it would run off, but then it scampered right under my foot on its way to the other side of the tent.
Two years ago, just a little later in May, I had seen four baby chipmunks in the yard, in about the same place. I went outside and sat down near them and watched them play. They were completely unafraid of me and didn’t mind my presence close by. At one point, they heard an alarm call from their mother, and ran to the hole to their underground homes, and sat right nearby looking around and waiting to hear if they must go back inside. But mother must have given the all clear, because they resumed their play.
I wonder if today there are babies underground waiting for a parent to return. The yard became utterly quiet after the hawk attack, except for an alarm cry from a bird or another chipmunk–I wasn’t sure. No birds at the feeder, so squirrels chasing each other up the trees, no chipmunks emerging from the rain spout. But later in the evening, life went on. At least two other chipmunks were dashing back and forth, and gold finches lined up to get their turn at the feeder.
What a gift to sit outside each day, learning what the land wants to reveal of her secrets. What secrets have you discovered, just sitting outside being quiet?
Chipmunk babies
Helpers for Finding Our Way Home
Margy Dowzer Photo
There are beings all around us who want to be called upon, who want to help us in this work of returning to wholeness, this work of finding our way home. I have shared stories of a few of the beings who have helped me. The bright red cardinal singing its beautiful song. The four directions beech tree. The waters of lakes and streams. The ground, the very ground we walk upon, that holds me when all around me everything is falling apart.
Now that I know about the mycelial network, the ground feels more alive to me. But it was always true that something happened when I sat down upon the ground. If I sleep on the ground for a longer period of days, there is a glow that surrounds my body. I remember this from my time at the Women’s Peace Camp, where I was living in a tent for four months. I felt alive in some new way that I began to miss when I went back inside an apartment in Chicago. I forget it easily, but I feel more alive when I am outside.
Jesus has been such a helping presence too. First in my childhood and youth, when he was the one who loved me and who called me to the path of love. But even later, when I was leaving Christianity to follow the path of the Goddess, Jesus was a guide and a friend. If we can experience the divine within every being around us, the theological questions about Jesus seem less of a quandary. People have been asking, over the centuries, Was Jesus a man or a God? I would answer, Aren’t all of us both human and divine?
When Winifred Gallagher wrote about her quest for a spiritual home, she described the essential spiritual practice of the Christian tradition as the practice of love for everyone. She commented that it seemed a lot easier to meditate for an hour every day, than to have to practice love for everyone—it was not an easy alternative. It has been a deep tragedy that Christianity has been used to foster hate and oppression. Jesus stays in my life as the teacher of love, the human example of what divine love looks like.
I want you to know that we are not alone. In this time of great challenges and transitions, there are a host of beings who love life and want to help us find another way to live. As we reach out to them, they are reaching out to us. I understand that every person will have their own ways of connecting to earth, to each other, to Mystery. The mycelial network might not be the thing that helps you to experience the connection between all beings. You might not resonate with Jesus or with trees. But I encourage you to find out what it is that does help you. In these times we need critical thinking and activism and also mysticism.
Just as we can now sit in front of a plastic and metal panel and communicate with people across the world, so there are technologies to communicate across species and across dimensions. The threads of life weave us together in ways we have barely begun to imagine. But I know this: we belong here together and we need each other now more than ever. Poet Barbara Deming wrote:
Our own pulse beats in every stranger’s throat,
and also there within the flowered ground beneath our feet.
Teach us to listen:
We can hear it in water, in wood, and even in stone.
We are earth of this earth, and we are bone of its bone.
This is the prayer I sing.
Forgiving the Broken
Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.
Louise Erdrich
One day, caught in the gap between my ideals for living in harmony with the earth and what I am actually able to do, I went outside to share my sorrow with the trees and the green earth. I want human society to be better than it is—I want there to be a path forward that is not so lonely and hard, so expensive and out of reach. I was in a painful, broken place. I sat down on a blanket on the ground, and looked to the four sacred elements of the earth for help; the earth, the air, the fire, the water. They were kinder than I expected.
The Earth said, “Forgive the people of your society. Don’t hate your own kind. They didn’t know the oil would run out. They were creating what seemed to be good with all this abundance. It’s not evil to use oil. It is evil to fight wars and oppress workers and sully the waters in your attempts to keep it and secure it.”
The Air reminded me that the songs of birds can dispel sadness, and awaken joy and beauty.
The Fire surrounded me with the warmth of love, and said these energy issues can only be resolved through your connection to the sun. All of our energy comes from the sun.
The Water said, “Weep when you are sad. Don’t always try to fix it.” And so I eventually came to a place of peace.
One of my ecological dreams is a “net-zero carbon” home that generates more energy than it needs. I’ve heard about these homes and the architects that are designing them. That would be ideal. But in order to be alive in this world, I need to forgive the messiness of what is, as it is now. I need to accept that human beings as a species do not live in harmony with the earth right now. We are broken off.
I am able to accept our brokenness when I feel the Sun shining down on us despite it all. When I feel the water claiming us as her own, the flowers blooming, the food growing, the birds singing. The beauty of this earth teaches me that there is something very good even in the midst of our brokenness. The next day, the newspaper had a story about green homes in New England. If I can expand my perspective, I can be joyful that some people are creating zero-carbon homes, that something is awakening among human beings that will lead to greater wholeness with the earth. I feel hopeful when I learn that the United Kingdom has a goal of all new constructed homes being zero-carbon homes by 2016.
Louise Erdrich quote from The Painted Drum, p. 274.
Feeding the Birds
Photo by Margy Dowzer
It is also possible to make a relationship to animals by feeding them. At our house, we offer sunflower seeds that are loved by cardinals, chickadees, and tufted titmice; suet for the woodpeckers, and thistle for the gold finches. Some of the birds are around all year long, but in late spring it is a delight to see the travelers again. We put out a hummingbird feeder at the beginning of May, and we put out orange slices and wait for the orioles to show up. They bring so much beauty to our ears and eyes.
Thich Naht Hanh says,
When we recognise the virtues, the talent, the beauty of Mother Earth, something is born in us, some kind of connection, love is born… We want to be connected. That is the meaning of love, to be at one. When you love someone you want to say I need you, I take refuge in you. You do anything for the benefit of the Earth and the Earth will do anything for your wellbeing.
When we make a deep connection with one small part of Mother Earth, we are helped to make a connection to the whole of our mother. We are helped to see that we too are a part of the Mother Earth, that we belong here. And then we can honor the whole harmony of connections that make up life. May we find a way to experience the joy that comes with knowing this deep harmony.
Thich Naht Hanh quote from an article by Jo Confino, “Beyond environment: falling back in love with Mother Earth,” Feb 20 2012, The Guardian
Finding Our Way Home 