In her book Refuge Terry Tempest Williams states, “There
are those birds you gauge your life by.” It is a wonderful line that describes
the way birds have been witness to her changing life over the years. Later on
in the book Williams confesses:
I pray to the birds. I pray to the birds because I
believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them because
I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day—the
invocations and benedictions of Earth. I pray to the birds because they remind
me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they
teach me how to listen.
I have to confess, that is how I feel about the birds
these days. Deb and I have always enjoyed watching the song birds that would
gather at the feeder in our Dallas backyard. And when one of our Dallas homes
backed up to a wooded biking/jogging path we had experiences with owls and
hawks.
Now that we
live in Florida, it is the shore birds I gauge my life by—the shore birds and
the pair of red shouldered hawks that live on the grounds of the church I
pastor. The great heron, egret, roseate spoonbill, pelican, wood stork,
kingfisher, cormorant, osprey and ibis are my companions as I seek to live
honestly and fully into my 50’s.
They remind me of the words of Jesus, “The eye is the lamp of the body.”
Every day the birds hold me accountable for my seeing. For just as surely as
seeing these birds teaches me something about God and my life, so does ‘seeing’
the person in need who is before me. We must be good stewards of our seeing.
What we fix our gaze upon is what we take into our very selves.
More than giving wings to my prayers, the birds stir the eyes of my
heart. They keep me ever watchful of what God is doing in me and the world. Deb
and I have learned a lot from the birds. At the end of our day instead of
greeting each other with “Honey, I’m home!” one of us will ask, “What did you see
today?”
Peace,
Mona