Thin Places
Mornings with the birds
This spring the sound of morning birds can be heard outside my bedroom window chirping and singing up in the branches of the ponderosa pines. Some mornings they awaken me, and I paddle down the stairs and open the back windows and listen to them while the coffee brews. And sometimes I have more time and I listen longer to their serenade that feels meant for me.
I don’t remember them last spring, or the spring before that. Perhaps I did not notice their songs. Though mornings are a new phenomenon for me. Late nights, most nights, in my own revelry, propelled by verres de vin had been my standard. Under those conditions my perceptions were dulled and early mornings rare and painful.
I don’t know many of the species, nor would I consider myself of the birdwatching breed. I think I’ve seen a robin, with its rust-colored belly, and I’ve definitely noticed a magpie. The taxonomy and the scientific holds no interest for me. It’s their spirit that enraptures me.
Most mornings I sit in contemplation as the soft light continues to diffuse through the window shades and their song grows louder. I sit in the beauty of this place where the sun shines and the birds sing and I wonder what they sing about. What do they tell each other?
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
“How did you sleep?”
“This branch is very nice.”
Do these bird-sized brains contain anything further? Or do they contain anything at all? What is this stubborn insistence to anthropomorphize all that I see in the vastness of nature? It’s more likely that these chirps and clicks are only just that, and like language sometimes there is no translation.
John James Audubon, Robin
What if they sing to each other for pure pleasure? As they flit from one branch to the next, twitching bodies, turning heads, moving wings. Maybe they sing to the opening of the world. Each beautiful morning as the sun peaks over the edge and casts long soft morning shadows against the trees. They sing for this joy, for the hope of a new day, for a few more hours of life ahead of them.
What if they sing merely to bring beauty to the world? To make us humans smile. Did God give us these birds just for that? Because they do make me smile. They make me happy each morning as I lay in bed and keep my eyes closed, fighting off the beginning of a new day. Lingering in bed, having woken feeling well, the light slowly filling the room and the birds singing is a quiet luxury of minutes that has no equal.
What if they are singing the saddest songs and pouring their hearts out each and every morning so that the sadness of night and the previous day can be gone. Do they take up all this sadness in the world and convert it to beauty? Is that their purpose? Or is that just wishful thinking? Wishful thinking for a fantastical world that cannot exist.
Yet, the song of these birds makes me believe such a world can exist. A world filled with the mystical, the unexplained thin places. A world that we cannot understand, nor need to. A world in which so much more can be possible.
But in the mornings if I move too quickly, if the hum of machines is too loud, if my ears and head are filled with other noises — I cannot hear the bird’s song. I’ve learned it is only available in the stillness. Only when I slow down to listen to the chorus can I hear. And when a vehicle drives by, or a plane floats across the sky, this peaceful reverie is broken. And then I must sit still a little longer and wait. Then the song returns, the hum, the differing instruments of bird song playing the world into being, into the brand new day.
When I slow myself to listen I begin to see. I watch the squirrels leap from branch to branch, scurrying here and there. I watch them climb vertical trunks, their mouths full of treasures. I see a little flutter of wings dart across my view and alight in the green needly branches of a tree. I look upward and see the dendritic branches splaying outward and contrasting with the warming blue sky of morning, creating patterns and art all by itself. And I think of Malick’s Tree of Life.
I see the way the soft low-angle shadows of morning form and move as the sun begins to awaken the world. I feel the cool breeze of morning and pull my sweater tighter around my chest and grip the warmth of my coffee cup. And I can start to distinguish the differing chirps and songs of the birds, for it is not just one song, but many singing together the song of life and nature.
And when, on mornings like these, I slow down and listen and watch, I feel good. I feel life is good and that hope abounds. And I feel rooted to the earth, to a reality that is textured and deep and pure. I escape my daily disembodied existence where screens and images and algorithms control my thoughts and time. And it makes me want to cry, because I always want to feel like this and know that I cannot.
And in these mornings I know that there is more than just our rationalized capitalistic existence. There is something more, something deeper, and I think I can feel God in these mornings. At least that’s what I hope.
It makes me want to love. To truly and powerfully love. To love others, to love without judgement and harshness. To care and to give without needing anything myself. To love without the endless, selfish, taking and taking and taking.
But then I pick up my phone and the spell is broken, and the time is gone, and I must leave this special place and wade out into the waters of a world I’m not sure I want to be a part of. But I know it will be all right. I know I can survive it. Because tomorrow morning when I wake early I can listen to the birds sing.
Next week at The Cultural Review: Once More to the Lake, by E.B. White