Chick-a dee-delight

The Black-Capped Chickadee is perhaps universally recognized and considered cute by almost everyone who enjoys birds.  It’s oversized head, tiny stocky body, and black cap and bib are distinctive and appealing to us country people, whether we actually live in the country or not.  This perky little bird’s curiousity about people, animals, and almost everything else in its territory, combined with its promptness in discovering bird feeders, make it one of the first birds most people learn to identify.

Watching chickadees about their business at my birdfeeder is great entertainment.  These darting little feathered creatures deserve top billing as the clowns of the bird world, as they flit to and fro, hang upside down from small branches, and generally amuse themselves and us with their acrobatic antics. 

 Because they tend to associate in flocks in the winter, we rarely see just one.  The sudden activity and flurry when a flock sweeps in is very distinctive, as are their feeding habits.  They seldom sit at the feeder longer than it takes to grab a morsel and then just as quickly transport it elsewhere to eat.  Frequently, we see one alight on a nearby branch, hold a sunflower seed against the wood with its feet, and then vigorously peck and chisel at it with its beak until the hull cracks and the inner seed is consumed.

Chickadees’ social order dictates that dominant birds get to eat first and then less dominant flock-members can dart to the feeder to select a seed.  Because of this we observe only a few of them at a time on or very near the feeder but a quick scan of the nearby trees reveals many more patiently waiting their turn.  Chickadees are also instinctively wise enough to hide food for later, disappearing from the feeder for a few minutes to deposit their treasures in cracks and crevices known only to them before they return to select more.

 It’s easy to attract them to our feeders in the winter.  We usually wait until the bears are hibernating to avoid having our feeders, fencing, and decorative lattice ripped apart, as these giant shaggy creatures will do whatever it takes to satisfy their appetites when fattening up in the fall.  But, once it’s safe to put out a feeder, it rarely takes more than an hour or so for the first chickadee to find it and within minutes the whole flock is in the vicinity.  Then what a flurry of activity there is, as they dart about the serious business of feeding and distinctive chick-a-dee-dee-dee calls fill the air.

  

And it certainly doesn’t take them long to get used to our presence.  Within a day or two they sit scolding furiously from a nearby branch when one of us has the audacity to approach their territory to refill the feeder.  They swoop in again to resume snatching seeds the moment we’re done.  On one occasion my husband finished pouring sunflower seeds into the feeder opening, bent over to retrieve the pail from beneath the feeder, and, as he straightened up, was almost hit in the head by a furiously scolding, dive-bombing, little feathered missile!

             

It seems to me that the mere presence of these delightful, mischievous little bird-clowns in our world, whether in town or on my country mile, is evidence a-plenty that God really does have a sense of humour.

Ten Years Ago Today

 Today it’s ten years since the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York.  As with other pivotal events in history, many of us remember exactly where we were or what we were doing when we first realized what was happening and became glued to the horrifying images on the nearest television screen.  I was in my first year of working as a counsellor, specifically as an Intern in the counselling program of the theological seminary where I studied for my Master’s degree in counselling psychology.

With such an impressive-sounding credential almost complete, you’d think I’d have known how to respond to the shock and horror expressed by the people I was counselling and the students I was supervising.  And I did try as hard as I could to be that balanced and stable presence that everyone was seeking that day.  But, whenever I had a break, even just a few minutes to myself, I closed my office door and cried.  I wanted to pray but had no idea what to pray.  Like everyone else that day, I was stunned, horrified, and afraid at the way the whole world had changed in just a few minutes of evil.

I think now that it was a good thing that I didn’t know how to respond anymore than my clients and students did.  This was an event that no one could have known the “right” response to.  Actually, in our shock and our grief, we all had the only response that made any sense at all.  By the end of the day I was telling my students exactly that; that tears, grief, horror, and incomprehension were the only appropriate responses and sharing our feelings was the only way to get a little comfort.

Ironically, the readings of the liturgical calendar for today are all about God’s forgiveness and graciousness.  In the first reading we heard that “anger and wrath … are abominations yet a sinner holds on to them.”  It’s easy for me to apply those words to the terrorists who crashed their planes into the Twin towers and the people who planned those cruel actions.  I am quite sure that God must hate the anger and wrath that fueled those evil, vengeful actions.  Certainly I still feel the hurt and the grief of that terrible day ten years ago.

Ah, does that mean that I am being angry and wrathful, that I am harbouring in my heart the bitterness and desire for vengeance?  If I’m honest, I must admit that I wanted those terrorists to be caught and punished for what they did to the world.  For a time I felt that the United States and the American people were justified in any response they chose over the next few months and years.  Even when I suspected that vengeance was the prime motivation, I found it hard to disagree with their choices.  Then how am I going to reconcile the words of today’s psalm,

            “[God] will not always accuse,

            nor will he keep his anger forever.

            He does not deal with us according to our sins,

            nor repay us according to our iniquities.”  (Ps 103)

with my hard heart that wants vengeance for the crimes of 911?

I most certainly like the lines that promise that God will be merciful to me and won’t treat me as I deserve for my pettiness, my anger, my lack of forgiveness, and my unfaithfulness to love.  I fear that I am too much like the steward of today’s Gospel reading who, when he was forgiven a great debt by his master, went out and refused forgiveness to another who owed him a smaller debt.

And all of these uncomfortable thoughts put me in mind of another parable of Christ’s in which several groups of workers were hired at different parts of the day to work in a landowner’s field but, at the end of the day, they were all paid the same wage, whether they had worked the whole day or only an hour.  The landowner basically tells the complainers (those who thought they deserved more for working the whole day) that it’s none of their business what he does with his money; they got what he had promised them, so they had nothing to complain about.

In the same way, it’s none of my business how God deals with the people responsible for 911.  It will be difficult at times to remember that I have no right to revenge and I’m only responsible for my attitudes and my sinfulness.  I deserve no greater reward in heaven than the terrorist who may have repented at the last minute before he crashed the plane into the wall of the tower.   Actually, it’s my job to hope that he did repent and to rejoice if I think he’s in heaven! 

            “For as the heavens are high above the earth,

            so great is his steadfast love

            toward those who fear him;

            as far as the east is from the west,

            so far he removes our transgressions from us.”  (Ps 103)

Many years ago, when I was probably only about ten or twelve years old, my mother was talking to me about God’s mercy, probably in response to one of my never-ending questions about things religious and philosophical.  “I wonder what we’ll do,” she said, “if we arrive in heaven and find that Hitler is there.”  I’ve never forgotten her wise words, words that gave me a real way to think about the immensity of God’s mercy and forgiveness and how God's ways really are very different from ours. 

Today, remembering 911, and hearing the challenge of the liturgical readings we might well say, “I wonder what we’ll do if we arrive in heaven and find those terrorists there?”  Do we get upset at the thought?   Maybe we think that if those terrorists could achieve eternal bliss with God, then we deserve an even greater reward because we’ve never done anything that bad, we’ve lived kinder and gentler lives.  If so, are we any different from the steward who was so blind to the gift he received he could think only of how to get more out of someone else?  Perhaps we’re a little more like those fieldworkers in the other parable than we realize.

And that's our challenge as Christians: to outgrow our human insistence on our own standards of fairness and justice and let God be God.  As long we keep God in a box of our own making we are actually taking over from God and deciding how things should be settled.  That's a responsibility that I don't want ... do you?

Now or Never?

 One of my favourite things to do, especially on a long weekend or a few days off work, is to read about writing and the writing life.  I subscribe to a couple of writing journals and I read every word in each one.  Recently one magazine has been sending me renewal notices and I’m tempted to … ignore them and let my subscription expire.

Why would I do that when I enjoy them so much, when I delight in every minute spent reading and getting excited about my own writing?  I’ve just spent most of my long weekend reading three magazines (one was long-delayed by the postal strike of a couple of months ago) and I’ve learned so much about effective writing, developing enthralling plots, and giving life to real-people characters.  Surely I should continue these informative and inspiring subscriptions to nurture my developing writing abilities.

There’s only one problem.  Apart from this post, which comes at the very tail end of my extra-long weekend, I haven’t written a word the whole weekend.  Nothing of what I learned in my hours of reading has been put into practice.  And, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over these many years of longing to write, reading about writing, talking about writing, and dreaming of the writing life, it’s that I need to write every day. 

           

As the title of one recently published book about writing puts it so succinctly, it’s time I “shut up and write.”  Even if it’s only half an hour, I need to park my bottom in the desk chair of my office, fire up the computer, and write something, anything.  I work elsewhere for my daily bread (with a little butter on the side) and I plan that when I can afford to retire I’ll write several hours a day and make up for lost time.

But will I?  Will I, at age 60 or 65, develop new habits and routines?  Or will I, like so many before me, retire to a life of more of the same habits I built up in my working years?  Will I continue reading and talking about writing and dreaming of “someday when I’ll have the time to write” but never write anything?”  Maybe now really is the time to “shut up and write.”  Hmm, I think I should buy that book … or perhaps not!

In the spirit of my new resolution, I’ll shut up now and go write.  I have to, as deadlines loom and I haven’t even started either of this week’s articles; I spent too much time reading!