To Marguerite Grace

Maggie Grace born April 3, at 3:28 p.m., 5 lbs 8 oz, 18.5" long

On the day before you were born, the earth and surround started slowing down. Two pairs of ravens soaring the skies over the field, talked in their quiet “qworks” to each other. The small helpless injured junco quiet in a box with blanket and soft tissue found its way on a long slow ferry ride to the bird hospital. At dark, the deer sauntered from the woods to the fields for dinner. On the forest floor Morel mushrooms pushed their way from the dark earth, and picked by a friend, found their way into my hands.

But on the day that you were born time slowed down so much that life became like a dream. People were moving but not going anywhere so it seemed.
As you were waiting for the time to be born that God ordained, I waited to get on the ferry to go to meet you. As I boarded the delayed ferry, and traveled extra slow through the waters, you were carefully brought to the hospital in your secure box, your mother’s womb and were gradually passing through the waters of the birth canal,

But on that day and very time you were born, the time and place ordained by God, the ferry boat I was on, and the whole earth, stopped still for just a quiet moment. The heavens and the earth were celebrating your arrival. A very little while after landing, with the word of your arrival from your Dad, we all shouted and cried for joy. Time sped us the 850 miles to California to finally find you in our hands and arms. Then time stood still just for a moment once again.

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures here below.”

Hummingbirds

Picture of found Hummingbird nest for my art class

This week, with the blooming of the native red currant, arrived the ear buzzing hummingbirds and the first white crowned sparrows from the south, and three varied white winter days, flitting hail, sleet and snow from the north! The hummingbirds reminded me of the nest I found while cleaning up at the edge of the woods. It had broken off a tall Douglas Fir tree in a winter storm and lay on the ground underneath. Because I often wondered what a hummingbird nest felt and looked like and where they might be found, knowing they nested nearby, I was thrilled to find one at my feet, pick it up and hold the delicate nest of spider webs and lichens in my hands.

I remember the first time I saw baby hummingbirds at the Seattle Wild Bird Clinic when I brought an injured robin through rush hour traffic with my children in tow to Mrs Butler's door. I was amazed to see her feeding 3 hummingbirds with a hypodermic needle. "Round the clock, every two hours," she said. She kept the solution and needles in her refrigerator and the birds were on her kitchen counter. The babies were barely as big as my littlest fingernail.

Speaking of babies, we are positioning ourselves to head south, opposite the birds, when we get a phone call from our daughter and son-in-law in California that our granddaughter is on the way. We are packed and ready to be with them the 11th if not before. We are wondering what she might be and look like and in April we will get a chance to hold this most wonderous creation in our hands.

"...fearfully and wonderfully made." Psalm 139:14

Easter

This week, instead of writing, I took an oil painting class from Matt Miller and was reminded of my first blog a year ago "fallen". (see it copied below)

"Fallen" by J. Matt Miller

"Why would I want to buy a picture of a dead bird?” was the questioning look I got when I bought Matt’s oil painting titled “Fallen”. He painted and posted it on his daily life painting blog on Good Friday. In the past I talked to Matt about painting birds, but he said they don’t sit still long enough for real life painting. I recall last summer when our grandson, Andrew, and I sat at our dining table drawing a bird. It was a window-crashed-dead pine siskin after which we buried it with ceremony, a cross as its marker.

Easter Sunday, Matt told me that he did paint a bird on Good Friday, one that crashed into his living room window. I looked at his blog and woke up on Monday knowing I had to buy the painting. I spent the week pondering why. Yes, I have a "thing" about injured or dying birds. Ask my kids. More than once I dragged them and various boxed birds with concussions through rush hour traffic for 20 miles to the Seattle Wild Bird Center, then the only state-licensed wildlife clinic in the area. I learned a lot about helping birds survive a crash.

So now, in our island home closet sits an electric heating pad and a cardboard box with towels just for these occurrences. The picture reminds me of two winters ago. Upon hearing the all too often terrible “thud” against the window of our island home, my heart and I race outside to find a spotted Tohwee, feet up, not a good sign. As only its red eyes move, I gather it in a soft towel and place it in the box, out of the way of noise and traffic, and set the heating pad to low. All the while softly muttering, “Please God let it live”.

With many hours passing and several tries taking the box outside and lifting the cover to release it, it finally flew to safety. Often when I see what I think is “the” Tohwee scratching at the grass for seed and scurrying with its mate under the lavender bushes that line the flag patio, I thank God for its revival. Perhaps I need to do more about the ignored problem of our window glass.

The Bird Conservation Network gives some solutions mentioning window glass crash as the number one human caused bird mortality with an estimated 1 billion birds killed in the U.S. each year. I’ve hung metal birds from the door frame on a raffia chord and stuck an outdoor chair in front of the glass door, neither of which works well. I pull curtains when we are gone.

So today I try “designer” vertical lines of soap every four inches down the window. We’ll see what my husband says when he gets in. “I still think a barn would be best for you,” was his response. Maybe so, at least there are not many windows to crash into.

But then, God, don't you know when a sparrow (or tohwee) falls?1 Don’t we all continue to exist by Your will? You, God, say how much more valuable we are than birds.2

 Stuck in my head this week is the song that we sang on Easter Sunday, “Crucified, laid behind the stone, you lived to die, rejected and alone, like a rose (or a rose-sided Tohwee), trampled on the ground, you took the fall and thought of me, above all.”3 You found me fallen because I saw and worshiped a reflection of your image, not you. I've worshipped a reflection, a visual barrier, that is the form of religion, not you; my own independence, not your way, my sometimes greater interest in birds than people.

You picked me up, wrapped me warm, and put me in a safe place. You loved me so wondrously, God, that you took the fall and died yourself, your substitute sacrifice, not for birds who still obey your commands, but for my sake, so I can be revived and set free. Did you sacrifice the tohwee so Matt would paint it, I buy it, so every time I look at it have a visible reminder of my worth to you Lord who died and rose for me, what Easter is all about.

Notes: 1. Matthew 10:29 2. Luke 12:24b; Matthew 10:31; Luke 12:4-9 3. “Above All”, Paul Baloche and Lenny LeBlanc.

By the way, a year later, no more fallen birds at our windows, the "designer" vertical lines of soap work.

Dead Spotted Tohwee (alias Rufous-sided Tohwee)

Pipilo maculatus L 7 ½ (19 cm)

Friday, April 06, 2007 Painting by J. Matt Miller

"Fallen" 8x10 oil/linen

A two week break

Heading outside

As we came back from our trip, too much else to catch up on...taxes, gardening, planting vegetables, attempting to order my life, spring cleaning, and fitting in some music, art and reading.

I reread Billy Collins poem "Advice to Writers" again.

"Even if it keeps you up all night,
wash down the walls and scrub the floor
of your study before composing a syllable.

Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way.
Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration.
The more you clean, the more brilliant
your writing will be, so do not hesitate to take
to the open fields to scour the undersides
of rocks to swab in the dark forest upper branches,
nests full of eggs.
When you find your way back home
and stow the sponges and the brushes under the sink,
you will behold in the light of dawn
the immaculate altar of your desk,
a clean surface in the middle of clean world.
From a small vase... sparkling blue, lift
a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet,
and cover pages with tiny sentences
like long rows of devoted ants
that followed you in from the woods."

from Sailing alone around the room: New and Selected Poems.

I took Billy’s advise. The reason for my increasingly poor writing is the clutter and surrounding disorder. These weeks ahead I'm starting in one corner floor to ceiling with brush and pail and vacuum and rag. The loose wandering papers will be gathered and teathered or placed in caged files. Away with the cobwebs, away with the piles. If I happen to head out the door it might be two years before I fnd my way back to the desk and talk to you, just so you know.

Bird song

Mockingbird outside window in California

A year ago we went to see our daughter and son-in law in California and they were complaining about a mockingbird outside their bedroom window that was singing, chattering doing its thing all night long. I brought a book to read at the time, Why Birds Sing: A journey into the mystery of birdsong by David Rothenberg. The author stated at the end of his scientific search, “Before we are artists or scientists we are human beings, and when we confront phenomena as enigmatic and tenacious as bird song, no single one of our faculties is enough. The beautiful songs of life are older than our entire species, and they will continue long after all human music has dissolved. If the works of God are to be heard on Earth, there is no better place to find them than in the deep intricacies of incomprehensible bird song.” (P. 218)

I have a Biblically based theory that especially birds, who did not fall from grace as we humans did, are directed, as from the beginning, by their creator for His glory. I also believe that God is sovereign and anything that comes into our lives is for His purpose, especially for those who believe. I've experienced birds waking me up early so I could get up and pray and they did not stop until I did. So I said to our daughter and husband, “There must be a reason why God placed this bird there. Perhaps you need to wake up for some reason. By the way, it is mating season and this is what mockingbird males do.” When we returned to see them this year, we slept on a blowup mattress in the baby to be’s room. The mockingbird had no need to sing near their window but was outside our window. He didn’t start his repertoire until it was past time for us to rise so we could join him in praising God for the new life that will come to our family in April.

To hear the mockingbird: http://www.youtube.com/ angelambryant Mockingbird song

Sore spots

Yucca at the patio edge

From last time’s blog, I continued to think about what traps me in life. I thought of how often I get too busy, a trap, and don’t ask others for help. Often if I do ask for help, those I ask are too busy and I can’t get the help I need. So I asked God, “What can I get rid of in my life and who could help me with what is left?” The first thing to go was the predisposition to expecting others won’t help me when I ask. “Forgive my "bitter root" expectations. Take them away, Lord," I asked. The very next day I ran into two people who offered to help in the future and another friend that showed up to work in the garden. I seized her and my husband, Neil, and we tackled a job I have wanted to do for at least seven years, hide a sore spot. It is easier to grab my husband when there is another person willing to help.

We targeted to move some sun loving Yuccas that multiplied with too much fun beyond their space to a new place and purpose. The two of us rounded up the long spikes to tie them up with twine so we wouldn’t lose an eye over it or get injured elsewhere. We cleared out the area underneath and cut the connecting roots with a pruning saw, so the surrounding plants would not be damaged when we moved the few. Neil dug them up and moved them below, three of them as well as babies to a dirt mound he had been preparing to hide the generator, the eye sore in our view. I love the way it softens and we hope the yucca love it there as much.

Again, in these weeks of Lent, I look at sore spots. I am thankful, Lord, that you have the answer to dealing with them. All I need to do is ask. Thank you for the quickly answered prayer, the encouragement of a friend arriving at just the right time to convince Neil to help. Thank you for moving me to another spot in life for your purpose, protecting me and keeping me out of the traps.

Matthew 7:7-8

January's over

Our newly refurbished Monarch woodstove

My mother always said, “If you get through January then you’ll live for the rest of the year.” The Januarys she probably referred to were the bitter cold and snow filled Nova Scotia Januarys where she grew up and where we spent summers. Even in the summers the woodstove in her homestead would be lit first thing in the morning to boil the water from the spring at the foot of the hill, and warm up the chill of the night. In January it would burn day and most of the night. We got through January here in the Northwest easily with just a little snow this week. Not so my favorite aunt, Mom’s sister, Aunt Dolly, from Nova Scotia. This last day of January she died of a stroke surrounded by family. She was an inspiration to me, still writing books at 93 and active in her community making a difference. I will miss her.

So the day after she died, today, Friday, I lit the fire in our newly refurbished Monarch wood stove in memory of Mom and Aunt Dolly who cooked on them. I was glad our regular first Friday of the month jam session was at our house tonight. It was fun to gather with friends who also love music while in the back of my head remembering aunts, uncles and cousins in Nova Scotia gathering every summer to welcome us back. They didn’t call it a jam session then or even a ceilidh (music and storytelling gathering) which it was. For the family gathering everyone brought food and drink, and musical instruments, voices and dancing feet. They gathered at the old homestead, with its pump organ, woodstove and warmth of music and life and stories we didn’t want to end.
Today, I believe there is an even a greater homecoming party in heaven for Aunt Dolly with music and singing and stories as she gathers with her nine brothers and sisters including my Mom in who passed before her and my grandfather and grandmother, who read her Bible stories that she now sees for real. The party, unlike January will never end.