Several years ago, we discovered where the hummingbird had made her nest in the ancient sycamore tree outside our house. Every day, we watched her zip and zoom through the swinging branches to a nest the size of a bottle top, no larger than a quarter. Sometimes she would hover for the briefest seconds right near one of us, people-watching, and we could hear the hum of her wings. With the help of binoculars, we began to notice two tiny needles resting on the edge of that circle of a nest, that minuscule bowl, two tiny hummingbirds growing in that miniature house of a nest.
One day, we caught the tail end of a hurricane, and the sycamore branches whipped savagely back and forth for hours in the wind and rain. I couldn’t breathe for the fear of what was happening to those babies. When the rain stopped, we ran to the yard, craning our necks, straining our eyes, searching for the precious little ones, and there was the nest! And there they were! Miracle of miracles, the nest had survived, and so had the chicks! We caught the whir and the hum of wings, and the mother zipped in to tend to her storm-tossed tinies.
The orioles don’t stop at a simple circular bowl, but turn their nest to a sphere, a woven basket hanging from the branches. Twice we’ve found their nests on the ground at the end of the season when the small ones have already fledged.
Wrens, robins, bluebirds, swallows, phoebes, mourning doves–we’ve watched them build their circles of protection to hold their hope of another generation, through storms and summer heat, bumbling first flights, hungry predators.
What is the circle of protection you build, your space to keep safe the vulnerable ones?
Is it your home, your work, your school, your community life?
How do you draw the circle around the ones who need your protection?
How do you protect and nurture the small bird of your own precious spirit?
What prayer, what petition, what magic, what circle, what nest will you offer for the protection of the new thing growing in you?
Gratitude List:
1. Safe circles
2. Birds at the bird feeder
3. The way the light shines in
4. Nesting
5. Soup and bread and brie
May we walk in Beauty!
Honoring Kwanzaa with those who celebrate it: Today’s Word is one of my favorite Swahili words: Ujamaa. Cooperative economics. How can we create local systems that develop economic justice for all? How can we share our finances in ways that build up the community?
“Don’t let the tamed ones tell you how to live.” —Jonny Ox
“The best way for us to cultivate fearlessness in our daughters and other young women is by example. If they see their mothers and other women in their lives going forward despite fear, they’ll know it is possible.” —Gloria Steinem
Mark Twain: “I’ve been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”
Frederick Buechner: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
“A night finally came when I woke up sweaty and angry and afraid I’d never go back to sleep again. All those stories were rising up in my throat. Voices were echoing in my neck, laughter behind my ears, and I was terribly, terribly afraid that I was finally as crazy as my kind was supposed to be. But the desire to live was desperate in my belly, and the stories I had hidden all those years were the blood and bone of it. To get it down, to tell it again, to make something—by God, just once to be real in the world, without lies or evasions or sweet-talking nonsense. It was a rough beginning—my own shout of life against death, of shape and substance against silence and confusion. It was most of all my deepest, abiding desire to live fleshed and strengthened on the page, a way to tell the truth as a kind of magic not cheapened or distorted by a need to please any damn body at all. Without it, I cannot imagine my own life. Without it, I have no way to tell you who I am.” —Dorothy Allison, from “Deciding to Live”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov: “Love all of God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.”
“A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” Jeremiah 31:15
XXIX
Traveler, there is no path.
The path is made by walking.
Traveller, the path is your tracks
And nothing more.
Traveller, there is no path
The path is made by walking.
By walking you make a path
And turning, you look back
At a way you will never tread again
Traveller, there is no road
Only wakes in the sea.
― Antonio Machado, Border of a Dream: Selected Poems
Walt Whitman:
“Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.
The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.
Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,
However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.”
A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait.
—Theodore Roethke
“Here is one way to look at yourself through spiritual eyes: you are a message. When you wonder what existence is all about, when you ask about your purpose in life, or when you feel small in comparison to the troubles of the world: remember that you are a message sent by the Spirit into creation. What you say, what you do, how you think and feel: your whole life is a long and sustained message for others to encounter, experience and receive. You are a living message: sent to touch more lives than you can imagine.” —Steven Charleston
Mockingbird Chronicles 