For the Birds

The call of a woodpecker hammered into the morning air at dawn. It was months ago that I learned his call from a video and the first time I recognized it in my own surroundings. Soon after, I heard him industriously nailing a nearby tree. “Hello town birds!”

Several years ago, a bird who makes an old familiar sound perched near a window on the farm where I lived. His song was like the unoiled see-saw of a childhood playground I knew far, far away. It was a high-low sound of the see-saw he sang. To his nostalgic sound another often followed. It was a different, funny song like a foot atop a rubber ducky, squishing down like a squeaky ball, like the quick smashing of a dog’s toy, “squeek-squeek!”. In the early hours they captured my heart. I didn’t know why the aching for something in their sound, the beauty within their throats, something only they released to me. So the birds lit on my journal pages day after day because this was how I could keep them close, to jot down their presence with me in the first waking hours on the farm.

Morning to morning I sought the sound and something leapt within me every time it came. For a long time this was so until the song stirred a desire to have more. I must call them by name, I must know who made the squishy ball sound and what name was the see-saw bird called? And I wanted to see them. Running to the window when I heard their song, I looked for a glimpse of the birds. The satisfaction I felt on finding their names and seeing their frames has stayed right with me. Their tiny beaks and perfectly fluffed feathers were enchanting! One cannot own a wild bird, but I had ached for them. I didn’t know why. How can one describe this feeling, this searching and then satisfaction?

When I came to this house in town it seemed no birds lived here, no black capped chickadee song, no brown headed nuthatch sounding as the rubber duck under foot could be heard. Where was the peeping of the cardinal, the rudeness of the blue jay, the mourning of the dove? Where did the crow sit high and speak to his neighbor? The air seemed gutted and bare. Hundreds of vultures roosted in trees two blocks away. They soared silent on thermals within my window’s view by the hundreds. What was this season emptied of the sounds?

In the autumn, I began to work on the shed out back. I shared the house with my cousin, but she offered a place for me; one I could add my color to, my books, my pictures and a few things, and I would lay a mat down for my dog. The work I would do was new; adding insulation, walls, and ceiling, trimming windows, painting floors and building a pretty picket fence to snug it all in. I had lights and outlets installed and heat. I bought tools and I cut wood and stretched myself far from the comfort of my woodworking ignorance. When the saws and drivers were set aside and the hammer and nails put back on the shelf I sat with my dog in the quiet and looked at what I had done. It was in the quiet that I heard the peep-peep in the privets then saw him swoop past the window. I leapt to my feet to find him; beautiful cardinal-man he was, all decked out in his luscious red suit, black eyes sharp and true. I was finding the birds again here in Hinterhaus. I was hearing their song after this long, empty passing of the seasons, there were birds for me still after all.

When the room was near finished and the heat was now on, I put on my boots and tromped from the big house to the shed just after dawn. As I walked into the opening morning another sound broke the cold air; the see-saw, high-low had found me here! I couldn’t see him, but I knew him. I remembered his tiny black hat and fluffed feathers. Maybe he was here all along. “If you had to choose”, a friend asked one day, “between your sight and your hearing, which would you choose?” Such an important question lobbed into such a casual moment! I drifted momentarily to the bird songs, the creeks rushing with water, the sound of music and the voices of my sons. I thought especially of God’s voice, how I pine for it, how I search for it in His word and in the life I lead. His voice has become the highest priority to me. I leap when I hear it and never stop seeking it. “I would choose to hear”, I said.

But, what about the birds? Maybe they are a foretaste– the enticing first portion of a meal one is being prepared for in heart lest I might be fainted away at the full course. Maybe the awe in the sight of a wild bird, that deep ache in the beholding is the yet dumb longing for God’s face, the tip of the taste of the wedding feast, that great gathering of the bride. And maybe we cannot see more, know more without our own willful gazing, our own famished seeking, without the silent steering of our inner loves. A man on the screen said that he had seen Jesus’s face before. If this is true, I do not know, yet who finds the Lord but those who look for Him and those who are touched in their hearts when finding that He has been been looking for us all along?

Here, O Lord, my voice when I call; be merciful and answer me. My heart said, “Seek His face.” Your face, O Lord, I will seek. Psalms 27:7-8

I have sought the sound, I have sought the voice. I’m not sure how one seeks the face–such a notion. I have been laying a bare sole on the trailhead, yet I blush at the intimacy that gazes into the face. But already this seeking has become a yielding field.

On the screen I found a man who said to “seek the face” is to seek the presence of God, the Hebrew word was the same. To see the birds… that was completion! To seek out their beauty, to learn their form, the pattern and colors that carry the voices that I love, this was the way to fully know them and it seems it is the way STILL. Let the blushing bride stand up and receive the One who calls Himself the groom— Seek His face. But this is the journey. I don’t know how I will see, but I know in whom I have believed.

I have said before that I’m on my way home, and this is part of the path. I know what it feels like to follow the Lord, this grounding of my bare feet to His terra firma. I know “The Way”, but I thank the birds for lifting me up to a view of more of the path ahead, and for this I love them even more. It is time to seek His face.