Birds of Advent
The Incarnation reveals that Jesus is our "Red Bird," our "Early Bird," come down from his home to make a home with us.
Psalm 84 is a cornerstone psalm in our household. It's one of the most meaningful entries in the psalter to me personally (it helps that I was born in 1984). But it holds a lot of weight for us as a family for a number of reasons. The first Bible verse our kids memorized is from Psalm 84, and we even turned those lines (v. 4-5} into a little song that we sang to them almost every night when they were younger.
In the foster and adoption world, it is common to talk about a child's "forever home," the place where all the case manager visits cease; the place where your stuff doesn't have to get packed up into a black, 20-gallon garbage bag at seemingly imminent but unknown intervals; the place where you can learn to let your guard down; the place you long to be.
Psalm 84 is about being at home with God. It's about finding your forever home in his presence. "Blessed are those who dwell in your house." It's about seeking that home with your entire being and, eventually, being brought to live there forever.
Psalm 84 is also about birds. The swallows and sparrows find their forever home—at God's altar, no less. It's the place where the swallow "may lay her young."
God makes a home for all of us, birds included.
Over the last couple of weeks in The Mended Wood Homeschool, the kids have been studying birds as part of their science curriculum. Which is great, because birds are great. I integrated poetry into bird week by reading "Red Bird" by Mary Oliver (the first entry in her collection of the same name) to the kids at breakfast for several days in a row. (One of my primary contributions to our homeschooling efforts is to read a single poem at breakfast for a week or so. We've feasted on a lot of Oliver's work so far this school year.) Here is "Red Bird" by Mary Oliver:
Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.Of course I love the sparrows,
those dun-colored darlings,
so hungry, so many.I am a God-fearing feeder of birds.
I know He has many children,
not all of them bold in spirit.Still, for whatever reason—
perhaps because the winter is so long
and the sky so black-blue,or perhaps because the heart narrows
as often as it opens—
I am gratefulthat red bird comes all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else can do.
I found all this birding particularly fitting during Advent, those four peculiar weeks that lead up to Christmas. Especially when thinking about Psalm 84. Because the Incarnation reveals that Jesus has come down from his home to make a home with us here.
Birds plus Advent make for a rich framework for exploring many biblical themes.
There is a sense in which we are to follow the example of birds. Both in the Psalm 84 sense—we should want to find our home, our rest, in the Lord—and in the Sermon on the Mount sense. "Consider the ravens."
But I think the ravens have it easier than me and you. Birds can see earth's magnetic field. This is like an existential cheat-code. How hard can it be to trust that your Creator will provide for you when you can see the inner-working of the created order? I explored this theme a few years ago in a poem I wrote called "What the Birds See." Here's an excerpt:
Of course, I thought,
as I watched a chickadee dip and
glide through an invisible glittering
of rings in between trees.
Of course the birds know they
will receive all they need.
Of course they sing as they dance
through pulsing fields of magnetic code,
how could they not? How could they
worry when they can see the
backend of the universe?
No sowing, no reaping, no gathering,
only feeding on faithfulness
and floating bits of auroras.
Then, this being Advent, there's a way in which birds help us to "prepare the way of the Lord," like John the Baptist, crying in the wilderness. Ted Kooser's "Screech Owl" takes on new depth when you conceptualize owls as prophets making a way in the desert:
All night each reedy whinny
from a bird no bigger than a heart
flies out of a tall black pine
and, in a breath, is taken away
by the stars. Yet, with small hope
from the center of darkness
it calls out again and again.
Let's linger with the owls for a moment. Consider the great horned owl. Their "horns" are actually tufts of feathers that can move up or down and are called plumicorns. What a great word! Plumicorns. Great horned owls are more crepuscular than nocturnal—meaning they are active at dawn and dusk. The other day I was given the gift of watching a horned owl, at dawn, call from the top of a spruce tree. It was a strangely moving scene:
He leaned into his call,
head down, tail feathers out.
He repeated this for several minutes,
with a pause in between each call,
facing the bank of clouds in the east
that obstructed the sun's colored light.
Each message was delivered with the same
earnestness and urgency, and all
went unanswered.
The cold, expressionless east, mute,
the only other sound the stirrings of exhaust
from passing cars.
Still he called, still nothing in return,
like a proverb too subtle to be heard.
Then he turned and flew, a sad, grey silence,
low over the yards, toward a stand of ponderosa
to wait for the responsiveness of night.
To summarize so far: We are to imitate birds—and, per Oliver, we are to feed the birds in the fear of the Lord. In a way, our feeding of them is a reminder that God will feed us. We are to pay attention to birds—their calls can help us to hear what God is speaking to us through his word.
But, also, we are to see God himself in birds. At creation, the Holy Spirit hovered over the waters like a bird over its nest—a scene purposefully mirrored at Jesus's baptism when the Spirit descends as a dove. This truth is illuminated by Gerard Manley Hopkins in his masterpiece, "God's Grandeur":
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
God hides us in the shadow of his wings (Psalm 17:8); under his pinions and wings is where we find cover and refuge (Psalm 91:4). Jesus himself longed to gather the children of Jerusalem "as a hen gathers her brood under her wings" (Luke 13:34).
But that verse ends in lament: "and you would not."
Heartbreaking, really. That we would reject the forever home under the wings of our Maker and Savior. That our ears would be deaf to his calls from atop the spruce tree. That we would hide ourselves under our own anxiety instead of trusting that he will always provide for us because he always loves us. A love proven by his coming to earth to live, die, and live again. In the literal or existential midwinter of our lives, Jesus is Kooser's "Early Bird," "hauling the heavy bucket of dawn / up from the darkness, / note over note, / and letting us drink."
We started with Oliver's Red Bird "coming all winter" and "firing up the landscape." Is this not what Christ did at his first coming? Is this not what he will do when he comes again? Oliver concludes Red Bird by giving her feathery friend the final word. And, as we head into darkest days of the year, as we wait and listen for our Lord's return, as we "prepare him room" in the home of our hearts, we would do well to let Red Bird have the last word here, too.
“Yes, I was the brilliance floating over the snow
and I was the song in the summer leaves, but this was
only the first trick
I had hold of among my other mythologies,
for I also knew obedience: bringing sticks to the nest,
food to the young, kisses to my bride.But don’t stop there, stay with me: listen.
If I was the song that entered your heart
then I was the music of your heart, that you wanted and needed,
and thus wilderness bloomed there, with all its
followers: gardeners, lovers, people who weep
for the death of rivers.And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body. Do you understand? for truly the body needs
a song, a spirit, a soul. And no less, to make this work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable
beauty of heaven
where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart.”("Red Bird Explains Himself" by Mary Oliver)
Have a blessed Advent and merry Christmas. Thank you for walking and waiting together.