We Are Bird People

Tree swallows

 When I rise up
let me rise up joyful

like a bird...

~ Wendell Berry

Every morning, we start with worship. We sit and watch the birds and we give thanks for their presence. 

The ospreys in their huge nest, chirping for breakfast, winging in with a fish, feeding the young ones, watching them grow already big and stretching their wings. 

The cliff swallows in the sky, swooping and diving for bugs, scooping under eaves to their mud nests, feeding their young whose broad yellow mouths are open wide for insects.

Oh, joy and praise for the swallows -- tree and barn -- who eat mosquitos!

The finches at the feeder hanging off my mother's balcony, singing their little hearts out in the morning sun, their sturdy yellow bodies shining like sunlight embodied.

The blue jays. The crows. The mourning doves. The robins. They too are part of our flock.

Maybe not so much the grackles and the starlings and the pigeons. We are flawed humans; we have our favourite feathered friends.
I think it's rather clear that we are bird people. We love the deer, the bears, the dogs and cats, but our spirits find their mates in the winged ones.

Every morning, we join this avian community of faith on the back deck, in the field, in the sky. Faith in nature, faith in the cycles of life, faith in their constant presence in our lives. 

We are blessed by the birds. 

But so far, we have not felt their blessings upon us!