Whenever I see buzzards circling in a clear sky, I think of Oscar.
Many years ago, a colleague of my father’s found an abandoned baby buzzard (a turkey vulture, to be exact), took him home, and named him Oscar. Cared for with tenderness, Oscar grew up and learned to fly. During the day he would go out and socialize with other buzzards, but he would always come home again every afternoon.
Bereft of a mother, however, Oscar had never learned an essential trick of buzzardhood — to lock his wings in a dihedral angle so as to soar on the warm air currents. While the other turkey vultures were lazily gliding, poor Oscar was flapping and flapping, working hard to stay aloft. By the time he returned home, he was exhausted.
This went on for some time, Oscar going out every day, flap-flapping to keep up with the others, and coming home worn out, until one day — he got it. Oscar finally learned what most of his vulture companions had known from youth, to fix his wings at the proper angle and simply soar. He was so ecstatic at this discovery that he stayed out for hours, soaring and gliding, catching the updrafts of the earth-warmed air.
Like Oscar, we often work unnecessarily hard just to keep aloft. We battle to succeed, we strain to make people like us, and in the realm of faith we struggle to lift ourselves to God. In the long run what we really need to do is learn to be still and rest on the currents of God’s love.
Someone who knew this was Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a remarkable woman, an artist, scientist, musician, writer, and composer. If anyone could rely on her own resources, it would seem to have been Hildegard. Nevertheless, she was aware that it was not her own flapping that would allow her to soar, and she described herself as “a feather on the breath of God.”
Our own efforts amount to nothing unless we are borne by the Spirit of God who breathes in us, surrounds us, supports us, and raises us up.
I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a child quieted at its mother’s breast;
like a child that is quieted is my soul.
(Psalm 131:2 RSV)