Hawk under umbrella

I was in the kitchen when I heard a wild beating and clattering.  All I could see from the window was a confusion of feathers and very large wings under the patio bench.  Since the feathers appeared to belong to a hawk, I put on my raincoat and gloves (even though the temperature was hovering around 90 degrees), as I have a deep respect for the talons and beak of even an injured hawk.  Thus protected (probably inadequately), I went out and pulled one of the potted tomato plants away from the bench, hoping this would help the bird escape its confines, and then backed away.

Our good neighbors, working on the house across the street, saw the hubbub, and came over.  By this time the hawk was lying still and was panting open-beaked on the hot concrete.  She (at least we called it “she”) looked for all the world as if she were dying. One person suggested that we shade her with an umbrella, which we did.  And since she seemed unlikely to pose a threat at this point, I removed my raincoat and gloves in order to avoid my own heat stroke.

Meanwhile I had called Alachua County Animal Services, and before long a nice young man who knew much more about hawks than we did, arrived.  By this time, though, the hawk had begun to revive, and after a few minutes of sitting under the umbrella and then on the patio wall, gave a great cry and flew into one of our huge live oaks.  She rested there for a while, and eventually disappeared.

Second hawk
The second hawk arrived quietly (unlike the first one) four days later, early in the morning.  I tried to call Animal Services again, but it was Memorial Day, and the office was closed.

Juvenile hawk on patio wall

This time it was a juvenile.  She sat on the patio wall for a while and observed us.  She moved to the driveway, then to the bushes, and from there flew to the roof.  We were relieved that she had moved to a higher realm, because while the hawk was watching us, a large neighborhood cat was watching the hawk. (However, I do think the cat would have gotten an unpleasant surprise had he actually tried to grab this birdie.)

Anyhow, we were hoping the young hawk had flown home, but after lunch, there she was again, on the edge of the carport and later on the railing of the deck on the other side of the house.  In fact, she hung around most of the day.  We put water out for her on the railing, while she mildly kept an eye on us and on her surroundings, seemingly unafraid.

The next day she was gone.

Now let me tell you something strange. The first hawk – the injured one who eventually flew away – clattered onto the patio at a time when a friend had recently moved into hospice to die.  The second hawk – the young one who hung around all day – came without disturbance the day after our friend had peacefully died.

I don’t believe that the dead – or the dying – come to us literally in the form of animals. But this I do believe:

• That everyday life sometimes works in symbols, and that the symbols, if we are paying attention, can at times reveal to us a truth deeper than what our senses can perceive.
• That there is a mysterious communion among God’s holy creatures, living and dead, human or not.  (See “With a Little Help from My Friends” for a quote from Saint Ignatius of Loyola.  See also Romans 8:18-23 for an example of the relationship between humanity and the rest of creation.)

Were the hawks showing us something about our friend, first dying, then reborn in the peace of God?  Or were they just hawks who, without any significance, blundered into our yard? Who can say for sure?  What we can say is that these wild creatures brought consolation and delight in a time of sadness.

- – - – - – - – - -

Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars,
and spreads its wings towards the south?
(From God’s words to Job, 39:26)

How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, indeed it faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy
to the living God. …
Happy are those who live in your house,
ever singing your praise.

(Psalm 84:1-2,4)

Not only the temple, not only the churches, are God’s dwelling, but all of creation — and each of us is also the dwelling place of God. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” asks Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:16.  How lovely is God’s dwelling place!

Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences.

When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule. The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation, such as tighter restrictions on pollution.

What about other ways in which life is devalued, perhaps even by ourselves? And what makes one human life less precious than another?

Being unwanted?

Our local newspaper published a letter from a woman who declares that terminating an unwanted pregnancy is being responsible to the family and to the community. It would seem that in her view it is being wanted that gives a life value.

The consequences of this attitude are both mind-boggling and frightening.  If a life is only valuable to the degree that it is wanted, what does this say not only about human life at its beginning, but also about some of the most marginalized people in our society, whether the homeless, the mentally ill, or those who are simply too difficult to put up with? If no one wants them, perhaps because they are seen as burdens to the community or to the family, then do they have no intrinsic value and are therefore disposable?

Being handicapped?

The website “Medical News Today” reports on a provision in England’s abortion laws:
It is a shameful fact, in a country claiming to have reached a high moral plateau on equality, that the disabled baby can be aborted up to birth, whereas the baby without disability has greater protection and the limit is set at 24-weeks gestation.

Being on the wrong side of a war, or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Rightly or wrongly, it is traditional to value the lives of one’s own soldiers higher than those of the enemy. After all, one goal is to kill as many of the enemy as possible without being killed oneself. But what about civilians?

As of October 7, Iraq Body Count (IBC) records between 88,253 – 96,340 documented civilian deaths by violence (whether on the part of the coalition troops or others) resulting from the US-led intervention in Iraq. Other sources report higher figures. Are these lives to be cheapened as simply “collateral damage”?

Being considered unworthy for one reason or another?

• A sinner? (So are we all sinners. Sinners are the ones for whom Jesus died and rose.)

• A criminal? A murderer?

God decries our sins and crimes, because by them we hurt ourselves or others, but they do not diminish our value in God’s eyes.

When we get right down to it, each of us suffers from unworthiness, but only some of us have the grace to be aware of the fact. That this is a common affliction of the human condition does not excuse cruelty or even ungraciousness toward others, but it does make judging a perilous venture.

Each one of us is infinitely cherished, whether or not our parents wanted us, and no matter what others think of us — no matter, as far as that goes, what we think of ourselves. (See “Beloved of God.”) Each one of us is of inestimable worth regardless of our looks, the shape of our bodies, or the state of our physical, mental, emotional, or even moral health. Boundless love enfolds us, and there is nothing we can do to change that fact.

So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
…
God saw everything that he had made,
and indeed, it was very good.

(Genesis 1:27, 31)

Gliding like a stealth bomber, a manta ray is anything but evasive with snorkelers at Flower Garden Banks. . . . When swimmers remain unagressive, manta rays often become curious and even nuzzle up to be stroked.

Manta rays can be huge — up to 22 or 23 feet long — and can weigh up to 3000 pounds. What intrigues me is why this huge, harmless creature likes us — or would seem to. Does it know something we don’t?

There is something mysterious in the relationship between human beings and other creatures. The relationship between people and dogs, of course, is an ancient one. Then there are dolphins, which have been known to save drowning human beings. Plutarch, who lived around 47 – 120 AD, wrote, “To the dolphin alone nature has given that which the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage.” He goes on to say that while the dolphin has no need of our help, “it is a genial friend,” and does offer us help in our need.

Our relationship with creatures other than these may be even less fathomable, yet it is not only real but essential. St. Ignatius of Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, speaks of the cry of wonder of the person who becomes aware of his or her sin in the light of God’s mercy — mercy seen in this instance through creation: “an exclamation of wonder . . . as I reflect on all creatures and how they have let me live and have preserved me in life.” In fact, I have been surrounded by love, without even knowing it: the angels have prayed for me, Ignatius says, and the saints as well. Then Ignatius adds the phrase: “and the heavens, sun, moon, stars, and elements; fruits, birds, fish, and animals” [Sp. Ex. 60].

What a strange passage! It is as if Ignatius — along with dogs and dolphins and manta rays, too, perhaps — knew something about creation that most of us miss entirely. And maybe what they know is that all of us are in this together. As Paul says in Romans 8, “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” (By “children of God,” he means us.) And even more, “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.” The other creatures of God somehow share with us in our imperfection and suffering, and share with us in our redemption.

It seems to me, however, that we too often ignore this kinship when we make decisions that affect the earth and our environment. How sad — sad for our mother the earth (to borrow the expression of St. Francis of Assisi), sad for our sisters and brothers the creatures inhabiting it. Sad, too, for us, since our fate is in some mysterious way tied up together.

An early visitor was the five-foot-long rat snake that made its way from the roof to our water heater closet. Then there are the raccoons, which sound as if they are constructing multiple-family lodgings above our bedrooms, and which on occasion have fallen onto the front porch or tumbled, quarreling, into the courtyard.

The latest intruders from the roof jungle have been highly unwelcome: a colony of fire ants. I had never heard of fire ant mounds on a roof, but these built their dwelling up against the second-floor bathroom skylight. Somehow they found tiny openings into the skylight itself. Since the ledge around the circumference is very narrow, however, their interior annex collapsed from time to time, casting dirt and ants onto the bathroom floor, where the ants would wander around looking dazed and biting the unsuspecting sister with whom they came into contact.

Several times, with the help of Sister Annette, I cleared them out as well as I could, then climbed up into the skylight to seal the seams with caulking — doing this by feel as I couldn’t se where the openings were, and hoping not to get stung in the process. With the third climb, I think I have finally thwarted the fire ants.

Yesterday I noticed a new invader from above — grass growing inside the skylight in soil brought in by the ants and deposited in a crevice I can’t reach. Eventually we will have to do something about the roof, before its function as border between indoors and outdoors is totally compromised.

Boundaries
In matters of the spirit, boundaries are not so clearly defined. We are accustomed to speaking in terms of the physical and the spiritual, but here the borders tend to be fluid. The denizens of one domain spill over into another like raccoons and fire ants, whether we want them to or not.

We are both spiritual and bodily creatures. Although the physical may often seem to us to pose a block to the spiritual, at times, and through grace, we become aware that it can provide a pathway to God — who after all is the one who created the physical world and called it good. The spiritual is not an intruder in the physical world as the snake was an intruder in the water heater closet, nor is the physical an intruder into the world of the spirit. They mingle comfortably, even if we are not always comfortable with their mingling.

Bearers of Mystery
The physical is in fact a bearer of Mystery. This may be most obvious to us in the sacramental elements of water and wine and bread, but our own bodies are also bearers of Mystery, suffused with the presence of God. This requires of us a reverence in our approach to the human body. It requires a humble trust when inevitably our bodies appear to fail us. For even in our weakness — and perhaps especially here — we come face to face with the incomprehensible mystery of ourselves and of the God of Jesus Christ, whose Spirit never ceases to work in us.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? (1 Corinthians 3:16)

May my spirit be as docile to your Spirit
as the air to your creating Breath,
and may my presence on earth
never obstruct the vision of your Beauty.

May my own heart’s welcome flower in your embrace;
may my forgiving be nourished in your mercy,
and may my cautious love be enfolded and emboldened
in the sacrifice of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.

In spite of his gentle demeanor, none of us felt totally at ease with a five-foot snake in the house, and we didn’t know how to go about convincing him that he would be happier outside. I looked him up on the internet and found that he was most likely a yellow rat snake, very useful to have around since they eat rodents, but we still preferred that he take his meals outside. So I called Florida Pest Control, only to be told, “We don’t do snakes.” At last a friend came over and took the snake outdoors, chuckling at our dilemma.

It was only when the snake was picked up that we could see his intricate beauty. As I mentioned, he was brown and gold striped on the top and sides, which was all that could be seen under normal circumstances. (I could tell when he slithered away in the dead leaves that those stripes were excellent camouflage.) On the underside, however, our snake was a lovely cream color with bright star-like splotches.*

So I asked myself: Why would these beautiful designs be found where generally they wouldn’t be seen? Is it that God revels in beauty, even beauty that is “useless” from a human point of view? I do believe that. I imagined God creating such a creature, putting star-like designs on its underside where they would rarely be seen and exclaiming, “How beautiful!”All that flows from God’s hands is beautiful. Like the snake’s belly, however, not all of our own beauty is visible under normal circumstances. What is more, I can’t help thinking that what God finds loveliest in us is not always what other people think is of value. Even what we ourselves take pride in may not be what God finds the most beautiful in us. On the other hand, God, who sees the undersides of our hearts better than we ever can, may look at something we think of as insignificant or even disgraceful, and exclaim: “How beautiful!”

And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us:
and establish thou the work of our hands upon us;
yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.
(Psalm 90:17 KJV)

______________

* In all the web pages I checked describing yellow rat snakes, the descriptions of the belly varied from simply pale white or yellowish to “mottled with gray” or “yellow highlights,” which leads me to assume that there is no single characteristic pattern.

To be exact, this was a sea nettle. (I looked it up.) Like other jellyfish, I learned, it has no heart, no blood, and no brain.

My only impression so far of jellyfish had been that they are a nuisance when one is swimming in the ocean — more than a nuisance if you are stung by one. In fact, as I stared at this one, my first reaction was a feeling of fascinated disgust. The sea nettle had shapeless stuff hanging from its bell which reminded me of primal goo. It was especially unappealing when it turned upside-down. I wasn’t even sure that it was alive.

Then a second jellyfish appeared, and I realized that they were both in fact alive. I wondered if this one could be the mate of the other — though it’s hard to imagine anything without either a heart or a brain wanting to swim along companionably with its mate.

Gradually, as I watched, a marvelous thing happened: I saw how beautiful they were. The first was a translucent white; the second had red stripes. They both looked like uprooted mushrooms. Even more remarkable, considering my first reaction to them, was the concern I felt as the water became rough and the striped one seemed in danger of being smashed.

Too often, I don’t gaze long enough at things or people to see their beauty. In gazing, we may at times be granted the gift of seeing the world and its inhabitants a bit the way God sees them. When that happens, we perceive the beauty that was there all along, but which we had not, up until that moment, had the eyes to see.

O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. (Psalm 104:24)

Even for a night person who struggles to be alert at morning prayer, it was worth the effort. We counted at least 80 meteors during the half hour we stood beneath the sky watching. Afterwards I reflected on what had been required and the similarities to what is needed for prayer.

1. Being there. This may sound obvious, but it is the first and probably the most important requirement. I had never seen a meteor shower before because I had never gotten out of bed, driven to a dark spot, and stood there under the night sky.

2. Finding a spot where artificial light doesn’t drown out the beauty. Our contemporary life surrounds us with external stimuli, all of which compete for our attention. Just as we had to find a location away from city lights and the moon in order to view the meteor shower, it is helpful to find a location (in our hearts as well as a physical spot) where our focus toward God is not unduly interrupted by what society thinks of as “light.”

3. Waiting. There were times when nothing much was going on (nothing, that is, that we could see), but if we had left, we would have missed something splendid.

4. Paying attention. No matter how many meteors are flaming above my head, if I am discussing the topic of my next talk or what to get at the grocery story in the morning, I will not notice them.

5. Letting our eyes adjust to the dark. Meteor watching involves being willing to stand quietly in the dark, and it requires a different kind of seeing from our ordinary, daily vision. In prayer, we learn a new way of looking both through our own faithfulness and through the help of those who have gone before us in the spiritual life.

Nevertheless, it is not our effort which makes prayer happen, any more than Sister Elizabeth and I made the Leonid meteor shower happen by being there, by choosing a conducive location, by waiting, by paying attention, or by letting our eyes adjust to the dark. But without these, we would probably still be wondering why so many people stand in awe before the wonder of meteors streaking across the sky.

The sun shall no longer be
your light by day,
nor for brightness shall the moon
give light to you by night;
but the Lord will be your everlasting light,
and your God will be your glory.

Your sun shall no more go down,
or your moon withdraw itself;
for the Lord will be your everlasting light,
and your days of mourning shall be ended.
(Isaiah 60:19-20)

Sister Elizabeth and I were the only ones home and she had already gone to bed, but since this seemed like an event worthy of being roused, I ran upstairs to get her — all the time hoping the baby was not injured and wondering what in the world I would do with a wounded baby raccoon in the middle of the night.

By the time we returned, Mama Raccoon had arrived, and they both looked back at us suspiciously as she led Baby away.

I returned to my reading only to hear, a few minutes later, another crash — which this time sounded like a softer landing in the bushes — followed by more pitiful chittering. Evidently Baby was not having a good night. I lifted my eyes only briefly from my book, however, figuring that Mama could be trusted to handle the situation.

God, our heavenly parent, is even more concerned about us than Mama Raccoon was about her baby. Our cries and complaints never fall on deaf ears. God lifts us up after we fall, and keeps coming back to find us time and time again.

As a mother comforts her child,
so I will comfort you…
(Isaiah 66:13)