Receive What Is Given
I'm sitting at my favorite study table at one of my library haunts. The table sits under a big picture window that overlooks a tree with thick bean-like pods. I've come to this table and its window many times over many years, and I have seen this tree in many seasons and kinds of weather. I have had the pleasure of experiencing how the window acts like a bird-blind when birds come to the tree's branches.
Today, the branches are bare except for those big bean pods. The leaves are down, and I haven't yet seen a bird. But the vicissitudes of this tree, and this dynamic reality of birding behavior remind me to receive what is given. That doesn't mean I'm passive: I'm still alert and observant, which is an active posture. This is my usual mode as a birder too. I'm less interested in the metrics, all the cataloguing, listing, and documenting of birds. I'm far more interested in the experience of birds as they come, as I receive them. So, while I might not look like a busy, serious birder, hounding various species down, I am quite serious about receiving the birds that are given to me to see. Somedays, it's the ordinary ones, and that means they are rather special because they are the ones that I'm receiving. They remind me to stay alert to the givenness of things.
That kind of language ("the givenness of things") might sound a wee bit philosophical for a Monday newsletter update. Maybe so, but Monday philosophizing is a perfect time to do it, deepening our experiences of ordinary life, right in the middle of its ordinariness, or -- let's be real -- its ordinary anxieties, usual demands, and typical distractions. Jesus was serious when he said, "Look at the birds," right in the midst of talking about stuff we often tend to fret about and get fractured over.
Rev. Courtney Ellis starting getting into birds during COVID, like many others, right in the thick of the pandemic's anxieties. She was already a prolific author and devoted pastor. But the birds started to work on her, as they do (I can testify!), so much so that she started a podcast about birding and even has a book coming out about birds and grief (pre-order here!). She's an immensely thoughtful human being, and my lands, a generative one too.
It was my pleasure to chat with her recently about birds, Beguines, and the givenness of things. I hope you'll have a listen, and then share the episode with a friend. So look up, look out, look around, and receive what is given to you.