The Blessings of Birdwatching
A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the 14th Sunday After Pentecost by the Very Rev. Tyler Doherty, Dean & Rector.
Sometimes I think that the entire Christian life can be summed up in the practice of bird-watching. One of the first things I learned in my early days as a teenaged bird-brain was the importance of a certain kind of openness and receptivity, the practice of attentive listening to what is always already present. One of my favorite haunts was the Leslie Street Spit--an unintended wild area of startling biodiversity in downtown Toronto that was initially formed by dumping building materials--mostly reinforced concrete--into Lake Ontario. Slowly a spit--a narrow finger of land--began to wander out from the shoreline. Grasses seeded. Trees took root. Milkweed started popping up. Soon it was a regular waystation for the Monarch butterflies migrating to and from Mexico. A family of coyotes moved in. And, of course, the birds. In the shadow of a bustling downtown--with its streetcars, weaving cabbies and skyscrapers--300 different species of birds on what started out as a quick way to get rid of building materials.
Like any novice I showed up at the Spit armed with a checklist of different species I was determined to tick off. I was all fuss and bother, rushing about with binoculars in hand, keeping a watchful eye on the clock. How many could I see in one hour? Crashing around, I quickly discovered that this bird-watching thing wasn’t all it was chalked up to be. I was covered in burrs, and all I’d checked off was a lousy ring billed gull circling the hotdog stand at the entrance dive-bombing unattended french fries. Time to change tactics.
I sat down under a gnarled willow, set aside my checklist, and came to a hormonal teenage boy’s approximation of stillness. At first, all I heard was the sound of thoughts crashing around in my head--”You’ve got 45 minutes! Get to it!” “Traffic will be terrible if you leave too late!” “I wonder what I’ll eat for lunch?” After a few minutes though, my surroundings started to come prodigally into focus. Wind off the lake with a dash of gull cry, sunlight dappling the muddy path, frog song from a pool not far off, and, lo and behold, a flitting feathered thrum in the trees. What I was seeking after was there all along when I finally came to my senses--opened, received, allowed what was there to present itself, reveal itself. What was covered under a scrim of checklists and busyness, edging into light in the form of a yellow-throated warbler hunting yummy grubs.
I started out the walk as the Lord of the Leslie Street Spit. I was the author. But stopping, pausing--even just a little--revealed that most basic of Christian dispositions--the Lord (not me!) is the author and giver of all good things as our collect reminds us. God--that effervescent reality beyond the tightly circumscribed confines of the puny collection of likes and dislikes I call my “self”--is prior to everything. True religion, goodness, good works are the result of contact with that which is prior, already given as sheer gift. But contact, the dance of love and accepting our acceptance requires my presence and consent. It takes two to tango into union.
It might surprise you that Karl Barth--the great Swiss Reformed theologian of the 20th century whom Pius XII called the greatest theologian since Aquinas--wasn’t a fan of “religion.” He thought religion was a human construct--all the ways we box God up in order to make God the plaything of our own unexamined, self-centered motivations: what Mark, quoting Isaiah, calls the bad exchange of the Living God for a comfortable idol of our own making—“human tradition.” Christianity for Barth wasn’t a religion. It was in-breaking encounter with something other than ourselves--why he always speaks of the “strange world of the bible” and the “transcendent otherness of God.” If pressed, I think Barth might concede that this is what our collect calls “true religion”: the Lord of all power and might (power and might that look like pouring yourself out for others, showering love and mercy on everyone without exception, washing feet, touching the untouchable) as the author and giver, rather than we ourselves. A life lived with receptive openness and vulnerability in recognition of the givenness of our experience--God there waiting to be recognized when the checklist is set aside and we stop being the boss of everything.
This is what Deuteronomy means, I think, by “entering and occupying the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors is giving you.” Not gave you in the past tense, but is giving… present tense. The land is not some geographical location, but the fruit of a disposition trained in seeing and living from the gift. Heeding--paying attention to, taking notice of--God’s presence always and everywhere. “The Land” is anywhere we verify in our own experience that “god is so near.” The Land is being given--even here and even now--at a stoplight, on the bus, when the desk phone is ringing and the cell phone is ringing and there’s someone in the doorway. I’ll never forget visiting a hospice patient near the end of her life while she was drifting in and out of consciousness… breathing it seemed only a couple times a minute. I had just finished anointing her and praying over her when she opened her eyes, smiled, and whispered--“The good and broad land.”
Interesting that Deuteronomy also counsels us not to “add anything” or “take anything away” if we want to live in the land. Aren’t we mostly adding something, or taking something away from our experience most of the time? Things should be like this. We don’t like this certain thing this certain way. Always adding and taking away, always copy-editing the work of the author of all good things, but rarely just present, open, receiving, to things as they are in what the theologians call their quiddity--their thisness. Poets and bird watchers learn this over time--the art of attending, without adding or taking away--to what’s there. That poem by the grand dame of American Haiku Elizabeth Searle Lamb springs to mind:
pausing
halfway up the stair—
white chrysanthemums
That pause, halfway up the stair, the recognition of the thisness of the white chrysanthemums--THAT is the land to which Deuteronomy points. The pew right under our blessed little bottoms. The Kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the Good News.The gift already given, but now received as if for the first time. James tells us to be “quick to listen” and with meekness (openness, vulnerability, receptivity) to “welcome… the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.” Deuteronomy says that God is near. James says that the word is actually implanted within us! Nearer to us than we are to ourselves if we just listen, abide. We seek outside ourselves in power, possessions, and prestige for the fulfillment of our deepest longing, when it has been implanted in our souls. “The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” The Pearl of Great Price buried in the field of the heart. Yellow-throated warblers in the branches right over our heads the whole time.
Sometimes, James gets misunderstood to mean that Christianity is about being a busy-body, a doer of the world. His point is not especially complicated, but it bears repeating--we are a listening people, who if we have actually heard, find ourselves moved naturally into compassionate action. Hearing but doing nothing is spiritual deadness. But so is doing without having listened. It’s just more activity without discernment usually done to meet an unacknowledged need in ourselves. There’s a big difference between God being the author of all good things and acting in harmony with that and me being the author of all good things and acting from there after all.
That’s why, when we come to our sliced and diced gospel reading for today, we find this strong contrast between outward observance and inner disposition. It’s pretty easy to wash your hands, put your napkin on your knee, hold your knife and fork just so, arrange the cups and pots and bronze kettles according to the Emily Post Etiquette Manual and have a perfectly awful meal because everyone is mad at everyone else and playing nice. Jesus is reminding us that no amount of rearranging the outward circumstances of our life will ultimately satisfy if we haven’t looked into our own hearts and seen that it is from there that all good and bad actions originate. “Take care and watch yourselves closely” Deuteronomy counsels. Look in the mirror, says James, and don’t forget what you see there.
In fact, looking in the mirror is a good metaphor for what happens when we first sit down under the willow tree to watch birds, or recollect ourselves in silence and stillness and simplicity during a time of prayer. We see ourselves clearly. Busy running to and fro, we often don’t even recognize that we’re anxious, fearful, depressed, angry. Pausing halfway up the stair, not white chrysanthemums, but our hurt, the ache of our loneliness. Can we just see that, behold that, hold that in love, know it to be held in love, without adding to it or taking away from it by denying it, or shoving it into some nether region of the unconscious where it will fester and erupt with fury of ten thousand suns at an inopportune time--probably when someone hasn’t washed the bronze kettle “correctly.”
That’s the beginning of true humility (from the Greek humus, earth). Humility is having an honest, grounded, earthy, perspective on ourselves, of getting to know our habitual patterns and automatic reactions, learning to not always have to act from that place of drivenness. We hear our usual stories about the usual things and then sometimes we hear something else--like a bird flitting from branch to branch: the dancing, darting implanted word of love, grafted in our hearts that heard is effortlessly done. No muss. No fuss. No credit due. No hope of gain. Just love doing what love does. The fruit of that three note melody greater than any symphony--”You are beloved.”