Hello. This post is about Death & Birds.
There are Buzzards nesting in the woods behind us. They’ll come and glide across the open sky of the valley, a landscape which provides the perfect acoustics for their urgent, mournful calls1. When they appear, the smaller Birds do the opposite—lest they be caught by these beautiful and efficient predators. David once saw one pin down a Wood Pigeon and rip it’s head clean off, only to leave its beheaded body behind, looking like a fallen member of the 18th century French nobility.
The sound of this Bird of prey always lifts my gaze upwards, and somehow the sky never seems more wide than it does when a Buzzard’s call is echoing through it. The way these Birds soar pulls at something in me. What is that thing, the flicker, the flame that awakens when we lose ourselves as we watch the flight of a Bird, as we have done over and again, on every continent and throughout time? Is it the spark of something deep within us that too wishes to soar above it all, above the mundane, above the restrictions of demand and expectation? What is freedom? And why when I don’t even understand it, does my heart so long for it?
Speaking of heart-longings, there is a Wren who I’m certain is nesting in one of the Conifers in the garden. I’ll hear him before I see him—perched on the edge, barely visible among it’s leaves, defying the laws of physics by singing more loudly than any Bird so impossibly small has any business in doing. It’s been unseasonably (whatever than even means, anymore) cold here lately, and so we leave tiny bundles of sheep’s wool about the place for the smaller Birds to take and use as nest insulation—we are, after all, neighbours. The Wren will take a comically small amount and fly back to the Conifer with it, before disappearing into what I imagine to be an exceptionally cozy home. If nest-envy is a thing, I am surely guilty of it.
When the baby Wrens are born and they fledge, every beat of their miniature wings will be testament to the love and the energy that went into their coming into the world. Just as every beat of every wing, and every footstep ever taken, is.
The more time I spend with new, tiny Birds and with people in the final stage of their lives, the more convinced I become of an unnamable and perhaps untouchable thing which each and every one of us holds. I don’t pretend to understand it, only sense it, and it is not for my logical mind to grapple with. It seems to be a life giving thing which creates a web, connecting each of us, winged and footed alike, and through which we all, already, know each other.
A cosmic web, ever growing. A unifying sense, or knowing. Something we (all beings) share, that gives us drive to hope, to dare, to carry on (in spite of all the trials and doubts that keep us small). A spark of recognition, see the me in you, the you in me.
In my attempts at active orientation towards the sacred, I am delighted to continually find it everywhere—and in the times when I cannot locate it I know that it has not disappeared, but that a part of me has been lost to distraction. Just as Birds rely on the stars to know where they are, I rely on Birds to know where I am. If, when in their presence, I am not awe-struck by the wonder of our shared existence, it is because I am not truly there.
When I am present, I know that my invisible connection to all of life has existed for as long as I have. Just as I know that as my heart took it’s very first beat, my Death was given birth to—it flowered somewhere in the future, where it now stands watching patiently, perhaps even lovingly, as I gradually move ever closer to it. As I move closer to it— I am the one enjoying the privilege of moving through spacetime. My Death is not walking towards me.
I do not believe that my life is limited by my mortality—in fact, I am certain that it is enhanced by it. The all too brief a time in which I have the opportunity to experience this seeking and finding of self in other is made more precious by the countdown which accompanies it. Perhaps freedom is letting go of the illusion of separateness and falling through the unknown, only to be caught by the cosmic net of interrelation.
After all, doesn’t the Earth reclaim each of us, eventually? Even the Birds..?
Yours in aimless flight…
After posting, it came to my attention that my friends across the pond have a Buzzard of their own which is rather different to ours—and indeed has no call! My sincerest apologies for any confusion. Here is an example of the Buzzards we have on our shores.
I don’t go to church but these beautiful letters that arrive on Sunday mornings feel like sermons to me. Chloe, somehow you capture what’s sacred about life and death and birds. What a balm for the griever’s heart and for all of us who find our churches in nature.
“I do not believe that my life is limited by my mortality—in fact, I am certain that it is enhanced by it. “ thank you for this.