He must be very tired.
About two hundred yards from where I sit on the deck, a lone osprey sits quietly on his nest atop a Douglas fir, immobile, illuminated by sunset, looking down at the lake. All day, a very busy day, he’s been shuttling to and from his nest, hunting and bringing food back for his offspring—who are just about ready to learn to hunt for themselves.
Perhaps he’s enjoying the view of the lake. I’m curious, though. I’ve never seen the big bird so quiet for so long. It’s been almost 45 minutes, and neither of us has moved. The poor guy must be very tired. Or, perhaps, it’s something else?
These guys never rest, do they?
If you draw a straight line between my chair and the osprey’s nest, our hummingbird feeder hangs directly in that line. By shifting my depth of field close and far, I can focus on the osprey, then on the hummingbirds that visit, then back to the amazingly quiet osprey. A ruby-throated hummingbird hovers, drinks, hovers, drinks again, then perches on the feeder bracket. He too is still. Very still, and I hardly breathe—these little guys never perch here, and I don’t want to scare him away. So, why is he waiting?
For a minute, two, even three, he sits entirely still, facing me. Then, he flits his wings once, twice, defecates a tiny drop, a jewel that falls and sparkles in the evening sunlight. He hovers again, above the feeder, moves in, takes a last drink, vanishes.
Peace and tragedy are siblings
Shortly before I sat down here on my deck in peaceful north Idaho, a maniac waited in a truck until the Bastille Day fireworks in Nice, France, were done, and when the crowd was milling down the Promenade des Anglais, he drove the 19-ton lorry into them and murdered 84 people, injuring scores of others.
I’ve been to big-city fireworks on the Fourth of July, and I imagine you have, too. I know the crush of the crowd when the display and the oohs and ahs are done, the nowhere-to-go-just-accept-it feeling. I can imagine the screams behind me and my family, the sudden panic around us. I can imagine turning to see what’s happening and beholding the looming lorry, the white death, bearing down.
Here on my deck, soothed by the evening breeze, sharing with the birds the quietest evening of this summer, I am perhaps an infinite distance from Nice and the Promenade Des Anglais. But in one small way, I am there.
How? How?
For the first time in many years, after a career spent in the service of the science of psychology (which requires no gods), I join thousands in Nice: I am praying.
To whom are we praying?
No doubt, you and I answer this in our own ways. I’m not praying to anyone in particular. I just speak words into the soft and darkening air, to the One in whom we live and breathe and have our being. I feel mourning, and imagine that I see mourning—my projection, no doubt—in the osprey’s stillness and the hummingbird’s wait on the feeder bracket.
I pray into the empty sky of the evening for an idea, a thought, any glimmer of a road from all this tragedy to peace. I pray for something I’m afraid I could lose: A word of hope.
No word comes back.
Until I see a boat . . .
. . . crossing Lake Pend Oreille. As I watch, the wake, opening always out in the cut water, fades, diminishes, passes. The boat’s knife has slashed, but it has not wounded, the water. No, water absorbs the violent energy, swells with its effect for a moment, then passes it along. Each molecule of water accepts the blast of energy and passes it to the next. We see the wave, and then it is gone. No molecule is lost or injured, because each accepts what comes, then moves it on.
Can we?
Can you share with me—in this blog post—my sorrow at the human violence in our world? Sorrow for Paris, San Bernardino, Syria, Israel, Istanbul, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Gaza, Burkina Faso, Mali, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Baltimore, Orlando, Baton Rouge, Dallas, Minnesota, now Nice. Sorrow for the thousand other places and million other deaths. Can you pass this sorrow along after tasting it for your moment, and ask your fellow human beings, friends, family, Facebook folk, to stop a moment, share the sorrow, then pass it on?
Will you?
I’m finding myself struggling to move on from all of this. When I turned on the tv to watch another form of horror (RNC), I am witnessing a drama unfolding in Baton Rouge….
Again? More? Tears form in my eyes that flow heavy on my face. The relief comes for me from the same lake Bill watched that night when Nice was broken…never to be the same again. There is the lake, the trees, flowers, Ospreys, and then I spot a sailboat on the water. This lovely gentle scene is changed by another human being. Who is this person, what are they thinking? What is in their heart right then?
Surely, those who have found it necessary to perform these inhuman acts have not spent time with our Mother Earth. I pray that so many angry hate-filled people will find a moment to feel her under their feet. Smell her, listen to her, allow her to soothe their angry hearts, as she has comforted my frightened one.
Thanks for that, Sue. You’re right, the relationship we have with the Earth is so important. To be nurtured by her is core to well-being. Urban life–buried in the heater-skelter not just of frantic motion but unlovely surroundings, harsh buildings, and poverty–degrades. No wonder so many are angry. We are blessed to live in a beautiful place and my heart aches for those who suffer in impoverished environments.