I’m not sure how to say this.  Some of you will be mad.  Or at least disappointed in me.

Well? I know you will. 

You’ve read the poems since you were young; you sang the songs.  You even watched Mary Poppins hold one on her finger as she sang A Spoonful of Sugar.

You love them.  I know you do.

Well, it can’t be helped.  I’m going to have to tell you.

I don’t really like robins.

I’ve tried.  Really, I have.

The thing is, there’s nothing special about them.  Oh sure, they have that orangey-red chest.  They even give a little hope in the late winter that spring will soon be here.  But, other than that, what’s so extraordinary about the storied birds?

What’s that?  You think they’re the early bird that gets the worm?  They’re always pictured as that.  But, that’s strike one against them, as far as I’m concerned.  I don’t do early mornings.  I just don’t.

But, on the off chance that I am awakened at four or four-thirty some morning, you can be sure one will be chirping outside my window to beat the band.  Try going back to sleep with that racket outside.

And, that’s another thing!  They don’t even really have a song.  Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!  Plus, it gets worse when humans are around.  They fuss and raise a ruckus, claiming territory they don’t really even want, simply to ensure quiet for their nest.

Give me the cardinals any day.  What a beautiful and varied song they have!  Their nests are in bushes and thickets no human would want to approach anyway, so they never fuss—at me, at least.

Then there are the wrens—or the finches—or even the white-throated sparrow that sings in the top of the sweet gum tree.

But those robins—they’re everywhere.  Bob, bob, bobbin’ across the lawn, scratching for the worms, early or late.  Trying to build nests where they absolutely cannot fit—under my eave, for instance.  And, then after the wind blows the grass and paper away for the tenth time, they try again—in exactly the same spot.

There’s no love lost on my part for the fabled worm-catchers. 

Well.  That’s not completely true.  Not anymore.

Our neighbor let a pair of the silly things build a nest near the top of the post on her front porch.  I looked at the structure and told her it wouldn’t last through the first storm.  Frank Lloyd Wright, they’re not.

I was wrong.  Several storms later, the nest is still there.  The female laid her eggs—four of them if Wikipedia is to be believed.  She sat on her eggs.  She hatched her little ones.

I would stop over to talk with my neighbor, being careful not to startle the fussy mama.  No loud noises; no quick movements.

Shhhhh.

I would have told you I still didn’t care for robins.  An event the other day put the lie to that belief.

My desk looks out a window toward the neighbor’s porch, so I have watched the comings and goings on that nest for several weeks.  The other morning, my attention was on my computer screen when a strange movement caught my eye.

The mother robin was flying rapidly away from the nest, but there was still a bird standing over the nest.  A big bird.

A hawk had discovered the babies!  Without thinking, I shouted loudly and jumped up, racing out the door behind me to stop the mayhem on the porch.  Evidently, the predator heard either my shout or the door and was already winging away from the nest with something—we can guess what—in his beak.

Oh well.  It was just baby robins.  Who cares?

Well, besides the obvious One who cares about every one of them that falls to the ground.  (Matthew 10:29)

This old man cared, evidently.  I sat back down at my desk, watching the frantic mother robin flying to the nest, sticking her head down inside, and then winging to the redbud tree nearby, before repeating the pattern over and over, and the tears came.

I don’t even like robins.  But, I cried.  Over baby robins.

I’ve thought a lot about that over the last couple of days, attempting to square the dichotomy.

I think I’m beginning to understand it a little better.  I even have a word to explain how this happened.

Engagement.

Engagement involves investment.  In this case, simply an investment of attention.  Which led to a personal stake in the wellbeing of the little birds and the happiness of their parents.

Engagement costs.

I stood in a friend’s hallway the other day after I had helped him with a household problem, and he told me how sorry he had been about my friend I lost a few weeks ago.

He must have been a really close friend.  Had you known him a long time?

It would be simpler to explain if it had been a long time.  When a longtime friend passes, you expect to be emotionally devastated.  Grief like that doesn’t come with short-term, social media friendships.

Or, does it?

Four months.  It seems a lifetime ago, but it was only four or five months ago that another friend, a poet in New Zealand, suggested to Jeff and to me that we needed to know each other.

He was also a writer, much better at it than I, but we both treasured what words can accomplish when arranged carefully, lovingly,  and set in place with a bit of grace.

I never got to meet Jeff in the flesh, but I knew him.  He knew me.  Out of the grace we both have known in our lives, a bond of love grew.

Now, he’s gone and there’s a hole in my world.

Engagement costs.

Oh, but it pays, too.

It is oh-so-easy for us to get caught up in the grief of loss, the feeling that the world will never again be right, and believe that disengagement is a better way to live life.

Many do.  Many I know refuse to be hurt.  The only way to keep from being hurt is to refuse to engage—to flee from love.

In such a vacuum, life is empty.  When there is never any pain, there can never be any joy.

When there is never any pain, there can never be any joy. Click To Tweet

I said my friend and I knew what words are capable of when used in the right way.  Many others know it, too.

Our words, written (and said) at the right time, and offered from loving hearts, provoke.

That’s right.  They provoke.  They incite.  They motivate.  They move.

It’s why I write.  When I am tempted to disengage—to lessen the pain and the frustration—I remember the words written to the Hebrews in the New Testament, reminding them to keep spending their lives with others, because in engagement we may provoke to love.  In engagement, we provoke each other to good works.

There are no age-related waivers given, no limited-education exceptions written. And sometimes, our companions along the way are like those robins.  Annoying.  Loud and repetitive.  Not nearly as intelligent as we are. Stubborn.

Engage anyway.

Provoke anyway.

Revel in the result.  Sadness, mixed with joy.  Love, combined with goodness.

But, I didn’t finish the story about the robin, did I?

My sorrow has turned to joy again, as I have observed, out my office window, the robins feeding their two surviving chicks the last couple of days. I assumed all was lost, but it was a lie.  Even as I write this, the male is on the ground outside with food in his mouth and the babies have their necks stretched out, yellow beaks agape, waiting to be fed.

All is not so dark as it seems.

It rarely is.

 

 

 

For the darkness shall turn to dawning
And the dawning to noonday bright.
And Christ’s great kingdom shall come on earth,
The kingdom of love and light.
(from We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations ~ H. Ernest Nichol)

 

 

 

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2018. All Rights Reserved.