Forgiveness

Poison ivy.  Right foot.  I can feel it coming.

It was worth it.

We were helping new-comer Nathan pitch his tent at the Wolf Conservation Center of New York.  We were packing up our own tent following last night’s Sleepover with the Wolves, and he was moving in and scoping out a dry spot.  I was up in the greenery on the side of the trail attaching his rain fly, thinking, “Is this poison ivy?”

Answer?  Yes, I guess.

It was worth it, because this is a special place.  There are Gray Wolves, Red Wolves, and Mexican Gray Wolves here, and they are all endangered, and they occasionally erupt into a glorious chorus of howls.

We had pitched our tent in line with the others for the Sleepover with the Wolves experience, and discovered quickly that some wolves could be enticed into howling by a little sonic nudge from a human’s wanna-be-howl.  It was thrilling.  But, the over-night was largely silent, except for an uproar in the Red Wolf enclosure, where (my guess is) somewolf grabbed a tasty little four-footed night traveler of some kind, and the others wanted in on it.  With not enough to go around, it got nasty and snarly, and slightly scary.

Then, this morning, the Wolf Conservation Center hosted my brand-new presentation called CRY WOLF: The Amazing Story of Humanity’s Love/Hate Relationship with Canis Lupus, and I had an eager audience that included a gaggle of 5th-grade girls.  It was a birthday party.  It was probably the coolest birthday party in the universe, I figured, and I awarded the mom for her awesome departure from Disney Princess drivel.  The birthday girl quipped, “I hope we’ll get to hear the wolves howl!”

We were a short walk up the hill and then on down the trail to the wolf enclosures; we were in their neck of the woods, but not right next door.

I opened my presentation with a beautiful tune called Forgiveness, written by Jan Michael Looking Wolf.  It’s a simple wood flute and guitar thing, and so lovely and expansive that closing your eyes and swaying to it is easy, and remarkably unselfconscious.  Forgiveness.  I played it on my wood flute to welcome in my audience, to set the tone, to open the spiritual space for wonder.  As the last note died, we heard…

…all the wolves, full-throated and lusty, ripe and rough and resonant, committed.  Howling.  It was almost high noon.  It was a full peal, in broad daylight.  Forgiveness.  With its sound and spirit, it reached up the hills and trails, inviting and encouraging these wolves to sing along and lend their hair-raising lupine amen.

I almost doubled over, gasping, “This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Forgiveness.

Listen to Jan Michael Looking Wolf’s beautiful song, “Forgiveness,” by clicking here.

Wounded Bird

Thwack.

A sound I know too well.  A bird just flew into the storm door.  Somehow, usually, miraculously (when this happens), they are unhurt.  And poof, they are gone.  Sometimes they leave their wing-prints on the glass, making strange art that shouldn’t be just Windexed-away.

But today was different.  The sparrow lay on the welcome mat, gasping, struggling, bright-eyed, beak agape and then closed, agape and then closed.  I cupped my hand around her tiny form and picked her up.

She was so wondrously made.  Even though she’s just a House Sparrow (the kind that flies around in the Home Depot or stalks your burrito bowl as you dine outdoors at Chipotle), she is beautiful.  The pattern of her flight feathers, the perfection in the arrangement of her buff belly feathers, the tawny hint of an eyebrow make her at once an object of my fascination and my sorrow.  I start to cry.  I extend her right wing and look; I am amazed. I extend her left wing, and marvel.

I cup her in both hands.  Is she breathing?  Is there bird CPR to be performed?  I pray.  Holy God and Master Creator, wake this beautiful thing of yours.  She should not die in my hands.  But she did.  A tiny smidge of bird blood appeared on my palm next to her beak.

There is no proper way to commit her to eternity, no words by which we return her small biomass back to the earth.  She’s simply not important enough.  Yet, today, when she died in my hands, she changed me, just for a moment.  She deserved something to acknowledge this: she was here.  She made me think; she made me look, for a moment, at my own small biomass and consider its import (or lack thereof), and my own fearfully and wonderfully made-ness.  She reminded me of the inherent vulnerabilities granted to those who receive the spark of life.

Once upon a time, I tried to commit to living radically in the present.  Ha.  But I think at this moment, I get it.

And I recall a song, a song I have loved for a long time.  It is by this song that I will hand her back to the puzzling God who promised that he had his eye on her; the same one who has his eye on me; the one whose ways are bigger than mine by a ga-jillion.  Listen by clicking on the link below.

Wounded Bird, Graham Nash (1971)

Amen.