Wild and Wonderful Signs

The yin and yang of signs includes those times when you are seeking direction or confirmation so request a sign (or two or thousand) and those signs that hit you over the head when you aren't looking. The former is Gideon's story, the latter is Moses'  My story this week is a bit of both, but first their tales.

Gideon heard a call from God to do some fighting of the enemy to save the people and bring rest to the land, you know, the sort of average day at the office thing.  Well, I can't say I blame him for requesting confirmation.  Heck, I would have outright said "no, you have the power to do this non-violently God, get back to me with that plan" or at least I hope I would have, but then again, that's another story.  Back to Gideon: he tested the message via fleece. He put the fleece out on the ground and told God that when he came and checked in the morning that it had better be wet and the ground dry if God expected Gideon to do as asked.  When he arose to find just as he had demanded, Gideon did what any of us would do, call for best two out of three!  Only he added the twist of doing it vice versa with the wet and dry.  Lo and behold he got his demand met and off he went to lead the troops.

Moses, on the other hand, was minding his own business.  That is, his business was livestock and he was minding them in the desert when he noticed a bush that was on fire but was not consumed. As signs go, I must say that that one is an impressive way to get someone's attention.  Moses didn't miss it, nor did he ask for it. There is a bit of wisdom that says that the bush had been burning for generations, but Moses was the first to hear the voice of God in it.  That says something about noticing signs.

So I was stuck in my car for far too many hours for a person with an attention span as short as mine as I was coming home from Hot Springs, North Carolina where I had not unexpectedly been inspired by attending the Wild Goose Festival. One great take away from this year's festival was that the future of Christianity is not just how those moving from Evangelicalism meet those coming from Liberalism but that we may be finding that labels are truly irrelevant when we are following the call of the Holy Spirit that is as untamed and unpredictable as a wild goose.  I was feeling the joy and inspiration of the gathering, filled with the spirit of God that I had felt in the gathered followers...and stuck in the car with nothing to distract me.  So in the course of that long drive (made a bit more exciting by the discovery that I had left my debit card at a restaurant in Hot Springs!) I was reflecting, praying, meditating and planning no less than three projects that follow up from the experience at the festival.  I wanted to text an idea to someone I wanted to involve in one of those projects so I was looking for a rest area.  I chose the West Virgina welcome center quite intentionally since I had yet to observe the West Virginia state bird while in that state.  

So I was enjoying the break, getting some food and water while sending the text, stretching my legs a bit.  I was only mildly aware of the birds around me.  Then I realized that the Blue Jays I had noted were quite loud and agitated.  It was classic mobbing behavior.  My suspicions were confirmed when I moved toward the small stand of trees where the ruckus was occurring and also heard equally agitated Titmice.  Whatever raptor had upset them escaped my detection, but it got me walking the picnic area enjoying the flora and fauna.  I began hearing a chip note that I thought I knew.  I followed it until I saw that it was indeed a Northern Cardinal, the state bird of West Virginia.

One task completed, I finished the second one of sending the text and started back to my car.  Just as I reached it I saw a group of people entering a car a few away from mine.  The driver looked familiar...because he was.  It was Joel, a seminarian in the process of ordination within my denomination in the Association just west of mine here in Massachusetts, whom I had met for the first time at last year's Wild Goose Festival.  I had not seen him since (because he has been living in New Haven), that is until this year's festival.  And now, here it was a day after the festival ended, three states away (and still not in the state where either of us lives) that I saw him again!  If the Cardinal was my Gideon-ish sign, this one was Moses-esque.

Some streams of Christianity put a heavy emphasis on seeking and interpreting signs.  In fact, it is a style I had experienced and moved away from in my journey and last year's Wild Goose Festival was a time during which I had a great healing moment with some new friends in that camp.  One of them challenged me this year to imagine having that all the time in my life and ministry.  I don't see that happening, since I think that if I constantly sought signs I would tend toward Gideon more than Moses.  But that doesn't mean that I can't see a wild and wonderful sign when it pops up right in front of me where I can't help but run into it. So I'm pretty sure that God has some plans and that the conversation with the invisible traveling partner was not in vain.  I am comfortable leaving lots of wiggle room, not pinning down details, because signs are guideposts not footnoted guide books.

Still I have to say that among the birds at that rest area  I'm a bit surprised i there wasn't a goose present. Oh wait, there is that invisible conversation partner...

Misplaced Beauty

As May 11, 2013 came to close, in the first minutes of May 12, I was on the winning team of the 30th World Series of Birding.  Our total of 182 species was 8 species more than the next team, and 19 more than the one after that.  Our week of long days of diligent, dedicated scouting had paid off in finding birds on a rainy day with no migration to speak of in a year when migration in general appeared to be late.  Whether it was due to the effects of superstorm Sandy or climate change was unclear, but in the end, though a meager total, 182 proved to be a respectable number for a tough year.

The happy dance was only virtual, not only because of exhaustion but also because it is unseemly to celebrate in the presence of those who have lost.  Still, the recounting of the day before finally crawling into bed was filled with the satisfaction of thinking that our best efforts had proven to be the best on the day.  That is until we arrived at the breakfast ceremony to accept our award.  We were informed that a team of high school youth had tallied 4 more species than we had, and although the award structure had not previously recognized youth teams among the winners in the level 1 full state competition, the board had decided that since they did indeed have the highest number of species, they were to be awarded the Urner Stone Cup and we would be given the Stone Award for second place.  Needless to say, we were deflated.  We couldn't argue with the numbers or for that matter the logic of the decision.  Alternative outcomes and arguments to counter the decision were whispered among team mates, but in the end there was nothing to be done but graciously accept second place.

Now with some time for reflection, I am a bit embarrassed by the emotional roller coaster I allowed my ego to take me on.  After nearly two decades of participating in this event, I should realize the truth of my own words that competitive birding is an oxymoron.  The sublime beauty of observing wild birds goes right out the window on a Big Day and it is all competition and no longer birding.  It is no fun losing, and coming in second after believing you were first is exactly that.  I wish that I could be more excited for the young men that won the competition, but I'm left with the sinking feeling not only that they may continue to be better than any team I'm on, thus keeping my name off the winner's cup, but that somehow our years of effort should have counted for more, that they could wait, but our time had come.  The ego can be pretty ugly at times and try as I might to pretty it up with various justifications, the mirror doesn't lie, this doesn't look good on me.

I am remembering J. Phillip Newell's words on Darkwood Brew about the ego being the servant of the being and that Holy Communion can represent the death of the ego in service of our true selves.  I do want to drink deeply of that cup that truly liberates me to be present in the moment and enjoy it for the great gift that it is.  I know that our team put in nearly the best effort that we could have.  There is no shame in what we accomplished simply because someone else accomplished more.  There was great joy in the competing even without the added bonus of winning.  Indeed, the "war stories" of the day will expand over time to be larger than life and will speak of the glory that was the 30th World Series of Birding, the one that Pete Dunne dared to proclaim the best ever.  In this moment, the moment when I see this Big Day that way seems distant, but in that moment I know that I will smile, knowing that this day (like all days) was a blessing.

List Lust & Lent

#401 Loggerhead Shrike

2012 was an amazing year in my birding career.  I don't know why I had such luck, but I was able to add 11 species to my life list, which finally topped 400.  I hadn't seen double-digit lifers in a single year in over a decade.  And while my Massachusetts life list is well over 75% of the total, I continued the curious trend of milestone lifers being out of state: #100 in New Brunswick, #200 in Maine, #300 in New Jersey, #400 in North Carolina. 2012 also marked the high water mark for my World Series of Birding team, the Wicked Witchities, who finally topped 200 species in a single day and brought home second place honors and the Stone Award.

#402 Spruce Grouse

2013 has already started with great promise with my team's winter plumage, the Wicked Pishahs finishing with the second highest species total at the Super Bowl of Birding and personally I listed 100 species in the first month of this auspicious year.  I am filled with excitement because for the first time in my life I expect to travel west more than one time zone.  That will mean a huge list of potential lifers. In fact, after carefully mining data on eBird for sightings in recent years for the dates and

#403 Black-bellied Whistling Duck

locations I will be visiting, I have a list of over 225 potential life birds to chase during June.  There is a very good chance that I will tick more lifers this year than any year before (I'm predicting 113) and that I will hit lifer #500 (I'm predicting Arizona for the location). And it all begins so soon, as new migrants show up each week, slowly the pressure is building which will explode with the spring migration and the World Series of Birding (I'm just crazy enough to believe that the Wicked Witchity/Four Loons super team combination has a shot of winning it all!)

#405 Wood Sandpiper

This sort of frenetic anxiety about a thing as ephemeral as a list of bird species is clearly abnormal behavior which takes its toll.  For the most part, the price aside from a significant one-time investment in optics and variable travel expenses is paid in loss of sleep (and some would contend, sanity).  In other words, it is the birder who pays the price, not the bird.  But I recently had to face the cost of my behavior paid by the object of my obsession.

#406 Allen's Hummingbird

Appropriately enough, the day was Ash Wednesday, the day of confession which begins the season of Lent, during which fasting and self-examination are expected.  I heard that a LeConte's Sparrow was being "very cooperative" in Concord, about an hour away.  I decided to chase this bird which was missing from my life list despite a couple of previous appearances by the species in the state during my birding career.  When I arrived, I discovered that I needed to be careful in my approach because the bird was feeding on the ground in the tiniest strip of exposed soil imaginable along the road surrounded my snow

#408 Little Egret

banks a couple of feet tall. There were about a dozen birders gathered around it at distances from about 3 to 10 feet.  When a vehicle passed by we all had to move and the bird didn't move.  When the bird did move it flew to a bush just beside the road.  I only stayed a short while and there were birders arriving as I departed.  From the reports, it appears that the bird stayed a few days and was seen by likely hundreds of birders, all at close range.

I would like to say that I was aware of the stress this bird was under and I did what I could to minimize it.  But the truth is, I added to the stress this bird, far from it's normal range, scrounging to eke out an existence, experienced in its time here.  In fact, it is likely enough that it did not survive.  There is a certain stoicism associated with chasing birds that are rare because they are out of
their range since often they are either already ill, exhausted from the travel, or so ill equipped to survive where they land that they die soon after being discovered.  While that is not always the case, it did seem to be true of this poor sparrow that it was stressed, not just by its misadventure in getting to Massachusetts, but also by the treatment of its "admirers" once it got here.

#409 Le Conte's Sparrow

Perhaps I will take the time to consider more fully the impact of my behavior on the birds I am eager to enjoy the next time a similar situation arises.  More likely I will find myself questioning after the fact.  Regardless, the questions are vital if my behavior is to change.  And I can't expect others' behavior to change if I don't first change mine.  And ultimately, the necessary changes are those that reduce the suffering of the innocent creatures that we claim to want to enjoy and help.