the deepening ground

There’s something that draws me to hawks. And yet, this morning a hawk was drawn to our side porch! Admittedly, I know exactly why the hawk chose to hang out on the corner post overlooking my neighbor’s lawn: baby rabbits. We’d been watching their furtive movements around the rhododendron bush from the dining room table for the past week. However, my son saw the vagabond white cat make off with one, and I’ve seen neither of the baby rabbits since. But as Robert Burns would say, “What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!” In fact, a deeper appreciation of these seemingly violent encounters in our days finds illumination in Wendell Berry’s “A Native Hill” (from Think Little published by Counterpoint). He writes:

“In spite of all the talk of the law of tooth and fang and the struggle for survival, there is in the lives of the animals and birds a great peacefulness. It is not all fear and flight, pursuit and killing. That is part of it, certainly; and there is cold and hunger; there is the likelihood that death, when it comes, will be violent. But there is peace, too, and I think that the intervals of peace are frequent and prolonged. These are the times when the creature rests, communes with himself or with his kind, takes pleasure in being alive.” (Berry 115-116)

And so when I read “Look and See” by Mary Oliver before going to bed last night, I knew that these three voices were inviting me to a deepening place. Modernity moves at a numbing pace and frequently abounds in chaos, but this morning (or whenever you read this post), may you stop to look and see the cosmos in the chaos and savor the intervals of peace.

Look and See by Mary Oliver

This morning, at waterside, a sparrow flew
to a water rock and landed, by error, on the back
of an eider duck; lightly it fluttered off, amused.
The duck, too, was not provoked, but, you might say, was
laughing.

This afternoon a gull sailing over
our house was casually scratching
its stomach of white feathers with one
pink foot as it flew.

Oh Lord, how shining and festive is your gift to us, if we
only look, and see.

“Look and See” by Mary Oliver from Why I Wake Early: New Poems by Mary Oliver © Beacon Press, 2004: pg. 26.