Comings & Goings
On a recent pilgrimage trip to Poland and Lithuania,
our guide was telling us about the landscape that was blurring by the bus
windows. She pointed toward a large
stork nest poised on the chimney of a little white house. It seems that even in Poland storks get the
credit for bringing babies. “They are
loved by the people because they are said, in addition to children, to bring
good fortune. However, all the storks
have migrated for the winter now, so unfortunately we won’t be able to see any
of them.”
The next stop for us was the tiny village of Głogowiec,
where Helena Kowalska would later in life become first Sister, then later Saint
Faustina. We visited the simple home that she shared with nine siblings and her
two parents first, and then the nearby church where she was baptized to
celebrate Mass. God was no doubt the
only one unsurprised when this baby girl
from a tiny dot on the map of Poland was
raised to the altar.
Afterwards, as we exited the church I heard a loud and
coarse sound and looked up to see about twenty white cranes all bunched up and
circling upwards on the thermals. They
were calling constantly and raucously. When the air current seemed just right,
they suddenly fell into formation and headed off; soon they were out of
sight. I took it as an unexpected blessing,
a Heavenly sign and proof yet again that Nature will usually prove herself unpredictable
and generous – just like her creator.
Saturday after lunch I decided to clean out the garden
beds. They were unpredictable this year
as well. Despite three plantings of
green beans, we had zero meals of beans, worse yet no canned beans on the
basement shelves, and well-fed deer. The
first two plantings were eaten down to nubs as soon as the bushes started to
really leaf out. The third planting never
got past the stage where the plant set their first two leaves; the increasingly
impatient deer ate those down to the soil as well. In Poland, our guide was delighted
when we spotted a group of four deer about a half mile away in a harvested
soybean field. Back home here In
Wisconsin, it’s not unusual for us to have five or six deer in our backyard, or
in our bean beds!
As I weeded the garden beds our local sandhill cranes
were calling loudly all afternoon. Their
raspy voices are sounding more urgent here in late October. The bird guidebook tells me that technically cranes
and storks are different families. But
just listening to both, it was clear that they shared the primordial harmony with
the seasons.
As long as I was outside I refilled the bird feeders. While most of the songbirds have long since
left, there had been plenty of wintering birds in the yard before we left. But with the feeders being empty for the two
weeks we were gone the backyard seemed silently birdless. It took until mid-morning Sunday before I
spotted several chickadees relishing plenty revisited.
Next, a little flock of juncos made their appearance. This is migration’s end for them. They are just down from the Canadian spruce
forests. Why they don’t keep going
southward I don’t know. But they will
dominate the back yard well into next spring.
All these comings and goings are reminders that the
season is turning, time is slipping away too quickly just as the sun is
slipping into the western horizon earlier each day. Time and life are shorter, but the blessings
of life are richer, sweeter, and fuller.
I’m of an age that could be a bit frightening, but I am at peace with it.
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
Photo by Santiago Lacarta on Unsplash
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