A bald eagle flies over the waters of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. (Abdullah Rashid, Reuters / CNS)
VIEW FROM THE PEW
Every time I set out on this journey of stringing words and ideas together, my mind drifts back to student days. I’m back in a high school math class desperately mentally mumbling formulas for some GPA-significant test. A worse nightmare, it’s a college philosophy class where the overnight caffeinated cramming is fading just as the exam begins. (Required philosophy credits were a cross you bore if you attended a Catholic university.)
I find myself doing now what I did then, talking to the Holy Spirit. What started as a memorized prayer has segued into a conversation with the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.
“Come Holy Spirit, enlighten my mind and strengthen my will to do good and avoid evil.
To You I commend my mind, imagination and memory, enlighten me. Increase in me the gifts of wisdom, understanding and counsel.” That’s the formula, but I sidetrack with some more specific pleas for help as I move along the prose path, sometimes plodding, sometimes off on inexplicable detours, hopefully finally striding or even skipping to a finish.
When I finally finish, I thank the Holy Spirit for being patient — and probably amused — with a human demand for immediate attention yet again.
My classroom mantra continued for a lifetime. Many a time in the crowded newsroom where I wrote for a living, I’d be replaying that prayer as I labored to report the facts I’d collected or the event I’d witnessed or a public issue being wrangled. I struggled to communicate in a thorough and balanced way — which is what people in the real news business do. Detouring off topic with opinions or flights of fancy were not encouraged. I’m not sure how the people surrounding me would have reacted had I prayed aloud!
Now I’m lucky for the chance to do my own philosophizing, but can’t always vow that my memories would survive severe fact-checking.
I know I’m totally flighty sometimes; I knew this would be one of those times because, well, birds have been in the news a lot lately.
I was reflecting on why the Holy Spirit is depicted as a white dove. It’s based on all four Gospel accounts about John the Baptist baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River. It was a sign to John and the crowd that Jesus is the Messiah. “The heavens were opened unto him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him. And a voice from heaven saying ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’”
Musing about how awesome it would be to witness to such a glorious moment, I compared that to my view just then of dull gray doves in the lawn, the avian version of grazing bovine creatures. As I stared out the window, four white ducks waddled into view, escapees from my neighbors’ urban farmyard, each focused in a different direction.
It was hilarious, I couldn’t stop laughing. How would I interpret this as a sign? Is the message to plod along, lady! Or is it to focus on one direction at a time?! Get yourself in perspective as one of God’s creatures, probably. Thank you, Lord, for this sense of humor, surely a gift of the Holy Spirit.
That’s when I decided this column would be for the birds. The thought had already been percolating because it’s been such a blessed relief to read about humans connecting with birds lately. I am clearly not the only one who needs a respite from the grim stories about what humans are doing to, and saying about, each other.
Communing with nature
People in New York City spent the past year on the lookout for a huge owl which roamed free through Manhattan after being liberated from its cage in the Central Park Zoo. News stories and photos in media nationwide chronicled sightings of Flaco, a Eurasian eagle owl with a 6-foot wingspread. Even the Honolulu Star-Advertiser devoted news space March 3 for a story on the memorial service last month attended by dozens of human fans after the owl was fatally injured by crashing into a skyscraper window.
At a time of depressing and demoralizing events all over the world, “this bird really became a symbol of hope and brought so many of us together,” said a speaker at the service, quoted in the Associated Press account. “I thank him today as I did every day I got to see him, for the joy, awe and wonder he inspired in us throughout his journey,” said another avid bird watcher.
After his first 13 years in captivity, Flaco figured out how to hunt rodents for food and survived for a year in the dense urban environment so different from life in the wild.
Meanwhile, hordes of folks have become unrepentant paparazzi, live-streaming the view from solar-powered cameras overlooking America’s favorite devoted couple awaiting a birth.
We benefit from modern technology and probing photography to keep track of Jackie and Shadow, a pair of bald eagles nesting atop a tall tree in Big Bear Valley in southern California. For weeks they have been taking turns sitting on their eggs, keeping them warm and dry in order for them to hatch. But with the cold, snowing conditions, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service warn that, unlike a Disney nature movie, Mother Nature’s scripts are not always happy endings. Bald eagles are among the rare bird species that mate for life and this pair has been together since 2018. Of 14 eggs viewed by the eagle-eyed watchers, five over that span of time actually hatched and only three eaglets survived into adulthood.
The eagles are majestic birds, a breed selected by America’s Founding Fathers as an emblem of the nation, symbolizing strength and freedom of our country. How could we not get sentimentally attached to this pair. Watching them is so much more inspiring than watching American politics or international crises.
Scholars who analyze human behavior are likely already crafting papers about the healthy effect of these communal encounters with nature. So much has already been written about how healthy it is, mentally and physically, for humans to get out into the natural world, escape from the noisy, enclosed and crowded habitat we have made for ourselves. Any hiker or park stroller or swimmer knows it without putting it into words.
Birds stimulate a reminiscing time for me. My siblings and I were so lucky to grow up connected with the world of nature.
Our dad, John F. Adamski, was a conservation warden in Wisconsin, in a town surrounded by forests, lakes and streams. We grew up learning about the scores of creatures that inhabit the American continent, as we roamed in the woods and beside waterways.
Growing up in nature
I wish I could talk to Dad or my brother Jack, who no longer roam this earth, about these recent bird news stories. We watched bald eagles dive for fish in the Mississippi River. We learned some harsh realities, such as the fact that predatory creatures need to eat and cute little creatures can also be food.
And then there was our own family owl encounter, a years-long story of a well-intentioned interference with nature. Jack rescued a baby horned owl after it was abandoned or lost. He fed it with good intention, but “Howlin” never did learn to hunt for food or fly away free. It never strayed far from the porch railing where it waited to be fed meat scraps.
Howlin terrified a little neighbor lady who required an escort to our house, fearing being carried away by the owl who would match Flaco in size. His droppings visible on another neighbor’s roof were a source of some tension.
Dad was blown away at the sight of kolea when he visited Hawaii. He marveled at how far “those little fellows” had to go without rest when flying to arctic turf to have babies. Hundreds of others are fans of those Pacific golden plovers. Watchers can predict the exact week in April when they will take flight to nest abroad in Alaska or Siberia, the only migratory bird that makes the journey to and from these islands.
The woodsmen in our family would love the positive bird news story reported March 4. It was about the ongoing effort to save Hawaii honeycreeper species which are close to extinction. The effort by conservationists and government was highlighted with a traditional Hawaiian blessing and chants at an event on Kauai. It kicked off 2024 as the Year of the Forest Bird, as proclaimed by Gov. Josh Green and Kauai Mayor Derek Kawakami.
A person who grows up in Hawaii has the richness of connecting with marine life, watching honu, dolphins and whales, but hasn’t a clue about “all creatures great and small” in the wider world. Friends of ours who recently moved to the Pacific Northwest are discovering what an adventure it can be to spot deer grazing in your back yard or the not-so-wonderful trait of chipmunks and moles digging in your lawn and house foundation. So far, no report on dog encounters with a skunk, a dreadful learning experience.
That is why I don’t believe it is a terrible thing for Hawaii people to migrate to the mainland. There’s so much more to the world than our beautiful but limited islands.
People living elsewhere in America, even urban dwellers, have many encounters with the rest of God’s creation. Numerous species of birds migrate and it’s exciting to hear a flock of geese or ducks honking on their flight overhead. Any drive in open rural space will give a view of a hawk or vulture riding the air currents overhead.
Just last week, a fine-feathered tourist caused Bellagio casino-hotel on the Las Vegas Strip to temporarily turn off its lights-and-music choreographed fountain. It was a yellow-billed loon off track on its migratory trek north. The National Park Service identified it as one of the 10 rarest birds that breed on the mainland.
We can relate to that, thanks to the monk seal mamas who seem to love the same beaches we do. Their endangered species status forces humans to step aside while a baby seal is nurtured. Even the tourist industry doesn’t prevail over Mother Nature.
St. Francis of Assisi is the one who comes to mind when seeking a spiritual outlook about mankind’s connection with all creation. His poem-prayer, “Canticle of the Sun,” also called “Canticle of the Creatures,” shows his reverent view toward our interconnected relationship with the natural world. He writes about how God is glorified by “Brother Sun,” “Sister Moon” and “Mother Earth.” Often depicted with birds perched on his shoulder, he was declared the patron saint of all animals, and more recently, of ecology in general.
But rather than using a final word from St. Francis, I think this flighty column requires a prayer by St. Thomas More. Our Pope Francis told the Roman Curia that he prays this Prayer for Good Humor every day. This is part of it:
“Grant me a simple soul that knows to treasure all that is good…
“Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumblings, sighs and laments…
“Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humor. Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke, to discover in life a bit of joy, and to be able to share it with others.”
