Rector's Note: Birds as Spiritual Directors-7.16.26

Last week I spent five days on retreat with the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, PA.  Their monastery is located in a beautiful patch of woods a stone’s throw from Lake Erie. I stayed in a little hermitage on the edge of their property, prayed with the sisters twice a day and ate my meals with them as well.

The sisters are a Roman Catholic order; Joan Chittister was a former prioress. I followed her work in Catholic feminist writing for many years. She is 90 now and not making appearances.

This was my second trip to the monastery. My first was 26 years ago, when my first experience of ministry was exhausting me, and my call to the priesthood was a tearful, inexplicable longing without a name.

This year, it felt right to return, and to visit again from a place of completion and appreciation. A full circle.

Among my books for spiritual reading was a little volume of self-guided retreats by Sister Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB, which my mom gave me for Mothers’ Day the weekend after I returned from that first retreat so long ago. I also brought a Book of Common Prayer, some art supplies and my fiddle. I didn’t want to be bored.

This year the birds that filled the trees around my little hut served as my spiritual directors, and took up most of my time. Over the course of the week, they gently instructed me on how to listen, how to search, how to find and how to wait – all important spiritual practices.

I love to watch birds. I think I got this from my mom, who would take us hiking, armed with field guides and binoculars. The birds in the trees were a puzzle to solve, a conquest to undertake. Spot it, identify it and move on. My dad, on the other hand, was more of a bird listener. He would lag behind our hiking party, sit on a log, and breathe in the surroundings. As a kid I would bounce between the two on family hikes, my mom in the front, hunting, chattering, and my dad in the back, sitting, listening.

Last week, the birds taught me how to balance myself somewhere in the middle, how to follow their lead and to let God fill the space between their call and my location.

The first day of my retreat I went out with my Merlin App loaded and ready. The trees were filled with birdsong, and every sun-dappled leaf seemed to hide something mysterious and wonderful. But no matter how long I gazed up into the trees or peered deep into the woods, I couldn’t spot anything. A bit of movement, a streak of something across my vision. My app insisted that somewhere nearby was a Redstart, a Veery, a Tanager, a Vireo, a Hooded Warbler, a Cardinal and more. But I couldn’t see anything. I took a walk along a stream and sat for a while on a sunbaked stone. Still, no matter how long I scanned the surroundings, I only managed to see a few of the birds that my phone app said were nearby.  So much for hunting.

The next day I decided to take a different approach. I spent most of the morning sitting quietly on the little front porch of my hermitage. I opened my Book of Common Prayer to Morning Prayer and read it aloud to the birds.  Every time I saw a bit of movement I paused and waited and let my vision go soft. Soon a pair of Redstarts appeared in the bush to the left of my cabin. The male looks like a tiny oriole,  with bright orange and black feathers. The female is olive green with pale yellow bars that appear when it spreads its tail. They make a high-pitched little twitter – a sound that I became more and more familiar with through the week. The male Redstart leapt from branch to branch and took a frenetic bath in the dust. And I realized that even when the birds finally appeared right before me, my aging eyes couldn’t focus as well as I wished. I had failed to bring binoculars. I laughed at my limits and returned to my BCP.

Morning Prayer lasted until lunch time that day. As I walked down the path toward the monastery and Noon Prayer, the Redstart landed in a tree right above me.  It sang and sang as if it didn’t want me to go. And for a moment it felt like it was God there, begging me to stay for a little longer. It left me with a lump in my throat and a taste of regret as I headed into worship with the sisters.

Over the course of the week I became pretty good at identifying the birds by their song:  the twitter of the Redstart and the downward spiraling burble of the Veery, the chatter of the warbler and the fast-paced medley of the Catbird. Slowly the birds taught me that their presence was enough, even if I couldn’t quite see where they were. No matter how close they came to me, how fully they appeared, I would never really know them; they would be mostly mystery.  It was enough to enter the woods with a desire for relationship, my senses tuned to notice and witness, delighted with whomever showed up.

In time, the birdsong began to feel like a deeply layered quilt of sound, a cool blanket of presence. The   woods outside my hermitage gently became one with the Word of God and the Law of God and the very presence of God. Until just sitting in the midst of it was prayer enough and praise enough, my body finally at rest, my mind finally on something else, my breathing finally slowed. Retreat.