Christmas Day. This morning when I finally crawled out of bed, gathered what few wits I have left, visited the bathroom, returned to the bedroom and looked out the window, what should my wondering eyes behold but a Carolina wren taking a water course in the small birdbath across the boardwalk outside my window. I started counting his plunges into the probably frigid water after I noticed that he or it was doing cardios.
The birdbath is small, less than three feet tall with a very small water holder. THe arduous wren would plunge in, go straight across the center as if he were fixed on some celestial point above. I counted ten times once I started paying attention. After he hopped out, he would glare around him for a bit, turn around and plunge in the other way. I love Carolina wrens even though they can sound like stuck Christmas ornaments in the spring, with their ceaseless, repetitive singing. Actually I like that too.
Since we saw a hawk outside the window on the other side of the yard yesterday or the day before, and with Trump looming on the near horizon, I figured vigilance wasn't such a bad idea. The Carolina Wren wears a perpetual scowl, but living in a world with such villains as ours on the loose, I don't blame him. I wear a perpetual scowl now too.
Beside the boardwalk there are the dried remnants of two hydrangeas and a still dark green-leaved rhododendron, looking a bit, ha, bushed. After another bit the wren flew, flitted, to one of the stalks, glared at the world around him, then flew, flitted, back to the birdbath. I decided that all the submersion must be his way of preparing for the advent of the Christ into the world on Christmas Day, except that the bird got stuck on repeat. Go little creature, go.
Eventually, I want to know what things mean, and mind goes to the idea that, for the believer--Catholic, Nicene Christian here--everything that is is a clue that points to ultimate reality, ultimate reality in this case being that Trinity defined in the Nicene Creed: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. How does the little scowling wren fit into that theology? I don't know. I watched him until he finally departed for elsewhere in the garden. I still don't know except that like all of us, the wren is, and that "isness" is also grounded in the source of all Being, God the Father as the first section of the creed defines it: Maker of all things visible and invisible. So in some sense what God is, Being, he in some sense gives or shares with everything that is. And now that I think about it I suppose I could rightly say that that giving or sharing is an act of "steadfast love," as the Psalmist often says. I may have defined for myself the beginning of a road to travel, a vertical path rather than a horizontal one. The bird and I have been loved into being, as has that wretched squirrel sitting in the bird feeder outside my window on this side of the house, and eating all the birdseed. Sigh. Perhaps I need to plunge repeatedly into a cold bath too. In any case time to recharge the iPad, find a Carolina Wren photo, and wish my wife, my son and his family farewell, as they are about to leave for a week in Florida.