To All The Nest Builders & Home Wreckers

I haven’t stopped staring at it for days.

A nearly perfect circle. High walls, muddied-hard, like cement. Concrete-like to the touch.

A soft, padded bed, four inches lower than the tower-like fortress build around it.

Woven flawlessly with cut grass, unwanted moss, and the long, light hollows that surround our all-year pond.

Close to water. Yet, high in a tree.

Balanced perfectly.

Formed solidly around a branch, not too thick, where little ones remain in safety. Not too unsturdy, where treasured possesions fall aimlessly to the ground.

I think of the mother who made this.

My mind is captivated with the one who worked tirelessly to measure the solid sides, form the perfect circle, weave each soft branch mindfully around her children’s nest.

Did she have help?

And why did we almost miss it?

Plum Tree.

Our trees blossomed wildly last spring. White blossoms covering everything, but especially the plum tree that lingered in the middle of our yard.

Perfectly placed.

Full sun. No flooding. Able to drink from the resevoir of our artisian well that moves calmly and unhindered, underground.

Rumor has it, a storm drove away the bees we were tending on our back five acres.

Water flooded in, and because of it, the queen and her posey, found a new home.

Without bees, trees can’t pollunate.

No bees, no pollen. No pollen, no fruit. No fruit. That’s when the chainsaw starts blaring strong.

We can all be home-wreckers and not even know it.

Cutting the tree.

Our little girls laughed in the back of their dad’s Dodge truck, like the cover of a Country Living Magazine.

Poised, happy, unknowing the wonder that would be sacrificed. The promise that sometimes branches that don’t produce, need to be cut down.

We all need pruning sometimes.

Even when we resist it.

Sometimes we prune in fall…

But other times, people prune, not counting the cost, just slashing and slaying as if souls and lives, people and families, were not at the other end of it.

Dust flying, we try to shield our eyes from the specks.

Because who likes the grain of wood chips, flying in the wrong direction?

And then, it stops.

No more loud, “Vroom, vroom.”

“Look at this?”

The Head of our Household reaches up, grabs something tenderly in his warm, calloused hands.

My heart stops. I hold my breath…

“Are their babies in it?”

The nest.

Bearded one offers it over, like a drink offering, to the one He knew would cherish it.

From one mom to another.

The girls quiet down.

All eyes fix on this treasure, coming from the sky, perfectly formed, made as a shelter for the feathered friends who live here.

Dried grass. Cement edges. Soft bedding. High walls. Tenderly, still molded, as if to the top of a tree branch.

It feels dirty and unholy to move what nature planted.

And yet, with all the limbs falling, it was useless to try and keep it.

I pull the nest to my nose. Empty.

My heart aches even more, although knowing I should be relieved.

What is it about this nest? What is it about flown and grown birds? What is it about this mother that draws me to her being?

My hands cup the grass-made home, like a Pulitzer Prize I had just won, for nothing.

Holy. Precious.

More intrinsic and priceless than all the medals in the earth.

Unseen, once hidden in the branches. Yet, beautiful and precious, because it was made by another, like me.

A mother.

Where did her babies go?

Did they all fly away?

How many times did she encourage them in hope?

Were some brave and bold? Others cautious and hesitant?

Were some bigger and stronger? And others tender, tending to want to stay closer to her in the nest?

Why did she have to let go?

If she didn’t, would they ever fly?

My girls.

My girls jump around again and claw at the perfect nest.

Yet, I hold it tenderly. Because I know what happens with carelessness…

People chop down the trees we dwell in. They try to force fruit. They pick at and dissect, until nothing is left of the dignity and respect that’s been earned and carefully cultivated.

Why do we thrust man’s efforts on everything?

Why is human life more wild than the tender creatures that build high in the trees, tend their flocks, then race off towards the sun…

Doing it again come spring?

Why do we fall so hard?

Feel the bumps and aches so much longer than we should?

Why do we touch and judge, pick apart and project, until the beauty of the created, of nature, is left cold and sterile…

Carnal, all alone without any heart to it?

I haven’t stopped staring down at it, for days.

It captivates me, for some reason. I cannot explain it.

In the meantime, I write and produce, record and send posts. I live for a world that in one moment is hooked, and the other minute races off towards the loudest chain saw cutting others down.

What happened to the unseen?

What happened to the small treasures?

Could it be the uncharted and unappreciated, the quiet faithful servants are the real heroes of this story?

And just maybe…

The stage dwellers and loudest limb-cutters don’t mean anything at all.

And possibly…

The gift is in the Beauty-Finders…

Those with eyes who hunt down the created and the simple….

Because those are the things that point us most to Him.

How can it be?

How can it be, we live our whole lives and miss the little miracles all around us?

How can we race and speed, push and shove, force and insist….As if that will make something of us?

Doesn’t the Good Book say, “Cease from striving and know I am God”?

Cease from running to and fro, racing towards the loudest and proudest, the most seen and most known…

And. Just. Rest.

Rest in the holiness of a cut down limb, with another mother’s perfect nest in it.

Connect with nature, not as some substitute god, but as fellow earth-dwellers…Dependent; like this bird, for water, and earth and sky.

Why are we so desperate to make a way, race past the beauty?

Miss the magic in a God who finds us away from the internet…

And down by the blooming, fruitless tree, where limbs are cut…

And another mother’s nest waits for us.

My chicks.

My chicks are flying. Not the three in the back of the truck, but the others I cling to and struggle letting go of…

I would never clip their wings.

But I must remind myself…

It is better to be a nest builder than a home wrecker.

It is better to watch fly, than to hold my babies back, keep them from spreading their wings.

This nest in my broken heart.

My broken heart, crying out for the mom I used to be.

Begging for the chickies that used to need me.

No, I never saw this feathered mama. Yet, this mama is part of me.

Now, to make a home with high walls, a soft landing, and a nest to keep my children safe…

Until they join the others.

And when it is time, I say “fly”.

“Fly”, because that is what baby birds were made to do.

And mama’s like me, we were simply called to care for you.

I keep staring at this nest; this nest of grass and mud, this temporary house that now lays empty.

Still thinking about the mom who made it.

And her courage to finally, “Let go”.