Beneath The Sheltering Limbs

As I drove to work this morning in the dark, the mellow dark, the unseasonably warm dark, my mind scurried from thoughts of my daily life to thoughts of what I believe and once believed and perhaps will one day believe. When I pulled into my parking space, the headlights showed two robins beneath a bare burning bush shrub. They were hopping about in their way, pecking at the faded mulch beneath the burning bush. They looked directly at me. They did not fly when I exited the vehicle, but I was careful to give them a wide berth on my way into the building. As is my custom, I scattered some crackers on the parking lot near where I parked, daily food for the crows I befriended years ago.

Later, after I got settled at my desk, I came back to the window and could see the two birds still there, still moving about beneath the shrub. Do they think it’s spring? I wondered. What are they doing? Are they in distress? Are they hungry? Did they see the crackers I put down for the crows? I considered getting some bread or cake from the kitchen and taking it to them, but decided against it, not wanting to scare them. I recalled that Someone promised to make provision for them, and I settled on allowing that to take place, if it will.

As one who daily wonders about the things allowed to transpire in this world, I discover that I am once again musing that it just may be that I am more caring and more concerned than…Someone. But that can’t be, can it? I am caught in my own presumption, snared by my arrogance and finite-hood. The older I grow, them more hesitant I am to make declarations.

I have been wrong so many times. I have been wrong about so much. Time is slipping past me like a gust of winter wind — I do not want to be found complacent in my own perceptions and assessments.

I went back one more time to the window. One of the robins was still there; the other was gone off somewhere for its own purposes. I breathed a quiet blessing on them and asked that they might be protected on this day when the mild temperatures are set to give way to an assault from the north. I asked that the absent robin might return to its mate beneath the leafless bush.

Where will these two little ones be tonight when the icy air reaches for all small, unprotected things? I pray they will be safe and warm.

I pray they will be together still.

~ S.K. Orr