Earlier
this week, Lucas told me that he wanted to go downtown to have breakfast with a
woman he had met before Christmas. This woman sells alternative newspapers near
Fountain Square as part of a program designed to combat homelessness in
Cincinnati. This woman had been homeless, Lucas said, until this program and
another one, called Excel, helped her find housing and earn a little money.
Lucas has been excited about sharing the gospel with people downtown, and is
discovering the fact that, in order to do that with any kind of effectiveness,
you have to get to know a person. So he had talked to this woman on a couple of
other occasions and he and a two friends had taken her out to lunch. Now,
apparently, she had suggested breakfast.
Of
course I think it’s fantastic that Luc wants to share God’s love with people
and that he cares about getting to know them, but the mom in me is nervous. Luc
is young, I don’t know this woman at all, and I imagine all kinds of situations in which he could get himself embroiled. And the older person in me is reluctant,
too, because I know that really getting to know people is way messier than
handing out a tract and a granola bar. And getting to know people who are very
different from us can be even messier. I told Luc about situations in my life
when I started out wanting to help someone and ended up feeling grumpy, taken
advantage of, and not sure I had been even a little bit helpful. He listened
politely. This brings me to our bird feeder.
One
of the really wonderful things about Cincinnati is how the city has consciously
tried to preserve not only green space, but wooded and wild space. Thus, though
we live minutes from downtown, we also live surrounded by Edgewood Grove Park,
Mount Storm Park, and Rawson Woods Nature Preserve. And thus, we have birds. My
parents and grandparents have always been dedicated feeders and watchers of
birds. Inspired by my heritage, I purchased Eric a bird feeder for Christmas,
deciding that we should become similarly dedicated to the welfare of our
feathered friends.
After Christmas, Lucas filled the
feeder with sunflower seeds and hung it outside the family room window. Pretty
soon, a male cardinal showed up. He was followed by the female and several
small, nondescript, greyish birds. (We have since gotten a bird book so we can
identify these guys. We have not, however, made any progress in actually
identifying them.) Sitting on the couch watching the birds was every bit as delightful
as I had hoped it would be. Within hours, the feeder was empty. After a few
days of multiple feeder fillings, each of which required Luc to stand
precariously on the porch railing to rehang the feeder, my parents visited and
gave us the brilliant advice that we should get a larger feeder. We got online,
ordered one, and by the miracle of Amazon, were filling the new feeder within
24 hours.
Of course, a larger feeder is also a
heavier feeder. As any ignoramus should know, a bird feeder than holds 11
pounds of seed is going to weigh at least 11 pounds. We, of course, did not take
that into account, being a special breed of ignoramus. After a sub-par
suspension job and an unusually windy night, we awoke to find the feeder on the
ground, broken, surrounded by about $10 worth of Kaytee Black Oil Sunflower
Wild Bird Food and a troupe of happy squirrels.
Thankfully, several seasons of the
original MacGyver series have not
left us without recourse. A trip to Ace Hardware, some wire, and some duct tape
later, the feeder was jury-rigged back to functionality. Meanwhile, being a
lexiphile as well as a MacGyver fan,
I looked up whether I was jury- or jerry-rigging the bird feeder. Turns out I
was jury-rigging it (a little-used definition of “jury” is “designed for
temporary use”), although jerry-rig is apparently such a well-established
misspelling that it is included in many dictionaries.
I didn’t hang the feeder that day
because it was raining, and though my love for birds is budding, it is still pretty
anemic. The next morning, I filled the feeder and went out to hang it -- a job
for which, it turns out, I am too short. Instead of getting a stepladder or
waiting for a taller person, I attempted to support the feeder with one hand
while throwing the rope over the tree branch with the other, all the while
jumping to get closer to the branch. As any ignoramus could have predicted, I
dropped the feeder and came very close to uttering an imprecation as I looked
down at the twice-broken feeder, surrounded by $10 worth of Farmer’s Delight
Wild Bird Seed.
I
wanted to do something nice for the birds. I wanted them to be a part of my
life and I wanted to be a part of theirs. I wanted to sit in comfort on the
couch and watch the grateful birds eat the seed that I had kindly provided.
Instead, I got a broken feeder and wasted seed. I consoled myself with the
thought that reality is messy, but I can still do some good for the birds.
Bloody but unbowed, I scooped as
much bird seed as I could into a bowl, put the feeder back together as best I
could (adding more duct tape), and refilled it.
This
time I was smarter, though; I waited for Lucas to help me hang it. So this is how
that went:
“The hook is slipping out of the
bird feeder; lower it a little. Okay; that’s good. You can let go. Really. You
can let it go.”
And the feeder crashed to the
ground, in five pieces, surrounded by all our remaining bird seed.
It is a cliché to say that I didn’t
know whether to laugh or cry. In addition, that’s a silly dilemma. If it’s a
toss-up between laughing and crying, the answer is clear. I leaned on Lucas
looked at the mess, and laughed. Only it did sound a little like crying. My
unconquerable soul was feeling a little bruised.
Right after the bird feeder
succumbed to the fell clutch of circumstance, I drove downtown with Lucas to
meet his friend for breakfast. Before we got out of the car, he suggested that
we pray. Oh, right. Good idea. Let’s get a little help from God up in here
before we go in and Do. Some. Good. Luc bowed his head and prayed:
“God, we know that in our own
strength, we can do nothing.”
Which is when it hit me. The bird
feeder isn’t about me persevering through the bludgeonings of chance to help
the birds. Luc reaching out to people isn’t about him helping them. This is
God’s show; we are just doing what he asks us to do. It doesn’t matter that we
fail, that relationships are more difficult than we anticipated, that our bird
seed ends up feeding squirrels and the problem is bigger than a roll of duct
tape. As Paul writes to the Corinthian church, “I planted, Apollos watered, but
God gave the growth. So neither he who plants or he who waters is anything, but
only God who gives the growth” (1 Cor. 3: 6-7). All we can do – all we are
called to do – is with the love of Christ to love people. And birds.
Coming soon: Feed the Birds Part 2: Squirrel Wars
