Feed the Birds

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