POTM...*: The National Bird?

 (*Photo of the Month)

The national bird? At least that’s what Benjamin Franklin would have preferred, according to a letter to his daughter in 1784! Old Ben never had a chance to publicly advocate for it, though, as the bald eagle as a national symbol had grown in popularity while he was away in Paris serving as envoy to France. Certainly at Thanksgiving, however, it IS the national bird, with forty-five million of them eaten over the holiday – fully one sixth of all turkeys consumed annually in the U.S.

It’s an incredibly beautiful bird in the wild, though, is it not? And it has multiplied prolifically in recent decades. In fact, wild turkeys are the poster chicks of conservation success: nearly extirpated in North America in the early 1900’s, down to the last thirty thousand individuals, they have now rebounded to a population of well over seven million, thriving in all forty-eight of the contiguous states (though, according to a recent article in Audubon Magazine, there may be some challenges on the horizon, especially in the southeast). Gail and I have come across these amazingly adaptable creatures while hiking in both Michigan’s Northwoods and Colorado’s 
Rockies, and while car touring in Florida and

Washington. My father-in-law in Roscoe IL even draws flocks of them in regularly, just outside his living room window, by putting out corn. And though they bear little resemblance to the domesticated variety shown in the USDA photo, it is said that a breeding domestic pair, totally white, will have its offspring return to their full-color plumage within seven short generations. Still, I am grateful for turkey farms; my mouth is watering just thinking about Thanksgiving Day and the days of leftovers to follow!

Quiz time:

--Speaking of turkey farms, how large in weight does my Iowa turkey farmer friend raise his birds, 

               raising 150,000 of them per year?

--What are male and female turkeys called?

--What are baby turkeys called?

--What is a group of turkeys called?

--Do turkeys fly, or roost in trees? (answers found at the end of this post)

OK, back to founding father Franklin… Here is what he had to say about the turkey vs. eagle national symbol debate! Of the eagle, he said, “…he is a bird of bad moral character, he does not get his living honestly [stealing from other birds or eating carrion]… Besides, he is a rank coward: the little kingbird, not bigger than a sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district.” But of the more noble turkey, he wrote, “…it is a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America… a bird of courage that would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards who should presume to invade his barnyard…”

Just think. If Franklin had gotten his way, we might today be calling an imbecilic person an eagle rather than a turkey, might celebrate a fantastic holing out on a golf course as a turkey rather than an eagle, might even have heard these famous words from the moon back in the late 60’s, “Houston…? The Turkey has landed.”

Finally, I suppose a turkey, cooked or uncooked, could serve as a suitable symbol for Thanksgiving. Anything that can help us call gratitude to mind would be a very good thing.

I will give thanks to you, Lord, with my whole heart. I will tell of your wonderful deeds. (Psalm 9:1)

~~RGM, November 5, 2013

P.S. The quiz? Male turkeys are called toms, and females, hens. Baby turkeys are called poults. And, though there is some debate, a group of turkeys is called a rafter, flock or gang. Yes, they fly, up to fifty-five miles per hour! And they do indeed roost in trees, which may be why a group of them is called a rafter. Lastly, my friend, Farmer Johnson in northwest Iowa, raises 45-50 pound birds that can do a person some serious damage if they wanted to! 

P.P.S. Did you pass?

From My Nature Journal: The Lesson of the Pancakes

I parked on the frontage road that paralleled the beach and scrambled down a fifteen foot pile of concrete riprap. On my way to catch a flight in Los Angeles, I found myself with a couple extra hours, so thought this spot on the ocean near Ventura a good place for some reading and prayer.  With the beach spread out like a blanket before me and waves breaking thirty yards away, I sat in the sand that cool November morning, leaned back against a sun-warmed chunk of cement, took off my shoes, and cracked open the little book.

It had been a long time that Henri Nouwen’s The Way of the Heart had sat on my shelf, though I had been looking forward to picking it up just as long. On my way out my office door several days earlier, I scanned my ‘to read’ pile for just a little tome to fit in an overfull briefcase, and it was an easy addition. It’s a brief book about desert spirituality, including the spiritual discipline of solitude, a commodity in short supply in my life. I had just read that one of the cardinal sins a person in solitude will struggle with is the sin of greed. Solitude is a kind of fast, and whenever we fast we are made starkly aware of the props we miss, the little luxuries we wish were available, and we come to realize how dependent we are on superfluous stuff. Solitude can bring us to that place of conversion where we can see how much our self worth has depended on what we have acquired, let this old greedy self die, and allow the new generous self to be born. But first we need solitude. The thing is, when we get there, we think we are alone. But suddenly this visitor named Greed comes pounding at the door. The task, Nouwen says, is to stay in solitude long enough that this unwelcome caller gets tired of knocking, goes away, and leaves us alone.

I sat there reading, resting, thinking, praying, the surf drowning out all sounds except the calls of gulls. I shut my eyes and lay my head back on the rock. All of a sudden there was the startling cacophonous sound of seagulls surrounding me and I opened my eyes with a start. Not ten feet away a dozen or so were fighting over some round object on the beach, scores more coming in overhead, screaming incessantly. Suddenly another dozen were struggling over another round, brown object just to the right of the first melee. Something whizzed past over my head from behind up above the riprap. Before I knew it more and more seagulls -- many species, large and small, young and old, several hundred -- 

were converging around me from all points. It felt like a Hitchcock movie.

Before I knew it, more and more seagulls -- 

many species, large and small,

young and old, several hundred --

were converging around me from all points.

It felt like a Hitchcock movie.

Behind me, from the parking area above the concrete, someone was pitching pancakes out onto the beach, gliding through the air like frisbees, to be met by the squabbling, screaming, pecking birds. Ten, twenty, thirty pancakes came sailing over my head, launched by persons unaware I was on the beach below. One bird would finally get hold of the tasty disc amidst the riot, fly away, and get only a few feet before the pancake would break and fall out of its beak, creating another mad dash of juking, feinting and grabbing on land and sea. I was mesmerized. The whole experience lasted about five minutes, whereupon I heard a motor start and a camper pull away.

Though I am unashamedly anthropomorphizing, I had a stark picture of what greed must look like to God, a parable asserting itself. One wants what another has, convinces himself that he needs it, and by aggression or subterfuge seeks to get it, only to lose it to another, and on and on it goes. The story was playing before me in real time and I prayed, “Lord, let me hold this image as I consider the effects of greed on my own spirit."

The beach became quiet again. Most of the birds were flying off but several dozen remained, standing quietly in the sand, perhaps licking their wounds (though they have no tongues), perhaps interiorly celebrating the pancake they got or bemoaning the one that got away. Then I remembered: at some point during the commotion something had landed quite close to me, not two feet away, hidden from my sight by a log. Had it just been a bird landing quickly, or was there one last pancake on the beach? I soon had my answer, for some of the birds standing nearest began to move toward me. One brave bird at a time would inch my way, look down at the spot, look up at me again, and look down again, take a hesitating step, two steps forward, one step back, but always forward, looking me in the eye as if to say, “You have what I want.” Several got within three feet, then took off, giving up. The birds were so close, their eyes so sharp in seeming to search mine, it was almost like I could see into their greedy little wills (ok, admitted anthropomorphism again). Finally, one advanced close enough to leap forward, snatch the last pancake and take flight, others lifting, chasing, crying from behind.

I had my picture, though, and I have not forgotten it: my loving, benevolent, gift-giving heavenly Lord, looking into my eyes, and sadly seeing the greed therein.

Lord, teach me the lesson of the pancakes.

~~RGM, from an earlier journal entry,

adapted for my blog November 1, 2013

QOTM...*: Abraham Joshua Heschel

(*Quote of the Month)

It is easier to enjoy beauty than to sense the holy. To be able to encounter the spirit within beauty, however, we must learn to crave for an affinity with the pathos of God.

~~Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Heschel (1907-1972) was a Polish-born American rabbi of the reform tradition, an author, philosopher, mystic, civil rights activist, and one of the leading Jewish theologians of the century. The quote is from one of his more famous books, God in Search of Man, which I read while in seminary. He also has a principal book on Sabbath called, appropriately, The Sabbath, which I read again recently and would recommend to any Christ follower wanting to deepen their understanding of sacred time and their practice of this first commandment.

Heschel insists, along with those of the Orthodox Christian tradition, that God is the source of all beauty, including that in nature, and that beauty can only be fully appreciated in a context in which one also integrates profound gratitude for

the Creator.

The Psalmist understood that notion as well: Great are the works of the Lord, pondered by all who delight in them! (Psalm 111:2)

May you sense kinship with God today, and may that relationship lead you to a deeper awe when you see something beautiful.

~~RGM, October 24, 2013

POTM...*: Shopping in the Woods

(*Photo of the Month)

They’re called highbush cranberries, though they are not cranberries at all. We stumbled across the bright little fruits on a roadside one early fall day, took a sprig to ID them, then noted them again in a couple other marshy areas. Finally, we determined to get back to those spots later and do some harvesting – “shopping in the woods” as we like to call it – which Gail and I did last weekend with my sister and nephew.

A member of the honeysuckle family, they grow on shrubs 6-16 feet high and provide a winter-long food source for birds, though for some reason tend to be among the last berries eaten. As a result they can also be harvested long into winter, sometimes the more easily spotted in snowcover. And though not related to true cranberries, they taste amazingly like them made into sauces, syrup, jelly or juice, rich in vitamin C. Curiously, they give off a strange and unpleasant odor when being cooked, though one would never know it with the finished product; also interesting are their heart-shaped seeds, which Gail could not resist arranging photogenically on a paper towel.

So now the sauce is cooked up, canned, and awaiting the Thanksgiving table next month, one more thing among the myriad for which to be grateful.

“And the earth yielded grass, herbs yielding

seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, 

with its seed in it, after their kind; and God

saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:12)

So did we.

~~RGM, October 19, 2013