Bird by Bird

"Look at everything as though you were seeing it for the first time or the last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory."

--from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Thirty years ago, my older brother who was ten years old at the time was trying to get a report on birds done that he'd had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and unopened books on birds. Immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'

I know that I have been there, on more occasions than I like to recall. Actually, I feel as though I am there every September! Every September I feel completely overwhelmed by what lies ahead. The church year looms: all those meetings and social events to attend, the weddings and the unforeseen tragedies, trying to find the words of comfort or encouragement, not to mention all those unwritten sermons waiting (I trust, I hope, I pray) to be coaxed out from whatever mysterious place it is that they originate.

I know what it is to face that deadline, and to know how fearfully unprepared I am. Hardly a Sunday goes by when I do not ask myself what I am doing here. What am I doing here? I am reminded of some words written by my colleague David Bumbaugh, and often used as a responsive reading in gatherings of Unitarian Universalist ministers:

What in the name of all that's Holy am I doing here? What in the name of all that's Holy are we doing here? What ever possessed me to think this sermon was worth delivering, to us, to this congregation to any congregation? Ideas that seemed so fresh now sound trite, hack- neyed, scarcely thought through. . . . Words that were chosen because you like the way they sound, the way they flow together, the way they fill the space. . . . There's another word I can't think of, another word that says it better, but I can't think of it this moment. So this word that I have chosen, which doesn't quite work, will have to do. O God, if you're there, please help them hear in this sermon something I didn't know I said. Help us to hear in the silences the message we need to hear. Let there be some richness we did not expect. Dear God, help me remember that what I say is less important than what they hear, else I'll never dare occupy a pulpit again.

And who, knowing what we know now, would ever have undertaken our nearly-completed building renovation project: the endless meetings, the endless discussions, the deadends and U-turns, the decisions; God-help-us, the fundraising; the yea-saying and nay-saying, the change which is always so difficult to bear, even when it may be for the best?

I can identify completely with our children and our young people as they face all the days, months, and years of school which lie ahead. The first grade or the next grade looms. The endlessness and hugeness of it. The excitement of it and the fear of it. The love/hate relationship we have with it all. Gratefully, the young mostly do not know all that they do not yet know. If I knew then what I know now, I would never have had the courage to attempt it, let alone to make it.

But, amazingly, we do attempt it, whatever "it" is. Sometimes we need that external encouragement of someone's arm around our shoulder, urging us with tough love to just take it "bird by bird," one step at a time, one day at a time, one word and one sentence and one paragraph and one sermon at a time. One book, one class, one meeting, one business trip at a time. One little home repair job at a time, too.

The fact is, this is how most of the truly important work in the world gets done. That is in part the meaning of the saying, "If you want to get a job done right, find someone who is busy to do it." We are all too busy to do it. But if we have learned the secret of "bird by bird," chances are we are your woman or man. Busy people know the truth of the saying "slow and steady gets you there." We all know the story of the tortoise and the hare, and some of us have even learned the moral of the story.

Most of the important work in the world is done by people who don't have the time, who don't have the skills, who often don't even have the confidence that they can to it, but who do it anyway, soldiering on, bird by god-forsaken bird, until the job is done. The product may not be perfect, but at least it's finished. We know we could have done it better, but there you are. What you get is what you get, but at least you got something.

I believe that it is in that tension between what we hoped for and what we got, between our plans and what happens while we are planning, between our accomplishments and our expectations and our shortcomings, that everything happens. As mystics and ascetics down through the ages have told us, it is, paradoxically, in the desert that the thirsty sometimes find water to drink; and it is often in the dark nights of the soul that we find the hope and inspiration to go on, against all odds, bird by bird; it is when we ourselves are spiritually empty that we sometimes, miraculously, have the most to offer to those who travel what Amiel calls "the dark journey" with us.

Years ago, my colleague Charles Gaines wrote the following in a little book titled "Hope and Courage Along the Way," recalling John Murray's admonition to give the people, "not hell, but hope and courage." Charles wrote,

It was opening Sunday in 1972, and I was sitting in my study crying. Some would call it a depression; others a loss of faith. But the morning service was to begin in an hour, and I felt there was nothing in me to give. I thought of calling someone to substitute for me, but, on an impulse, I took up a pencil and wrote.

What is this front that I must maintain?
     Before the world
     the confidence man of cloth
     with smiles of faith and assurance,
     leading others to believe that
     in a world of cruelty and death,
     everything will be all right.
What is this front?
     When inside me churns sadness
     of unresolved griefs;
     no dreams of tomorrow
     that enliven my spirit
     and bring meaning to my living now.
Who can know the weakness I feel.
     Doubting my ability to face life,
     to savor it in each moment of love,
     while casting no look to future's plan
     because I fear it so.
What is this front?
     Reaching for the human in me,
     for faith in myself,
     for acceptance of others,
     for freedom from the sadness
     of this season
     when I can live with joy again.

Some will probably call this a prayer, wrote Charles, others a bit of scribbled poetry. But it got me through that Sunday. I used it for my morning's meditation. More people asked me for copies after the service than at any previous time in my life.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock