for Phoebe:

a Meditation on Sacred Impermanence

I walked out to the barn yesterday morning, on my way to shovel a few wheelbarrows-full of gravel into spring ruts. It was a hot day, hitting 90 degrees, but happily not humid. Airborne dust from the Sahara hadn’t come this far north and the high smoke from Canadian wildfires passed over the day before. So the sky was clear and blue with a gentle breeze blowing. The birds were busy and the day promised brightly. I did not know tragedy lay right around the corner.

The barn is where Church of the Woods holds services in the winter and on rainy days. It’s a simple structure, but so pleasing of line that sometimes I pause and simply gaze upon it. Indoors, it’s no fancier than a concrete slab topped by 2 x 6 framing with native pine siding. A woodstove anchors one corner. In the other corner, next to a stack of firewood, a sturdy plastic sled is parked, filled with the liturgical supplies it bears into the woods. Various icons and church paraphernalia from coffee mugs to stacked plastic chairs are piled around. At the far end, a slightly battered side table—it had once been my mother’s—serves as simple altar.

Outdoors, there’s a covered alcove where the “bird board” hangs. I don’t know of any other church that has a bird board.

This is the place where the people (mostly Susan) record which birds have come to church recently. Some are perennial—faithful of the faithful. Chickadee, Raven, Barred Owl, Pileated Woodpecker—hardy year-rounders. Most are more summer residents. Lately, the thrushes—Wood Thrush, Veery, and (oh joy!) Hermit Thrush have been singing lustily, morning and night. Scarlet Tanager too, fiery flashes through the forest.

Along with the bird board, there’s another small whiteboard which receives notes from human visitors, and a cork board that hold the worship bulletin plus a trail map and various oddments of information pertaining to a woods-walking church. A few signs hang above. One reads: “Where the Land Itself is the Sacred Space.” Another in the shape and color of a huge red heart says simply, “I Am Sending You Light.”

A doorway at the end leads into the tool shed, where I keep ax, chainsaw, and other tools of church-tending. Above this doorway hangs the gently curving four-foot long antler of an Alaskan caribou that I picked up off the tundra some years since. Each of these elements tells part of the story—that these woods are a place where humans and creatures meet the sacred together.

To my dismay, though, this day there was one more scene on display. Earlier in spring, a pair of Phoebes had perched their nest right on top of the antler. Phoebes like to nest on shelf-like ledges under overhangs, gluing the nests to sheer walls with mud, moss, and other earthy materials. If this feels risky, it is.

This pair lost their bet.

In the night, the nest had crashed—and the eggs inside smashed. Proto-phoebe was spread over the stone floor, and the parents had fled. I cannot blame them.

As soon as I saw the devastation, I knew I had to tell you, because this scene says so much.

How hard it to accept the cost of living in a mortal body. By virtue of birth alone, our death is assured. We wink into existence, and we all, sooner or later, wink out. Tragedy is built in.

If it weren't for this, though, I don’t know if we could love—or know that life and death are primary gateways to the sacred. I’m fairly confident (ha! don’t believe me when I say this) that the reason God brought the universe into existence is because without physical existence—without bodies—love cannot become real. It has no place to go. It remains only potential. Imagine a great spinning dynamo seeking to send Spirit energy into the farthest reaches of… nothing and nowhere, ever. That’s how I imagine God must have been before the universe got created. All that energy, and no place to go.

Even a god would burn up without someplace to put the love. (Perhaps that explains all the Greek myths about Zeus and mortal women…) If Spirit never landed upon matter, it would just be there forever, alone. Impotent. God needs love to be embodied. Bodies need life, death, and love in order to know God.

Birth—that instant when a new body is breathed into existence to create Someone who never existed before—is the first sacred moment. Death—that instant when a physical body relinquishes the breath that ensouled it—is the second. Held in and through these two, all Life, all Existence can be seen for what it is. Sacred Breath in Sacred Body, the two held together in Love. Just now, just here, just for a little while.

We receive this gift while we have breath. In return what can we do? We give thanks. We ask forgiveness. We offer love. We remember, and we tell stories.