What a difference a few days can make. While I was away for
a week, the grasses in the meadow I have been watching grew a foot or so
(thereby giving the Meadowlarks plenty of cover in which to hide their nests),
and the glorious Blue Grosbeaks returned. Meanwhile, one of the two Bald Eaglets
I have been keeping an eye on since early March apparently fledged, and the
lone remaining eaglet looks as though it will take off any time now. Over and
over it stretches its wings, flaps them, and lifts a few inches off the nest.
Through my binoculars, I catch a fleeting glimpse of daylight under its feet
when it rises up. It settles again mid-nest. Then it hops up onto the nest’s
edge and looks out over the tops of the trees toward the river, and then down
to the forest floor, and then out again.
I wonder what it sees. I wonder what it thinks about what
it sees. I wonder if it has any inkling of what it will soon do. I wonder if it
feels excited or fearful—or both—about leaving the nest and flying. Mostly I
wonder about the timing: how it will know when to let go so that it can soar.
Such wondering has particular poignancy for me this year.
Two family members—my sons’ paternal grandfather and my daughter-in-law’s
father—are house-bound and in hospice care. In a sense, their task is the
opposite of the young eagles’ task. Their call is not to leave their respective
“nests” and become independent. Rather it is to stay centered in their nests,
to let themselves be cared for and loved. And yet in some ways their work is
the same, for in the end, like the eaglets, they will need to let go and fly
into a world they cannot yet completely know.
And so, when I hold them in my prayers now, I lift them
up not as two frail old men on the verge of dying but as two eaglets on the
verge of learning a new way of soaring into a new kind of life. For both of
them, and for all of us as we take the next steps on our journeys, I pray for the
courage to let go of the old so that we can soar, and I pray for good timing.
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