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Opinions and Insights


Now I see: On birds and ‘spiritual attentiveness’


I’ve always loved the outdoors,


enjoying the natural world through camping, backpacking, canoeing, kayaking, fishing and long-distance running. I’ve respected nature, explored it, protected it and taught my sons to do the same. But I never had any particular interest in birds until 10 years ago when my eyes were opened to a world I never knew existed. I was with my family in Costa


Rica for an immersion course in Spanish. We took a few days to explore the coastal waterways along the Atlantic, enjoying the wildlife, rich with sights of crocodiles, tur- tles, monkeys and sloths. While a fellow traveler identified the exotic birds we were seeing, I recorded the names, hoping to impress a fishing buddy who loved birds. A few weeks after returning to


Texas, my friend and I were fish- ing on our favorite lake. I pulled the list of birds from my pocket and named the first, expecting a look of surprise, and maybe envy. Instead, he told me that the rare bird I saw was, in fact, native to our area and he pointed out a nest of them along the shoreline! Not to be outdone, I read the second name from the tropics. He looked over- head to a bird flying by, and said, “There goes one of those now.” And so


it went with the entire list. Every exotic bird I had listed


lived in abundance in the same habitat I had shared with them for more than 20 years. They were not rare, merely unknown to me. I found this unsettling. The next day I bought a guide


book and began to identify birds as I drove, worked, ran and fished. Once I started to notice, birds were everywhere. Brazen and boister- ous birds chirped and clattered in palm trees, stealthy birds moved through dense shrubbery, shy birds remained still and quiet in mid- day shadows, small songbirds sang hymns to the rising sun, and regal predators perched atop light posts. The cover of the guidebook


displayed a particularly striking bird with steel-blue wings, a red-


dish speckled breast, and a face with sharp contrasting lines of black and white. I found myself desiring to see this bird more than any other in the book. If I should ever enjoy the privilege of see- ing this bird, my hobby would be complete, or so I thought. At that time, I served as


a pastor in McAllen, Texas. Participating in conference lead- ership meant that I drove to San Antonio once or twice a month for meetings, 230 miles each way. One morning, my eye caught a dove-sized bird perched on a power line at a particularly odd angle. I turned the car around, reached for my binoculars, and discovered an American Kestrel, the bird from the front cover of my guide! I watched in awe, feeling ecstatic, grateful, humbled. This was a celebration of life, an unexpected con- firmation of a beauty that frequently seems elusive if not entirely beyond our grasp. After a while, I continued on


my way. To my complete amaze- ment, I discovered another Kestrel a quarter mile down the road. Again I stopped. How incredible in one day to see two of these birds I thought I would never see! As I drove on, I saw another, and then another. Slowly it dawned on me that I had made the mistake of a beginning birder by never checking the range maps of the bird I was seeking. Kestrels are common to South Texas during fall and winter, and they hunt in territories about a quarter mile apart. Before the day was over, I had seen dozens of Kestrels. Smiling to myself, I began to


fathom a sobering truth. I had traveled those 230 miles up and 230 miles back hundreds of times over 20 years. That striking bird that I claimed I had never seen had surrounded me the whole time. I’d seen tens of thousands of Kestrels, but I hadn’t bothered to notice them, recognize them or know them. My eyes had been closed to a world that was real and present and alive. Since those early months of


birding I have learned a great deal, and I continue to see birds I’ve never seen before. A whole world


exists that we don’t see, a world before us that we fail to recognize, notice or hear except in intermit- tent ways. It’s an enchanting world, magical, unseen and full of the everyday miracles of migration, feeding, mating, nesting, singing, surviving. It’s a world marked by infinite patterns of behavior and personality and habit. Now, I ponder the mystery of


how birds survive in subfreez- ing temperatures or through long weeks of drought, of how the smallest of them flies from my window feeder in Missouri to South America and back each fall and spring. I’ve discovered species of magnificent colors that share my neighborhood but which my human neighbors know noth- ing about. I have been taught techniques through books and colleagues for inten- tionally finding birds. I’ve learned to look for them, to listen for them, to peer into their world


without interrupting them and to draw them into my world without harming them. Birding rekindled an adolescent


interest in photography as a tool to help me identify them better, and this evolved into a desire to catch images that capture the criti- cal essence and unique identifying field marks. Bird books line my shelves and bird drawings adorn my walls. I still consider myself an amateur, and yet I enjoy pointing out birds to friends and sharing my love of birds with colleagues as non-intrusively as possible. I count as colleagues people I never knew


November 11, 2011


before who share this interest. I see birds everywhere. They


quiet me. They lift me. They remind me. They grant me free- dom, and they help me look at life itself with an unfiltered delight. Birds are a gift. Birding has helped me under-


stand the spiritual discipline of attentiveness. Just as I previously lived each day surrounded by a world I never knew existed, so each one of us risks living our days without noticing the life of the Spirit, the presence of God, the movements of the interior life. Once we begin to notice God,


a whole new world opens, a world that is true, ageless, and marked by unexpected discoveries of grace. Belonging to the community of Christ, we start to explore life with God and we detect God’s presence and activity. With soul work, an unseen world becomes visible. We look afresh at our family, our work, our inner life and the people around us. We experience God at work in the world, the Spirit moving where it will, Christ present in every face. Grace, patience, peace, justice,


mercy, pardon, reconciliation, hope, faith, love—these signs and elements of the Spirit’s work sometimes emerge boldly in unex- pected places. On other occasions we catch only a fleeting glimpse, though the signs still surround us all the time. For the spiritual life also, there are guidebooks and col- leagues who are willing to assist us, and there are techniques to help us see. Like birding, life in Christ has a language of its own, a


vocabulary of grace to distinguish and describe nuances of soul and character. Frequently, Scripture uses sto-


ries of blindness and seeing. “I was blind but now I see. . . .” “I see people as trees walking. . . .” Jesus describes his mission as “the recovery of sight to the blind. . . .” We go through life self-blinded, seeing only a small portion of what is before us. Whole worlds exist right before our eyes, but we direct our attention elsewhere and we perceive the world through filters. There are people we fail to notice, promptings of the Spirit we ignore, callings we do not hear, offerings of grace we overlook. Birding draws my attention to


places that otherwise my eyes would not have focused and helps me see ordinary places from an extraordi- nary perspective. Similarly, spiritual attentiveness draws our attention to Christ and opens our eyes to a world we otherwise fail to see. Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, for I want to see you.


Yours in Christ,


Robert Schnase, Bishop


page and page 1A were taken by Bishop Schnase. You can view more of his photographs at www.pbase.com/mobish.


Mo. Conference of the UMC The bird photos on this


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