That God made birds...

This afternoon I was noting how many birds were hanging on the feeder, and Tom jokingly said they were eating us out of house and home.

"I must spend a hundred dollars a month on them!" he said.

That was an exaggeration, but it is true that he invests in a lot of seeds and finch sox to keep them happy. But I think we both find the investment gives a good return.

I went to get my book of poetry by Jessica Powers, and read him the opening lines of this:

Birds
By Jessica Powers (Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD)
1905-1988
1956

That God made birds is surely in His favor.
I write them as his courtesies of love.
Hidden in leaves, they offer me sweet savor
of lightsome music; when they streak above

My garden wall they brush my scene with color.
They are embroideries upon the grass.
I write the gayest stitched-in blossom duller
than birds which change their patterns as I pass.

I nurse a holy envy of St. Francis
who lured the birds to nestle at his breast.
Yet I am grateful for this one which dances
across my lawn, a reckless anapest.

Subjects for gratitude push up my living
praise to a sum that tempts the infinite;
but birds deserve one who psalm of thanksgiving
and these words are my antiphon for it.

I was blessed to know Sr. Miriam for the last several years of her life. She was a bit birdlike herself, and a woman of great wisdom. She was a well-known American poet before she decided to become a Discalced Carmelite nun in 1941. Sr. Miriam was a member of the monastery in Pewaukee, not far from Holy Hill, and I used to go over there to give conferences and to hear confessions every couple of weeks.

One of my favorite stories is from the time before she was a nun, when she was living in New York and got into an argument with someone (an editor, probably, and I suspect it was a priest) over what was the greatest attribute of God. The other person held out for Truth; Jessica was in favor of Beauty.

Years later she told a friend, "We were both wrong. The greatest attribute of God is Mercy."

May it be so.