Stopping Cold

Thursday, October 22, 2009:  I’m always amazed at my ambition – 10 books to read and all 21 of the journals to review and organize for the writing of  "The ---------------," this book I’m writing. That’s what I brought with me to Gethsemani, my quiet weeklong retreat – these foods for thought – as though gluttony were the goal of spiritual silence.

Fortunately my work ethic is less powerful than whatever force in me said NO to all that. This is my last full day here and I’m not even sure what I’ve done this week to fill the days -- but I feel brimful nevertheless.  Was it that sunrise that took an hour to bare itself yesterday? Was it the sunset that seemed so reluctant to leave on the previous night? How long did it take to watch that flock of geese traverse the sky from one end of this world to the other? – Certainly long enough to witness three volunteers from its hindquarters rise up to relieve those with the hardest job in the front. And what about that bird that’s been following me around all week to keep me from reading even the first of those 10 books? . . .

That bird is a real mystery to me. I’ve never heard a bird’s song with more notes – or even as many – as this one had in her repertoire. It was a melody – not the repetitive four- or five-tweet pattern which I hear from the birds at home. No, this bird had melody, cadence, and even rhyme, I'd say. But I never saw her . . .

I had positioned my chair at my favorite reading spot between a large tree and the gravesite of my first favorite writer from my teenage and early bread baking years, Thomas Merton. Last year I re-read most of his early classic, “The Seven Storey Mountain,” while sitting at this spot. This year I tried to start the introduction to a book by Robert Hopcke, “There are No Accidents.” The bird began singing as soon as I sat down. I stopped my reading attempts, looked up, tried to read again, sat up and craned my neck, stopped, gazed out to the mountains, thought a while, got up from the chair, craned my neck while standing this time, sat back down, got up to circle the tree while looking upward – no bird. I even said, Who are you that sings? – thinking I might scare her out of her hiding place so I could see her – desperate measures – then I rapped on the trunk of the tree – that was ridiculous and painful too – thinking the same thing, that she might expose herself to me.

I wasn’t annoyed in the least bit – more dumbfounded – even considering whether the monks might “plant” these bird song devices in the trees and turn them on from a switch inside a nearby window. Maybe two or three monks are looking out the window at me now, I thought, snickering at the way I rapped on the tree trunk as though to say who’s there? That would be ridiculous. But I wanted to make sense of the talented bird, or at least see her, and people can be pushed to think odd ways in times of great no-sense. Nevertheless –

She (and I) must have gone on like that for 30 minutes. Then, thinking I was cold anyway, thinking I couldn’t read here anyway, I got up to walk back to my room – and the bird stopped cold. Why stop now? I’m sure I said that. I ventured back to the chair, thinking the device might somehow be linked to the chair – hoping no one saw me – walking to and fro the chair, even sitting once and circling the tree once. But she never resumed.

Then last night I heard it again – in another tree – by the parking lot – I looked up as others walked by for their after-dinner stroll, or got in their cars to leave, or just ambled aimlessly.  I wanted to scream through their silence, The bird! She’s doing it again! But – I can’t see her . . .

I looked, craned, whispered . . . but she just sang.