Vermont Journal - the Crabapple Tree

July 23
I opened the door and the two us, our dog Annie at my feet, looked out onto the yard at the crack of dawn. The sun had not yet risen to burn off the morning mist. Still on the threshold, both of us stared at two wood peckers on the crabapple trunk, tapping to the heart of the wood. Annie and the birds were thinking food, but my fantasy was the wonderment of what fine-pearled treasure the wood might yield if we could peck to the heart of it, for which one might be willing to sell all?

July 25
Phoebes. Phoebes nest under the eaves of the doorway to our common room. This morning the nestlings flew. I watched a little phoebe drop from the branch of the crabapple tree. She went straight down about five feet like a stone. After several hops on the grass, she flew up into the tree again.
For several months while the phoebes hatch and grow we do not use the doorway where they nest. We only cross that threshold after the young birds have crossed their own threshold into a new airbourne way of life. As can be seen it is not a transition without a few drops and hops.
I have thought of those transitional times when I too have plummeted like a stone. I hop, even get hopping mad. But it is true that God is never elsewhere than right where we are. Jesus reminds us that not one sparrow will fall to the ground apart from your Father. Then he adds, "you are of more value than many sparrows." So after a few hops, I learn to open myself to the wind of the Spirit so I can be lifted up, and become airbourne, or shall we say, Spirit-borne.