A Short (Thanksgiving) Story: Count Ten Birds

Although a little longer than some of my recent “(Very) Short Stories,” I offer you on this Thanksgiving Day a story of awareness, gratitude and friendship. Take some time today to look around, to count your blessings, and so say thank you to the Giver of all.

Adam was up early again on a cool, Thanksgiving morning, just after the sun, and although it was just a few days shy of December, the morning was still more like autumn than winter, crisp and damp, in the 50s. He grabbed a coffee and his favorite, well-worn, corduroy short to slip over his t-shirt and walked out the back door and settled into a chair on the porch overlooking his garden. This was his place of solitude and pondering, a sacred spot for considering both the problems of the world and whatever was going on inside himself. He often thought that sitting here was as much chapel, sacrament and liturgy as was his parish church just down the road. 

Adam was up early again on a cool, Thanksgiving morning, just after the sun, and although it was just a few days shy of December, the morning was still more like autumn than winter, crisp and damp, in the 50s. He grabbed a coffee and his favorite, well-worn, corduroy short to slip over his t-shirt and walked out the back door and settled into a chair on the porch overlooking his garden. This was his place of solitude and pondering, a sacred spot for considering both the problems of the world and whatever was going on inside himself. He often thought that sitting here was as much chapel, sacrament and liturgy as was his parish church just down the road. 

The question he’d been wrestling with for the past few days was a familiar one for him: How to best spend his time, these waning years post-career, post-kids, post so many of the things that once brought him life and energy and passion. He wasn’t unhappy, he thought, he just wondered where the time went, where it might be going and how much of it was left. Just that “little question,” he thought, raising his eyebrows. 

He went to a workshop once when he was approaching retirement from the engineering firm where he had worked for nearly his entire career, during which a too-wise-for-her-youth facilitator had asked: “If we only have so much time here on earth — and we do — how should we spend it?” It was a question that, as he begrudgingly plodded his way into his seventh decade, both intrigued and haunted him. It seemed to be both a blessing (Oh, the length of our days, the promise of each new day!) and a dire warning (It could all end tomorrow). 

He sipped from his coffee mug, a gift from his grandkids (Pop, we love you a latte!) and gazed out into the yard beyond the screened porch. The deep greens of summer had faded to browns, reds and yellows, and the trees had lost their leaves so that he could now clearly see the once-hidden grounds of the monastery beyond the back fence where his neighbor and good friend Ethan lived. A pair of fire-red cardinals flitted from feeder to feeder, cautiously looking around between pecks, aware of both the bounty and the danger of life. 

Without much warning, Adam’s mind moved from the birds to his own worries, to all that was and could and might just possibly go wrong. The house needed a new coat of paint. The furnace could use a tune up. What if the market crashed again and their savings dried up? What if that cough his wife had turned into something else? What if, what if, what if, he thought, sounding inside his head like nothing less that one of these birds with their repetitive, questioning songs. 

He set down his coffee again and wrapped his shirt around him tighter as the wind blew through the maples. “I think too much,” he said to himself.  He shut his eyes and prayed his morning prayers, a mental collection of words and silences in which he found some peace on most days. He ran through the list, prayed for all those he had promised to pray for, and ended with just the easy in and out of his breath and the word that connected his life and his prayer and his breath: Spiritu. Spiritu. Spiritu. He sat in silence; he had no idea for how long, only that word — that name — resounding in him like yet another bird song. On most days, it was enough. He glanced at his watch. It was about time. 

“Morning, Adam,” Ethan’s voice called out quietly from beyond the trees, gently breaking his silence. He pushed himself out of his chair and walked out into the backyard. His daily trek to the back fence to talk with Ethan was as much a part of his daily ritual as the prayers. They seemed to go hand in hand, the silence of his prayer, his awareness of his breath, and the quiet conversation across the fence. 

“My turn today,” the monk said as Adam approached the fence. “How’s it between you and the Creator today?” They took turns at this daily check-in, an examination of each other’s awareness of the movement of God in their lives. They had been doing it so long they couldn’t remember how it started, this conversation so organic and natural it seemed a part of the garden.

“Been thinking about the birds,” Adam said, lifting his hands and his eyes to the huge sycamore that stood on his side of the fence but offered shade to them both during the summer months. “These birds don’t think about much. They don’t worry. They just do what they need to do to survive, responding to some urge and call deep within them to keep going — to find or build a home, to eat and provide for and protect their young, as well as they can for as long as they need to. Then they let go. Easy. Natural. Repeat and repeat. Along the way, they sing.”

“And?” Ethan nudged.

“And they make it look easy,” Adam said. “I think too much. Worry too much. Even though I know that gets me nowhere…or at least not where I want to be.” 

“Closer to God or further away?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“Say it anyway.” 

“Further away. Like God’s left the building, or the garden.”

“God left or you did?”

Adam grinned. “Okay, very likely it’s me. God being the unchanging changer and all that.” 

“And all that. What else?” 

“What else what?” 

“What else have you been noticing about this creator and keeper of birds and old men like us?” the monk asked. 

Adam paused — a long, pondering pause that was comfortable to both of them. There was no hurry between these two friends who had shared a fence for more than 30 years. The longer the pause the better and deeper the response, they had found. He looked back toward his house, retracing his steps past the garden and around the barren plum tree. He thought briefly of all the years making that walk, all the weeds pulled, all the harvests of fruits and vegetables and flowers for his wife. 

“This creator and keeper of birds and old men like us is pretty constant,” Adam said. “Way more constant than I am. When I put myself in his presence — or even try to — he generally shows up. Or maybe is already there, waiting.”

“Hmm,” grunted Ethan. “What’s that tell you?”

“I guess I need to just keep showing up. And stop thinking so much.”

“The important thing is not to think much, but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love.”

“Who said that?” Adam asked. 

“I just did.”

“Yeah, but you’re not holy enough for thoughts like that. Who said it first?”

Ethan paused, trying to think of witty comeback. Finding none, he told the truth. “Teresa of Avila — mystic, Carmelite, all-round wise woman.”

“Ah. Knew it couldn’t be you. She might be on to something.”

“Thinking is over-rated.”

“So says the monk with a PhD in medieval theology or whatever,” said Adam, smiling at Ethan. 

“Yeah, well, that was a long time ago, and here I am now, trimming back bushes and dead-heading flowers with a former engineer who thinks and worries too much because he does, in fact, know how everything works,” the monk said. “I think the important thing is showing up, being aware of everything around us and somehow finding God in it all.”   

“That awareness thing can be tough. Sometimes I’m aware and sometimes I forget entirely. Weeks go by and I haven’t looked beyond my television or the book I’m reading.”

“Let me ask you a question,” Ethan began. “On your walk from your porch to this fence today, how many birds did you see?”

“No idea,” Adam laughed. “I wasn’t counting. A couple, I guess.”

“Do me a favor. Turn around and look back in your garden. Count ten birds.”

Adam turned around. At first he saw nothing. He rolled his eyes. This was going to take a while. Then a pair of Cardinals landed on his feeder hanging from the plum tree. A robin pulled up a worm from his garden near the expired tomato plants. Three sparrows rested on the fence. A starling landed on a branch near the fence line. He turned toward Ethan. Above his head over near the monastery, a red-tailed hawk flew by, a smaller, seemingly foolish bird flying in its wake. That’s nine, he thought. Then, as if showing off, a murmuration of starlings flew into his gaze, hundreds of birds flying in unison, twisting and turning like a school of fish. He turned to Ethan.

“Four hundred and ten,” he said, pointing to the starlings. 

“Elapsed time, 13 seconds,” Ethan said, pointing to his watch.

“Imagine that,” Adam said.

“Imagine that. And if you wouldn’t have looked? If you hadn’t counted? How many would you have seen?”

“Bupkis,” Adam said, in his best Yiddish accent. “Nada. Not a one.” 

“So, too, with God and his many appearances, all around us each and every day,” the monk said. “Most go unnoticed because we’re not looking for them.” 

“Well, here’s to showing up and paying attention,” Adam said, raising an imaginary glass to the sky, to the birds, to beyond them both. 

“And to loving much and doing what stirs us to love.”

“To that, too. Perhaps a conversation for tomorrow?”

“Same time, same place, same question,” Ethan said. “Somehow, the answers are different every day.” 

Adam nodded, reached across the fence to shake Ethan’s hand, and then turned to make the slow walk home, a little more aware now, a little more settled and at ease, a little less worried about the doing of life and more focused on the living of it. A little more grateful for the journey. 

Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 2009

Later Thanksgiving day, November 25, 2009