consider the hawk

finding welcome in an inhospitable world

Photo by Rachel McDermott on Unsplash

When I look at the world on a particular day, say

today. Today it is hotter than it should be, hazy

Lazy with the slow afternoon of a Sunday nap, trapped

inside our city, and this country by forces beyond our control.

Control is a thing governments (and small children) crave, slaves

though it makes of us all.

On the phone, far from home, I hear of a woman whose name I don’t

know, who says she is afraid of God. Hawkish, harsh

like someone bent over your shoulder, watching for what you’ll do wrong.

Wrong, like I was all week, standing too close, correcting a kid whose

performance was lacking. “Slacking!” I said, with my hawk-like eyes.

I think of this woman, my kid, and the world, on this particular day.

Pray, tell me why we believe God to be so harsh and exacting? Exactly

like us, we think?

I too watch birds, mostly sparrows. Rows of wrens lining the rail, pale

pigeons, broad-chested, long-necked, deep-throated calls.

Calling to one another, they are free of care. Care

to share your secret? Yet this is how God says he cares for us:

look to the sparrows, not the hawk.

Some days I pick up a particular piece of the world, lamenting Annie-Dillard-like

over the vicious incongruity, the unfairness, the blighted mess of it all.

All truth be told, it is not the whole of things. Sing,

says the bird, full-throated and loud, other stories of the world!

Unfurled, into His own creation in revolt, revolting

some people found Him,

The unwelcome God, making a way

for us to come home.