Bird by Bird: How an Idiom Could Save Your Life

Last Summer, I installed an app called Merlin at the influence of my Paw-Paw whom I had seen using it on his back porch at High Rock Lake in N.C. The app listens for bird calls in your immediate surroundings and identifies the birds around you by their calls. The app highlights each bird's name right when the chirp happens whilst adding it the list of your backyard symphony. After a while, as certain birds are highlighted right when they sing their tune, you start to learn the birds in your area via their chirps and music. This experience is quite lovely and immensely enjoyable. 

Falling in love with this app right after I finished up another crazy school year got me thinking. I once read a book by Anne Lamott called Bird by Bird in a college writing class, and I remember being captured by her idea that writing is a step by step process (meaning crappy first drafts are part of the fare). You line up the writing "bird by bird" (hence her title), much like my Merlin app captures bird my bird and gives them to me one by one in a way I can actually absorb the information. So many things in life are like this: best in Step by Step. Bird by Bird. Draft by Draft. 

This "bird by bird" idea reminds me of another idiom made famous especially by those aware of the struggles of being human: "take it one day at a time." My mom used to work for a special needs company called "One Day at a Time" as an art teacher. Each art class was its own experiment. She wasn't given a good budget and had to use whatever local materials had been donated or whatever we found and recycled that week to formulate a craft which was not only worthy of framing but was also something each of her special art students could do. It was quite a challenge. One week we used colored and sparkly granite pieces that we found in a man's used car-lot (he hadn't minded us picking around his home and placing the granite in sandwich bags according to color). Another week we used toilet paper rolls since we'd been saving up for months around the house, yet another time we used mirror pieces from a mirror my brother had broken that week playing "Tarzan" and combined them with other small junk-drawer items to form beautiful frames for the self-portraits completed during the previous week. Each week was its own experiment in material finding and art project planning. And each class was its own experiment in adapting the projects as needed for the diverse art students who came, and in dealing with whatever triggers and/or outbursts happen to come up during that particular day and class. 

Being my mom's art assistant at "One Day at a Time" (ODAAT for short) was a little like playing the game "Curses" where each action on a card performed by a certain player triggers a different reaction in another; part of the goal being to identify what the cards actually say--"what was the curse on the card?" and furthermore "what is the trigger for that curse or reaction?" Except there were no curses or cards; only people who struggled in various ways with various things and reacted to one another--sometimes Susie's behavior becoming too much for Johnny's since Johnny didn't like it when Susie say "No more," and Susie sad "No more" anytime she got tired. And still other times the dominoes of behavior were less predictable, less patterned; sometimes Keith's behavior simply popping up because he was having a bad day, or hadn't had a certain breakfast bar he liked that morning, or because he hated paper mache' or sticky hands. Whatever the case, helping at ODAAT was a period of my life in which I learned the unpredictable nature of people and of life; in which I learned that taking things not only "one day at a time" and "one art class at a time" but also taking things "one moment at a time" was often essential for living a peaceful life in the midst of the chaos that is life. Monty Python says, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition;" I say "No one expects Keith to scream 'Save us from this dismal hell' because he saw Susie eat glue."

One of the beautiful things about this art class (and there were many) was that the individuals we served had learned to take life one day at a time and one moment at a time much earlier than my mom and I. We had much to learn from these unique and wise 18-50 year olds. A long time ago they had come to the conclusion that they couldn't control every aspect of life, or many times most aspects of life, and therefore, they would enjoy each day and each moment the best they could and would forgive themselves and others easily and simply when something didn't work out so well. Mom and I received more grace and forgiveness in that art class than in most of the churches we attended, and we likewise learned more about the "bird by bird" way of life than we ever had. Living "bird by bird" for many of our special friends looked like accepting how well their hands and arms worked or didn't work on any particular day. For others it looked like not remembering much of what had happened the day before or what the plans for this new day were, but only remembering those most important people--their parents, their worker, their brother--and being okay with simply following and trusting the people who had built a life with them. It was humbling to work with such flexible, honest, raw, trusting, chaotic, and people-centered folks. It was humbling to gather materials for them "week by week," and it was humbling to learn beside them and through them "day by day;" "moment by moment." 

Anne Lamott and the Merlin app don't have a corner when it comes to using birds to speak of living day by day rather than in fear and worry. Jesus spoke this way when he shared with the crowds in Matthew 6. He said, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" I get to thinking about birds a lot living in Jersey and walking the Wildwoods Boardwalk. 

The seagulls here are mostly Laughing Gulls. They're these low-flying, loud, and greedy little buggers who typically have beautiful eye rings which emphasize their dramatic expressions and pursuit-fishing beaks that can hijack your WaWa sandwich faster than you say "Wait--!" It's amazing to watch these creatures which don't seem to have a worry in world whether you find them on the beach or the boardwalk. They simply hover and scan their immediate environments and find whatever food the Lord and his children provide--whether that be sand-beetles on the shore or the French Fries your friend just bought and no intention of sharing. Their cherry-red, opportunistic beaks are always at the ready; always expecting their Lord to provide for them. They simply have this confidence that they will not only survive life on the boards and at the beach, but will thrive here. They simply seem to know they will get multiple meals if only they watch and wait. 

Though I hope that we Christians are better at hospitality than Laughing Gulls, which, once they "claim" a streetlight warn others with their loud calls to stay away, I do see a lot about Laughing Gulls that fits with what Jesus says we, as his children, are to be like. We SHOULD be confident that our God will provide for us, and we SHOULD be confident that He does, and has, and will continuously and abundantly provide for our needs and even our wants. As Dr. K says and Chris Byrd repeats, "We serve an Abundant God; We have an Abundant Life" (there is a ton of meaning packed into this simple phrase). We also SHOULD, rather than worrying and fearing inside our heads, expect God's kindness and watch and wait for opportunities--opportunities for evangelism, opportunities for blessing others, opportunities for housing and for work. Our God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, not just all the French Fries on the Jersey boardwalks, so what should we fear? Of whom shall we be afraid? Are we not of more value than the birds and the flowers, and look at how our Lord provides for them! These Laughing Gulls, and really, all of God's little creatures which we are told to care for, depend daily on their Lord for provision, and on we humans as his conduits. What would the Christian's life look like if we followed suit? If we depended daily on God to care for us, and if we expected abundant care...If we likewise saw our fellow believers are conduits of his blessing? I want a life with that level of faith, and so I will ask along with the wise father in the scriptures--"I believe; Help my Unbelief!" 

Part of the Evangelism training here at the Boardwalk Chapel includes lessons on The Lord's Prayer, which also comes from Matthew 6. The passage that most comes to mind at this juncture of course is the instruction to pray: "Give us this day our daily bread." We are to ask the Lord, not for a 5-year-plan, a week's provision, or even for today and tomorrow's manna. Rather, we are to ask our Lord for today's bread. This includes both the physical provision of what we will eat and wear, and also the spiritual provision of what energy, wisdom, and Spiritual power we will be given by our Lord that day. All of life is to be lived in dependence and trust on and in Him; our Creator who knows what we need best. Jesus showed us how to live in this extreme dependence on God when he walked the earth. He went away to pray and seek the Lord in quiet places; He not only taught the disciples how to pray but rebuked them when they didn't pray for what they needed (Mark 9); He was constantly giving glory to His Father in heaven and entrusting himself and others to his Father in heaven who provided for him (including the "bread" of spiritual nature that the disciples "didn't know about" in John 4). How much more should we live in dependence on the Godhead when Jesus lived in this way? And yet, it is so contrary to human nature because of that natural fleshly-man who screams for autonomy away from God, Christ, Spirit, and others--and whom we must crucify with Christ each time he calls out for an independence that will surely kill him (and by default us!).

It can be especially hard to live by "our daily bread" when earthly examples of parents or authority have proven to be unfaithful or unreliable when we looked to them in dependence. But the Lord is much more than mere flesh will ever be; his very character and self is wrapped in His eternality. As He proclaims Himself to Moses in Exodus 34,"The LORD, the LORD God, is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness, maintaining loving devotion to a thousand generations forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished; He will visit the iniquity of the fathers on their children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generations." God has an eternality of character that no mere earthly parent or authority (no matter how wonderful or horrid) can have, since He is forever by his very nature. We, in our sin and in the curse of death, and in the very fact of our beginning at some point, are not this and never will be. He is God, and we are not. Let us not define him in or by human definitions, terms, and failures. Let us trust the only Eternal, and therefore, the only truly Faithful and Trustworthy God.  Jesus is "the Faithful and True" of Revelations. Let us go to Him in dependence for our daily everything, for He is the everything to our nothing. He is the provider for his children who come to Him for life and life eternal. 

God provides each breath until our breaths are no more, so why would we ever think we could live in a more than moment to moment, bird by bird, dependence to dependence existence? Let us daily ask. And let us daily gather the manna of physical and spiritual provision, bringing it into our homes. Lest the excess manna turn to maggots in our mouths, lest the anxiety about tomorrow turn to panic attacks in our chests, lest the autonomy lead to isolation from God and man, lest we try to determine our own destinies and realize we were never meant to live beyond the childlike neediness and expectation of one who knows where their help comes from--our help comes from the Lord; maker of heaven and earth. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!