Will there be a Wood Thrush in Heaven?

My last post was a lamentation for a world  “that is too much with us…laying waste our lives.”

With gratitude, I write this one as a psalm, sitting lakeside in the Maine woods, keeping company with bluebottles and dragonflies. Now and then a kingfisher rattles its way from tree to tree along the shore.  Far down the lake, a loon calls to its mate; it answers with the same otherwordly sound. The only indication of human activity is the soft whoosh of a sail as a small boat tacks across the pond.  The sun is warm on my face; it is so quiet that I can hear “lake water lapping in low sounds by the shore” (W. B. Yeats).  Soon I will move into the shade: I anticipate a coolness more gentle and refreshing than any air conditioner can deliver.

Max Picard once wrote “Nothing has changed the nature of {man} so much as the loss of silence.”  And so I give thanks for these few days of quiet retreat, allowing me to experience all that’s drowned out by noise: car alarms, jangling phones, leaf blowers and endless talk, talk, talk. Here I can see how the trees and wildflowers grow unobstructed.; how they shelter soft gray mushrooms popping out from the rich soil and neon green lichen on fallen branches. Nurse logs lie peacefully in the woods, giving life to new green shoots and leaves. I inhale the sharp, woody smells that a carpet of pine needles releases under my feet as I walk up the path. I hear, see, smell and touch to my heart’s content.

Returning to my cabin  at dusk, I am greeted by the song of the thrush; to its clear fluting; its haunting, almost primeval notes of the deep woods. The sound takes me back to my early childhood, lying in bed as darkness fell on summer evenings, while the wood thrush was singing the day down. I am not so much listening to it now, but feeling it go straight to my soul.

If I am truly circling around God, today I got pretty close.