The Beauty of Danger

Recently, another raptor came to my porch. I believe it was a Cooper's Hawk-- small, blue and brown. Perhaps it was attracted by the "wild" birds I feed. My porch has become quite a haven for mourning doves. I've been told that this is a sign of a "peaceful" home, to have doves around. I was wondering more whether they were sent to me to companion me in my mourning...

The arrival of the hawk was brought to my attention by the sound of something slamming against the sliding porch door. Birds occasionally fly into it, but this was louder. I turned to see the raptor sitting on the table's umbrella, collecting itself. I was held in its magnificence! I thought to run to get my camera, but I feared it would be gone when I got back. I stilled myself, and watched... I was saddened when it flew away-- but went to look for what it might be hunting. Sure enough, a dove took frightened flight when I opened the door, releasing itself from its hiding.

I thought: in Nature there is no good or evil. Predators and prey, yes. Survival. Life and death. But animals do not characterize each other in terms that may be taken to be pejorative. There IS danger, but not evil. And everything is beautiful, as the sappy song says, "in its own way"...

Sometimes I feel like St Francis in my own little slice of the natural world on my porch. I am not as grand as he; my porch is often all of the Nature I can handle! But it is its own spiritual teacher. For instance, the squirrels eat the seed I've intended for birds and dig up my geraniums in order to bury the peanuts they take from someone more generous than I in their offerings. The squirrels are "pests" to me, but not evil, and not even "bad," even when I think ill of them. St Francis must have learned the compassion and even-handedness of love from his interactions with the animals... At least, so I care to think!

What St Francis is most famous for, outside of those little statuettes that find their way from garden shops to gardens, is his prayer. (I'm tempted to make the trite connection between "prey" and "pray" here somehow...) You know it. It begins, "Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace..."

Well, before I left my most recent employment, er, before I was shown how to leave..., I had taken an on-line course on "managing the changing organization." In it, we were taught an acronym for what most managers face when they are trying to manage the change their businesses want to implement. It was "GRASS:" Guilt, Resentment, Anxiety, Self-Absorption, and Stress. If "all flesh is grass," then one can imagine how universal these feelings are among those having to adapt to change!

In response, I wrote a prayer, an adaptation of St Francis', called "A Prayer for Managing a Changing Organization." It goes like this:

Lord, make me an instrument of Your Change!
Where there is Guilt, let me bring Mercy.
Where there is Resentment, let me bring Understanding.
Where there is Anxiety, let me bring Serenity.
Where there is Self-absorption, let me bring Inspiration.
Where there is Stress, let me bring Comedy (for all need to laugh a little bit, and laughter relieves stress!).

Anyway, if you notice, I've countered the acronym of GRASS with that of MUSIC! HA! Music, as we all know, endures, and transcends grass...

But also, I have to say, this prayer has become more personal in these days of my life, when I believe that God IS changing me, and changing me rather radically. I have experienced myself as GRASS-- the guilt, resentment, anxiety, self-absorption and stress have been what they have been! There have been many aspects of this change that God is bringing about in me that I simply have not liked! Let alone the way it is being brought about...

But you know, I hope I've managed also to hear God's MUSIC-- to be merciful to myself and to be receptive to the mercy offered me by others; to increase in my understanding of myself, and to be pleased to be charitably understood by others; to find my moments of serenity, in accepting what I've done and cannot undo, and to be comforted by the peace others have offered; to be open to inspiration, and encouragement, and to open my own imagination to what God might further reveal; and most of all, to find some comedy in all of what feels too often to me to be tragic, for I am firm in my belief that God's transformations are of our tragedies, into comedies-- God likes to laugh, I have to believe, even more than God consents to cry.

I appreciate the MUSIC each of you are to me, to my ears, to my soul, to my soothing. Such MUSIC is the beauty in the danger of these times for me... And I thank you...