Ozark Oddments: Perilous times

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Perilous times

The bluebirds have worked very hard this year and have managed to raise a second batch of babies.

I have no idea how many left the nest box, but at least one survived and ended up on our porch on Saturday.

It sat there quite a while, with Mom chattering away from the branches above.

We were pleased to see it, but very much wished that the parents would lure it away from the house and take it out back toward the woods, where it might be a bit safer from the marauding cat.

I have not heard the parents’ plaintive calls since Saturday, so I hope that they succeeded.

Baby birds often do not survive. Lots of things are out to get them, and their clumsy abilities at flying often send them crashing into things, which can be fatal.

One would like to intervene: rush out and grab it and keep it safe from harm for a little while longer. But Nature has to take its course, and sometimes it isn’t pretty.

One could make a metaphor about baby birds leaving the nest and children, but I think perhaps I won’t go there….

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Thoughts to ponder

Most of us go through life so absorbed in the cocoon of ourselves that we rarely stop to consider the other. Of course, we think that we do; indeed, we may pride ourselves on our capacity for empathy; we may be considerate and thoughtful in our dealings with others, but how often do we stand before them. so to speak, and experience what it is to be them?--Domenica Macdonald

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, by Alexander McCall
Smith

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Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering -- because you can't take it in all at once. --Audrey Hepburn

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I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.--Agatha Christie

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Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.--Katharine Hepburn

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One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

"Two people... told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is. I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities. I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thoughness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of "how those Christians love one another"?--Madeline L'Engle, "A Circle of Quiet"