A Call to Ministry: "When Dead Birds Fly"
Ordination, March 2007
It was a dark and stormy night, when out of the tempestuous sky came a bright flash of light and a bony finger pointed straight at me. It was accompanied by a loud, commanding voice: “You, Vicki, are the anointed.” Ha. Kidding, kidding!
Actually, my calling came very much like Pandora’s and Karen’s: in tiny signals in my everyday life as I prayed, “Where can I serve?” “What is right for me?”
I believe that there is rarely a huge sign from the heavens calling for an amendment of life. More often, it is in the recognition of tiny happenings that bring—to use the language of Ignatian discernment—“consolation” that I am drawn to seek more consolation and to flee further away from things that bring desolation. After some time of seeking and fleeing, seeking and fleeing, I found myself open and kneeling, pleading for more of the same consolations.
One year, on a family vacation, we stopped the car at a highway rest stop in the dusty mesa-lands of west Texas . As I laid out the picnic and called the kids for lunch, a highway department worker, who appeared to be mentally challenged, cleaning up the picnic area. He had come upon a small flock of dead birds and was gently picking them up one-by-one, stroking them, and then silently flinging them up into the live oak branches overhead. One by one they fell back down to the ground to land by his feet again. Then he would stoop and stroke and then toss again. His face would light up when by chance one freshly cast bird would catch up in the tree branches. It was as if he knew they didn’t belong on the ground still and lifeless, but needed to be in the trees, alive again.
At first we chuckled at his naïve behavior, but we returned to the memory of that scene often as we continued down the road. His simple, but deeply meaningful act of hope made a lasting impression on our hearts. We have even named that stop, “The Place Where Dead Birds Fly.”
I left that place with a prayer on my lips, “I want to do something that reminds people that there is hope.”
It is often in times of despair, when we are so vulnerable, that some small happening brings a ray of hope that parts the clouds and lifts us up. I’m reminded of a time when I was struggling with impending loss. I had been at the hospital when my 88 year old mother lay dying. She had been unconscious for much of the 12 days we were there, and each day seemed like a year. The prognosis was not good, and my five siblings and I took our turns sitting with her and waiting for death to come. I had lost any sense of time or connection to anything normal. I felt a deep loss, loneliness, lostness.
Then the little ray of hope appeared. A nurse’s aide came into the room to give my mom a bath. Rather than asking me to leave, she asked if I’d like to help. She’d wash and I could dry. I was grateful to have something to do, and as she started to wash, she began to hum quietly. Her “hum” soaked into me, soothing as it soaked. It brought with its tune a restoring connection to possibilities beyond what I perceived in that sterile hospital environment. I left that room knowing that I didn’t have to wait for a lightening bolt. I wanted to pass that good stuff on!
It is written in the Christian Bible in the book of Matthew the 5th chapter that Jesus said, “You are light for the world. A city built on a hilltop cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp to put it under a tub; they put it on a lamp-stand where it shines for everyone in the house. In the same way, your light must shine in people’s sight, so that, seeing your good works, they may recognize and give praise to your Father in heaven.”
You are here today to celebrate ordination for the three of us who have completed this phase of specialized training. You are going to extraordinary ends to celebrate that we are entering the professional vocation of offering presence and compassion to those in need. But just because you’re sitting out there and we are up here, doesn’t mean that you, too, haven’t been called to share your Light.
In just a few minutes, we will stand together and you will place your hands on us to empower us and send us out! Look at your hands! Where will that power come from? YOU will be an instrument of the Spirit that holds everything together and that Spirit will flow through those very ordinary, but chosen hands. We all will not be remembered for our extensive training or expressive words, but for small actions done in quiet. And sometimes we won’t even be aware that anyone has received anything at all from us. Ordinary people like you and me simply share the things that give us consolation and in so doing, we are great blessings to one another. Whether it be smiling at a stranger in the grocery store, or in attending a class or setting up for a ceremony, or even attending this celebration as a friend, each simple and ordinary deed points to a Way that leads from self-concern to the wide, divine nature of humanity as it is meant to be.
So as you have come here to send me out into professional ministry, I’d like to say again, you’re not off the hook. Pay attention to your own calling. What is it that deeply consoles you? Do you like to hum? Do you love to see birds flying? Then do those everyday things with great love. In openly sharing your joy, you bring the Presence of Love and Hope to life.
May it be so.