It’s the first thing I see each morning as my feet hit the floor. A watercolor print of a great mother bird sheltering someone underneath her wings. It is unclear what kind of person it is. What is clear is the look of fear and desperation on their face, hidden within a safety so tenuous. With reverence, I stand each day to address the sheltered and the Shelterer. It’s beautiful, yet sweetly haunting. The bird’s dark eyes look downward to the person at her breast, who appears to push the wings outward, or to part a veil, or to pull it close like a blanket. There’s a longing in each set of eyes.
“How often I’ve longed to gather your children, gather your children like a hen gathers her brood, safe under her wings,” laments the young rabbi.* Possibly the echo of a psalm he learned as a boy, sung to him by his mother. He sings now the unrequited love song of God, one that will not return to Her.
“Lament” is a fancy word for heartbroken. If you have ever loved someone who did not love you back, you know this. It’s the hardest thing the heart must hold. There is no anger in his voice, only sadness. A plaintive cry like the mourning dove, he knows the grief of God… a love and sorrow bigger than a city and the people in it. Within the heart of The Mother, a desire is nested to shelter her children. She feels the fragility and fear within us, which sends her out to search and sing. Her desire, stronger than heartbreak.
A songbird is outside my window, singing at the top of her lungs. Her wings beat within me, longing to make her nest in my branches. I raise the window, and hear her song in my native tongue, “Come here, baby… Come here.”
*Luke 13:31-35, The Message
–Jim Marsh, Jr., Bread of Life Church
