There is a dead bird at the bottom of the hill, fairly fresh, entrails bright as holly berries.
“How do birds die?” a small child once asked me. We reviewed the list of causes: cats, vehicles, larger birds, windows. “But do they die of old age?”
That was my question. Does a bird ever live a good long life and then, one day, just not wake up? Sleep forever in its cozy nest? If I was a bird at the end of my life flight, I’d like to die on the wing, just drop into a wide floating arc and keep falling. Gravity would be no gentle guide for the landing but it wouldn’t matter, I would already be singing on a golden branch in my next life.
This dead bird’s insides remind me of the holly bush, also dead but strangely still alive, that I rediscovered recently in the brush pile, where it had stubbornly rooted after being violently ripped out of the earth. It was such an ugly bush, eaten regularly and vigorously by some creature, never bearing fruit which are poisonous for small humans anyway. The bush appeared to have been pruned, if you can call it that, with something like a medieval mace, perhaps wielded by a one-armed ogre. This little shrub was uglier than a pair of Uggs, which I must remind myself any time I contemplate its demise, because it is hard, hard to take the life of a living green thing, knowing what I know about this polluted failing planet. It was also hard, in effort, to uproot it – the holly bush clung to the ground with a tenacity that nearly beat me, but when you dig the hole deep enough, all things eventually succumb. That it managed to send new life out of the side of its unsightly stump as it lay awaiting the wood chipper made me shake my head, but also: a little gladness.
Nevertheless she – nature – persisted indeed.
And so – death, life, death, life. What do the definitely dead bird and the uncertainly dead holly bush teach us about the jingle jangle of Christmas? We look for the Christ child’s first coming, and we look for his second coming, and in the middle, with the brightness of red entrails on snow: death. There is no second coming without death. No birdsong. No berries. No internal secret peace. No second chance. No snow-fresh start-again. Nothing worth keeping.
Do you need to let it die this advent season? Soar, drop, breathe, and let go. The winter birds are singing just for you.
Post 4 of Waiting: An Advent Series.