Bluebirds in the Garden

Of all the birds I watch, the ones which bring the greatest joy are bluebirds. A lovely couple have graciously accepted the home I offered last year and have set up house on the other side of our grassy garden, which we continue to call 'the tennis court' long after the old court was dug up and fence removed.

Momma and Papa are busy building a nest, which will soon be filled with four little blue eggs. Alas, I can only observe the comings and goings and surmise what is happening. Building, laying, nesting, feeding, hatching, feeding, growing, feeding, fledging, and little ones leaving to find a home of their own.

Will our young birds find a box in your garden next year?

The Great Backyard Bird Count

My first time to participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count. Snow, beautiful snow falling, falling, falling and forming a magnificent backdrop to the activity outside my window.  Twenty species!
     Mourning Dove - 9
     Downy Woodpecker - 1
     Hairy Woodpecker - 1
     Carolina Chickadee - 5
     Tufted Titmouse - 1
     Carolina Wren - 2
     Eastern Bluebird - 2
     American Robin - 1
     Brown Thrasher - 1
     Pine Warbler - 4
     Eastern Towhee - 2
     Chipping Sparrow - 3
     Song Sparrow - 2
     Dark-eyed Junco - 4
     Dark-eyed Junco (Slate-colored) - 8
     Northern Cardinal - 5
     Red-winged Blackbird - 1
     Common Grackle - 1
     House Finch - 4
     American Goldfinch - 42 (a conservative number)


Blue, rust, gold, green, red, lavender ... a colorful spectacle that my camera could not capture.  So delightful that I didn't even begrudge the grackle and red-winged blackbird their share of the afternoon feast, even though my beloved little goldfinch fled whenever they appeared.  Odd that these sinister fellows kept coming back to the feeder together.  Rather like the comic, black cloaked villain of a Vaudeville show, although the allusion is poor, for the scene is anything but gaudy.  

The Christmas Card

I love Christmas cards ... the humorous ones, the sweet ones, the spiritual ones, the cute ones and the braggadocious ones. From childhood I've kept a sample of all the cards I've sent and saved the ones I've received as well.

How many people do you know who keep old Christmas cards? Last summer, in a rare mood and feeling rather proud of myself for cleaning out, I threw out the precious cards I had saved for 35 years. Today I'd like to see them once more.

Some of my earliest memories of Christmas include the cards my parents sent and received. Mother always displayed the wealth of remembrances on our mantle. The overflow went into baskets. Many baskets.

Everyone we knew sent cards. The first arrived in late November, right after Thanksgiving and before we could even think of "getting out the Christmas things". Others were mailed, ours included, the day before Christmas. "That counts, doesn't it?" we would assure ourselves as we dropped them in the mailbox.

Today a card is an investment. So is postage. Some friends are strapped for time. Others money. Still others are celebrating the season in celestial realms. Not many cards arrive, making the ones that the postman brings even more precious to us.

Happy day! This day a card arrived from Frank and Janet, my longtime American neighbors in England who bravely moved home to San Francisco six summers ago. Seeing the familiar handwriting, I am sadly reminded that I'll never again have the privilege of popping over to share newly picked Cotswold strawberries.

The card, though it boasts a winter scene painted by Grandma Moses, floods my heart with memories of gracious summer luncheons and candlelit dinner parties, travels in William, the middle aged Bentley, tempting treasures in England's auction houses, sweet chats about this and that, gardens, flowers, antiquities, pubs, a sleeping fox, and opera...most of all, opera.

I treasure the card. Not for the photo. There isn't one. Not for the artist's view of yesteryear, enjoyable as it may be. But for the sweetest of memories. For the friends I hold dear. God bless you, Frank. God bless you, Janet.

Merry Christmas!

Rise up, o men of God!

Rise up, o men of God!

Have done with lesser things.

Give heart and mind and soul and strength

To serve the King of kings.

Rise up, O men of God!

The kingdom tarries long.

Bring in the day of brotherhood
And end the night of wrong.

Rise up, O men of God!

The church for you doth wait,

Her strength unequal to her task;

Rise up and make her great!

Lift high the cross of Christ!

Tread where His feet have trod.

As brothers of the Son of Man,

Rise up, O men of God!

When Abraham was bargaining with the Lord in Genesis 18, he asked Him if He would spare Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of 50 righteous men.

The Lord said, "Yes."

In an amazingly bold series of requests, Abraham kept revising the number down, down, down, eventually asking the Lord to spare the cities for the sake of 10 righteous men. Why then were the cities and their inhabitants, the surrounding plains and all that grew on the ground utterly destroyed? When the time came to stand boldly, only one man stood against the crowd, and even he negotiated and was willing to compromise with evil.

Where are the righteous men of our land?  Stand up and declare that you will render what is God's only unto Him . Read and sign The Manhattan Declaration which ends so boldly:

As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority. We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust—and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust—undermine the common good, rather than serve it.

Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching. Their answer was, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

According to the US census bureau as of 2008 the population of the United States is 304, 059,724. If just one out of every hundred Americans took a stand, there would be 3,040,597 signatures on the Manhattan Declaration. As of today, there are only 178,000 brave souls, men and women, who have added their signatures.

Rise up, oh men of God!