Sapsucker
Finn the dog and I were just returning from our usual morning stroll, back through the neighbor’s yard to the hidden ponds and lakes and holy places we like to visit, when I heard a telltale frantic thump coming from inside the greenhouse.
I sighed, put Finn in the house, and retrieved a pair of garden gloves.
There was a bird trapped in the greenhouse. Our first of the year.
It’s just one of those normal aspects of seasonal life we’ve come to expect. When we leave the greenhouse door open, as we must for ventilation when the weather gets a bit warmer, certain feathered friends find their way in and can’t get out. Some birds figure it out faster than others. Songbirds tend to be the savviest, especially the keen-eyed juncos who I almost never have to coach. They simply land on the greenhouse floor, take a minute to look around, spot the open door, and flutter out. Easy-peasy.
But some birds, especially the ones not naturally used to landing on the ground, struggle. Hummingbirds are the worst, always insistent upon flying up when you need them to fly down and out of the doorway.
This time, the bird in question was a sapsucker. A red-breasted sapsucker, to be precise. These pretty birds look and act a bit like woodpeckers, with their red heads and ability to drill tidy rows of holes in the bark of deciduous trees.
As expected, this one was holding tightly onto the wall of the greenhouse, confused and frightened. It never occurred to her to look around, take stock, find perspective.
Thankfully, her fear made her docile enough that I could wrap my gloved hands gently around her wings and escort her out. She fluttered into a nearby tree, gave me a cheeky and slightly offended glance, and then flew away into the wind.
It’s nothing personal, of course. A sapsucker is always welcome in our lives, in our yard. But, obvious as it sounds, we must remove what doesn’t belong so that all can thrive. That’s just a fact of life.
Removal isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes it’s life-giving.
All The Snakes In Ireland
This past weekend the world celebrated the feast day of Saint Patrick, a day of merriment and the color green and shamrocks all over everything. And I am always of two minds about the whole thing, whenever it rolls around.
On the one hand, as a Celtic Christian, you would think Saint Patrick’s Day would be like Christmas for me. A day when the whole world celebrates Celts and Celtic things! What could be better?
But instead, I just end up getting annoyed and pedantic with the misunderstandings, the cultural mishmash, the mixed-up history, and find I have to enjoy it privately, in my own ways, to keep from being a pain to anyone else.
So much of what passes for history and folktale is carefully edited, things removed to make it sound better or to suit whoever is telling the tale. It seems to me that Saint Patrick is among the more famous victims of this, especially the idea of him “removing all of the snakes in Ireland”, a shorthand allegory for his alleged ousting of the pagan druids.
The truth is…probably less tidy. But people don’t like untidy, especially in our folktales, and even more especially where faith is involved.
In reality, there’s evidence to suggest that Patrick was one of many Celtic faith-leaders of the time who are responsible for the preservation of old Celtic pre-Christian tales and stories and incantations and prayers, which would never have been written down if it weren’t for monks dutifully keeping record. The Celts were a people of oral storytelling; history back then was ephemeral, easy to lose. The learned monks in their dark cloisters are the only reason we know much of anything at all about the Ireland we like to call “pagan”. Despite their faith, they did not see the pre-Christian stories as something to be rid of, but something to weave in. Something that prefigured Christ, testified to Him. They likely believed in syncretism, even if they didn’t have a word for it.
So, no. I don’t think Patrick was the sort to drive the “snakes” out. I doubt that removal was on his mind at all. I think that detail about the snakes was added later, a bit of propaganda to tidy up the scandalous aspects of a Celtic faith considered a little too comfortable with its pre-Christian roots.
Revision is like surgery. Removal of the right thing at the right time can be healing, can change our lives. But removal in the wrong ways can destroy, can cause confusion, can leave us harmed in ways we may not even understand.
The Flutter of Wings
As you may have guessed, this parable is a love song to revision. And here’s why.
You see, I am an editor. It’s part of my dayjob as a freelance wordsmith. This week, one of my clients released her self-published young adult book, called Lark At Night. And the release put me into a very thoughtful mood. (Sidenote: despite my clear bias, I truly recommend looking into the book if you love timeless children’s literature like The Secret Garden and the Narnia stories. Blaze has written a truly magical tale about childhood and family and the power of beauty and compassion. It’s an instant classic, in my opinion.)
Editing gets a bad reputation, sometimes, and that’s because there are a lot of editors (myself included) who struggle to know how and when to remove, how and when to add. Editors can come across as picky, analytical, unpoetic, lacking in artistic sensibilities, wielding a scalpel without care. Even on our best days we can insist on removal with the desire to heal, but without bedside manner it doesn’t come across that way.
And sometimes…we’re wrong. Those are the worst days. Those are the days that haunt you, the driving-out-the-snakes days. The days when, in an effort to make things tidy, you only make them worse.
That said, I truly love editing. Sometimes I think I love it more than writing, although I would never allow myself to be quoted on that. I love seeing the whole board, rearranging the pieces to make everything fit just right. I love editing my own work, and I love being entrusted with someone else’s story, looking for the places where the bird must be removed from the greenhouse, careful not to step on the snakes.
The release of Blaze’s beautiful book is a celebration of her willingness to tell the story she longed to tell, and to tell it right. As a talented visual artist, she understands where certain lines must be erased for the good of the whole piece. Removal as an opportunity for betterment, for creation. Removal leaves space, and space opens up possibility.
Editing, at its best, is a celebration of what’s possible.
We cannot have perfection this side of Heaven, much to the chagrin of editors everywhere. In the stories we tell, not everything can stay. Life is like that, too. But that doesn’t mean we cannot have what’s good. What heals.
And I truly believe that the best stories, the ones that heal us, are told in the fluttering of wings, the stillness left behind when we open wide the door.
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This reminds me of the pruning process Jesus often speaks about. Sometimes, things we have spent much time growing, nurturing, cultivating, hanging onto need to be pruned so the rest of us can flourish.
My ex husband was an orchardist. You are absolutely right when you say that it can't just be done willy-nilly, it must be done with care. When my ex would go out to prune the trees, he always took great care to survey the entire tree before he made any cuts. Sometimes, a limb that needed to be pruned wouldn't need to be pruned *right that second,* it could wait for another season or two. Sometimes, the limb just needed to be redirected. Sometimes, it would need to be lopped off, quickly and decisively. But always, always with an eye toward the natural growth habits of the tree and what the tree itself needed. And then, the way he would prune an apple tree would differ greatly from how a plum tree needed to be pruned. If you prune a plum tree how you'd prune an apple, you'd do great damage to the plum. And so on.
I think, whether we are talking orchard trees or creativity or personal habits or writing, the same principles apply. I wouldn't critique a 7th grader's charcoal sketch the same way I would critique a peer professional, but both must be done with love.
Great article!
I felt a strong sense of sympatico regarding misunderstandings of some ancient traditions. A few of my novels feature people following a neo-Pagan tradition, and I feel an unholy glee when I use a character to correct another character's misunderstanding, mispronunciation, etc. (A favorite example: Halloween is Samhain, which is not pronounced like it looks, and it has nothing to do with evil; rather, it's one of two times in the year when the veil between what was and what is can be experienced as thin enough to allow for communication.) I loved your description of Celtic Christianity (https://sereid.substack.com/p/steeped-in-gods-presence). And syncretism: what a wonderful word, what a wonderful phenomenon!