“[The baby bird] did not know what his mother looked like. He went right by her. He did not see her.”
Are You My Mother?
I will admit that not many know we are expecting a third little one in June, but certainly not at all because the news is not worth sharing! Rather it simply seems that once we stepped away from our church jobs in 2019, and with the isolation of a pandemic to follow, we found ourselves far removed from friendships given our natural spaces for social interaction were no longer in existence. Throwing myself full bore into motherhood, accompanied by several weeks in my home state of New York where family tragedy tugged at my heart, it seems friendships fell away from me and I have been too uneasy with all that continues to lie before us to bring myself out of isolation. Few have seen my burgeoning belly, and even fewer still know our aches, but I put the weight of that reality on no one but myself. And I must say, I have grown quite accustomed to days at home with venturing out being limited to nature walks with my girls or trips to Trader Joe’s. I remember thinking fondly of the days where I would wake up and realize that there were no meetings to attend or rehearsals to run. Now I find myself waking up with that satisfaction on a daily basis.
I find staying close to home to be a rather restful way to live given its simplicity, yet there is indeed a loss of self if not intentionally lived. For self is not fully expressed if left without the company of others.
Intentional living continues to become more and more of a challenge, particularly when it comes to relationships. Social media allows us the false satisfaction of knowing and being knowing, but only by the use of one or two of our senses. As you have most likely not considered since grade school, we have been gifted with five areas of sense. Perhaps those that consider the human senses a bit more are writers who constantly need to find ways to communicate the experience of a character to their audience using only the written word, marketing firms who know to engage as many senses as possible to sell you on a product, or those who have lost a sense and need to rely on other means to satisfy that deficit. While I’m sure there are other professions or scenarios where we give our senses a bit more thought, the underlying point being that it’s probably not the majority. Our five sense are a natural part of life, whether we give attention to them or not. You may be wondering where I’m going with this talk of our five senses, and for your sake, hopefully for more than just because it happened to be a homeschool topic with Eve earlier this week. Simply this.
When we limit the great expanse available to us of our knowing friends through sight, touch, sound, smell, and even taste (when accompanied by a simple cup of coffee) we forego experiencing each other with our whole selves. Instead we have opted for knowing each other in part, and thereby only being known in part.
Now mind you, it is most certainly still possible to keep up a guard that keeps others from knowing you even with all senses very much engaged. I know this because I have done it well. (An ability that brought its own relational misses.) But how much easier that feat is when certain senses are stripped from us with no effort on our part except to partake. A Facebook post, an Instagram reel, but equally as effective is keeping yourself from friendships all together. And with many accustomed to knowing each other through social media means, they think little of pursuing you when you simply do not show up to where they are.
I sat at my brother’s side just last month as he took his final breaths. To say my heart was wrenched seems an understatement. As the days wore on, ceremony arrangements and the like being arranged, I had the momentary dilemma, if you will, of whether or not I should share of Aaron’s passing on my Facebook wall. Very few in Illinois ever had the joy of knowing him, so their awareness of the news would be for the sake of passing along comfort to me, not for their own grief over Aaron. But of course living so far from my hometown means that those that knew he and our family well had been out of relationship with me personally for quite some time. I had to consider what then the benefit would be to share something so raw and grievous: Whether to engage the sympathy of recent friendships, or to alert those that knew him through me of such a loss. And if I might speak plainly, the greatest response, if indeed I had shared through that medium, would have been through short quips of sympathy that engaged no more than brief words on a pixelated screen that did not look for a reply. I wouldn’t have expected most people to begin sending cards or flowers, sharing meals, or visiting for a hug. Certainly a few may have, but most likely only those who understand that the comfort needed to aid grief can only be met in the willingness to engage the senses.
Though physical in nature, our senses navigate us from the tangible towards the heart.
You may have noticed the quote from P.D. Eastmans children’s book, Are You My Mother?, that I have yet to circle back to. The moment where this newly hatched baby bird intentionally falls out of his nest to go looking for his mother who was otherwise preoccupied finding a fresh, fat worm for her soon to arrive chick. Seeing as he broke free of his little shell before she could return, he thought it best to find her himself. Although there was one problem. He didn’t know what his mother looked like, or really what a bird looked like at all. He had no understanding of the sight of feathers as opposed to dog fur. He had felt the hard interior of a shell without knowing the softness of touch, where a plane or boat now became equally viable mamas. He could not differentiate between the smell of a beak digging in the dirt from a rusted old car. And he had known no difference from the taste of a worm to the milk of a cow. He simply had no basis to understand what a mama – his mama – could be. And so, early on in his venture away from the nest where he could have found himself swept comfortably back home under his mothers care, “he walked right by her. He did not see her.”
We tend to journey onward much like this naive young bird, expecting to find the relationships that are meant to nurture our deepest, most basic of needs, yet having scarcely put to practice the senses that work to draw us towards those whom we are searching for.
I admittedly feel a bit foolish to have kept myself in such a solitary state at a time in life where my need for relationship seems to be at a lowly pique. Yet all the more foolish for believing that I could be a friend by only little means. Without engaging the whole self. Without being fully real. But thankfully, just as a baby bird, there is time to grow even after having fallen out of the nest.
EXPOSITION: Would you admit it to yourself if you had come to let your relationships hinge on very little more than one sense at a time? Are you engaging your whole self or just enough of yourself to get the attention that feels appeasing to our need to both give and receive deep friendship?
RISE: Eliminate those interactions that only appeal to one sense at a time. What are you left with? What would it look like for you to engage your friendships with your whole self?
DENOUEMENT: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” (Peter’s letter to a group of persecuted Jesus followers.)