CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter…
©
[I
wrote this seven years ago, when we lived on Riverview Drive in Sterling, IL.]
My wife is not God for the little
creatures that come to the magnolia tree just outside our living room window,
since she did not create them, but she is
an angel, The Peanut Butter Angel.
It’s been a bitterly cold month, so
Helen has taken on the messy and frigid task of smearing peanut butter on
pinecones, rolling them in birdseed, and hanging them from branches on the
magnolia. A bevy of birdies comes each day to feast–cardinals and sparrows and
chickadees and juncos and grackles. Actually, I don’t know what a grackle is,
but those black birds that come look grackly. They are augmented, of course, by
a regiment of squirrels. Our eight-year-old grandson claims he can tell them
apart and has named each of them.
Jumpy and Hoppy and Flighty and the
others may have seen The PB Angel hang pinecones on the tree, but that’s the
most they know about her. Even then, they probably did not make the connection
between this heavily bundled and muffled earthbound thing, so different from themselves, and the good stuff that
appears for them to eat. It just appears, like manna, and they eat it and, I’m
sure, are glad.
I’m not sure about the reality of
other angels, the kind many people accept as heavenly beings who somehow look
over us and look out for us human beings. Since I have seen The PB Angel at
work, however, I am more inclined to believe there may be other sorts of angels
at work as well.
Perhaps my understanding of the work
of heavenly angels is no greater than the birds’ comprehension of The PB Angel.
Maybe, when heavenly angels hear us humans laugh at the creatures with
“birdbrains,” they laugh and call us “humanbrains,” with the same dismissal of
our mental abilities. Perhaps the gap between humanbrains and angels is as
great as the gap between birdbrains and humans.
If heavenly angels exist and are at
work, it makes no difference whether I believe in them or not. They’ll do their
angelic thing just because they are angels. The birds don’t have to believe in
The PB Angel to get her to look after them. The PB Angel does her thing just
because she’s an angel.
John
Robert McFarland
The “place
of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper
Peninsula, where people are Yoopers [UPers] and life is defined by winter even
in the summer!
You
don’t have to bookmark or favorite the CIW URL to return here. Just Google
Christ In Winter and it will show up at the top of the page.
I
tweet, occasionally, as yooper1721.
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