By Maria Sermersheim
Meditatione Ignis
Last spring, I wrote a column considering robins and their self-destruction spurred by their incomprehension of their own reflections. This spring, I offer a more positive appreciation of robins and a Lenten lesson they may teach us.
I love the Merlin app, which identifies bird calls according to the audio it registers, and I often whip out my phone when I hear an intriguing sound. It has happened many times that I hear a lovely call or a song that has never caught my attention before, and with a thrill of anticipation for the discovery, I start recording on the app only to be swiftly disappointed again by the regular culprit: the American Robin. For months, this trend incited less of an appreciation and more of a grudge; those darn robins always fool me! How have I still not learned their variety of sounds?
But as I was walking around the lakes last weekend with a friend, and she asked me which bird call is my favorite, I realized that the reason I always record the robin’s call is because I find it enchanting and ever new. As much as I am frustrated and disappointed by the lack of novelty and the fact that it is one of the most common birds, its song continues to attract me. Though it is quite a trope, it is true that the ordinary is beautiful, and God most often calls us to holiness in the regular order of our days. I rediscovered this in the robin.
I think this lesson applies especially well to our devotional practices in these early weeks of Lent. With the beginning of the season, we can form resolutions with gusto and commit to new and grand sacrifices and prayers, and that is a wonderful enthusiasm that should not be stymied. However, there can be a temptation to exchange the more common practices of prayer in favor of the more extreme, which seem more worthy of Lent — but the point of the penitential season is not to disdain the regular and good devotional practices and opportunities for holiness, the robins of our spiritual lives. There may be a call that continually attracts us, a way in which the Lord regularly speaks to us and invites us to be perfect and merciful as he is; but because the source is so boring and ordinary (like completing our regular duties or being patient with that same friend who demands so much), we dismiss and deride it. Ugh, the robin, again. Why can’t it be something cooler, something greater, like a heroic act for a stranger or a more intense schedule of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, something that they would write about in the lives of the saints? You could certainly hear such calls — and there are certainly more colorful and interesting birds that I sometimes discover. Find them, follow them, love them! But remember that such calls do not replace the robins’, and the call of the robin remains beautiful.
As this Lenten season continues, let us certainly keep steadfast commitments to live our devotion to the Lord in ever greater and more genuine ways. Let us simultaneously remember that these Lenten commitments do not replace or diminish the value of the ordinary ways in which God regularly catches our ears, and we must continue to grow in love of God and neighbor even in unexotic and unspectacular ways. If today you hear the robin, harden not your heart.