Bird by Bird
Finding Wholeness in a time of Fracture
It’s hard to know what to write this week. The last days have been a tough emotional ride, for me personally, and for the beautiful world around me. This beautiful world. It’s too easy, I confess, to forget to see that beauty when the louder stories have been ones that have fueled the “culture of contempt” that the Bishop Marianne Budde described this week in her sermon in Washington, DC on January 21.
That description has stuck with me. Who is growing more powerful in that kind of culture? Who is being harmed? I haven’t been able to escape the refrain in my mind this week from a very old nursery rhyme: “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” And in the refrain I hear the questions, “How does your country grow? How does your own soul grow?” What is being tended? What is being reduced to rubbish and destroyed?
I find myself having less answers and more questions than ever these days. Is this because I am growing more curious, tending to the garden of possibility and hope? Or is it because my heart is crying out with a heavy silence no words can describe? Perhaps it is both, and more.
My friend and teacher, Summer Joy Gross, calls this a way of “staking the cross in a moment.” It’s a description that comes from St. Ignatius in which I might place the presence of God into a time I’m living, without trying to answer or solve anything. Just to hold on with this presence underfoot and in hand, trusting that the necessary discernment will come without me forcing it.
And so what am I tending in the meantime?
In the course of the week I heard four separate and equally wise messages to slow down, to find and take rest. Beginning first with one of my all-time favorite writers, Anne Lamott’s famous “bird by bird” message. Her story remembers a time when her older brother, a fourth grader at the time, had a big report to write on birds. This was the yearly fourth grade project and he had a lot of time to work on it, but the night before it was due, he had none of it started. As Lamott’s brother sat crying over the monumental task before him, their father came to sit, put his arm around his son, and said simply, “Don’t worry, buddy. We’ll take it bird by bird.” And that they did.
It is not selfish, and is incredibly necessary, to take rest in order to care for our emotional and mental landscape. How else can any of us hold steady, take all that feels monumental bird by bird? If I fill my inner garden with social media messages of contempt, with the massive list of all that is being unraveled and potentially destroyed, with the rapid fire list of reasons to feel fear and outrage, I experience the panic of my nervous system first trying to go into hyper-vigilant reactivity, then swinging to overwhelm and shut down. From “how can I save everything right now?” to “what’s the point in caring at all?”
Yet, the message to rest urges me inward. Place a cross in the moment. Take this one day bird by bird. Today, that has meant knowing I must make choices about how and how much I ingest the world, how I care for my physical, mental, and emotional health.
What does this look like for me today? It means that I am choosing not to decide about who I love or what the news is from anything I could see if I entered the world of social media. Gregory Boyle writes of Padraig O’Tuama describing the “troubles” in Northern Ireland as “belonging gone wrong.” Boyle writes, “The same could be said of American gangs, of our partisanship, of the tribal nature of all the camps so dominant in the country at the moment. Real belonging should dismantle aloneness and caress into being a radical humility and dedication to loving-kindness.”
What Boyle describes is the way that “love promotes well-being. It wants what God wants: wholeness for everyone. It keeps us honoring the dignity and nobility in each person.” If I begin today with my own wholeness, could this allow me to honor and see this in others, too? Rather than contempt, oh Mary quite contrary, what else might grow up in this day?
Knowing how to take care of my nervous system and to bring down the hyper-vigilant reactivity or gently hold the overwhelmed shut-down are essential always. This is something we can all learn to tend together. Today, that is the first bird. So, I lift my eyes from my screen and turn off the social media apps. I sit for a time with some contemplative, nervous system quieting practices. I gaze out the window to where the white snow-covered ground meets the line of blue sky in the distance. I move my body with a walk and a yoga practice.
In this way, my heart becomes clear enough to see the beauty of creation again, to know what is mine to do—maybe not for all time, but for this time. For today. What will I care deeply about in the days ahead? This guidance begins to present itself, too, bird by bird.
So, then the garden of my soul, like this winter day, feels dormant, expectant. Maybe the beauty I’m not able to see lies in wait for another day. I wonder, could the monumental task of living well and whole that is before us be an undertaking that happens bird by bird? For today, I’ve done all that can be done.
Dear friends, this practice is open to all this week, regardless of subscription type. If you find yourself needing more of this kind of work, and paying for a subscription isn’t possible, please send me a message. This feels like a bird I can manage to offer right now. And if you need guidance to adapt the practice for a chair, reach out. It’s a great honor to offer ways in which there might be less barriers to movement. Click the link to practice: Adaptive Yoga with Christa
Are you considering joining me this fall in Portugal for a time of deep rest, renewal, exploration, adventure, play, yoga, and creativity? Reach out to me if you have any questions at all. You’ll find a whole page of information and delicious pictures here: Portugal Retreat Fall 2025