I continue to read slowly the story of French saint Thérèse of Lisieux’s life. In one of the most famous passages of her book “Story of a Soul,” Thérèse likens herself to a little bird. She has just described a visionary experience of discovering her vocation “to be love” in the wider church, and she ventures to consider herself a “little bird” compared to the heroic saints who fly like eagles close to the Divine Radiance of the sun. She doesn’t dare consider herself such an eagle—instead, she’s a little bird, but with boldness in her heart. She has the aspirations of an eagle even if she cannot fly. “The only thing [this little bird] can do,” she says, “is raise its little wings.”
Often when seeking to live a contemplative path as a parent, I feel like Thérèse’s little bird. I want to soar in contemplative heights, if that’s what it means to savor solitude on weekends and extend my meditation sits by half an hour. If I could linger in the woods with my dog Snickers past the routine forty-five-minute trail loop, the day would feel luxurious. Just yesterday morning, I rang my Insight Meditation app’s bell, and within fifteen minutes, a child woke up early requiring support with the morning routine. It’s so predictable that I should expect it, but I am caught with disappointment and minor annoyance at my truncated meditation sits every time. I also often have a feeling of “not enoughness” in my commitment to social justice. I desire to act in solidarity with those who most suffer from systems of oppression. I have the heart of an eagle, but it’s simply not possible to fly. And if I spent a day at the State House in nonviolent direct action with, say the New York Poor People’s Campaign, then I would miss my kid’s basketball tournament—and leave my better half with all the childcare duties. And where’s the justice in that?
But Thérèse teaches me that the framing of better, bigger, bolder, and higher is not accurate in the spiritual life. She turns the logic of spiritual and social justice heroism upside down. She imagines that although she as a little bird cannot fly close to the Divine Sun—with the support of the Divine Eagle’s wings, she can. Not only does she picture the saints of the church circling at high altitudes as eagles, but for Thérèse God is an eagle who provides little birds with eagle wings (see, too, Isaiah 40:31). God as Divine Eagle swoops down to fetch the little bird to “ascend with it to the Furnace of Love” (Story of a Soul, 200). She even imagines herself as the prey of the Divine Eagle eaten by God—perhaps masochistic, but still stirring.
Photo by Rachel McDermott on Unsplash
Here in Thérèse’s bird metaphor is found the self-donating love of God that always moves toward us. What is the incarnation in Christian theology other than God flying toward humanity and the universe in solidarity with our needs? The apostle Paul’s verses in Philippians 2:6–7 are often used to describe the so-called “kenotic” or self-sacrificing love of the incarnation: “Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself” into human form. Another way to say it is that God the Divine Eagle dove down and joined the little bird.
The eco-feminist theologian Sally McFague, in her last book, affirms this self-sacrificing movement as not only something we attribute to God but about how reality works. She quotes environmental ethicist Holmes Rolston on the sacrificial lives of plants. Plants move in incarnational ways: “Plants function for the survival of myriad others.… They are ‘emptied into,’ given over to, ‘devoted’ to, or ‘sacrificed’ for these others in their community.” But their sacrifice in death returns as the cycle of life: “Plants become insects, which become chicks, which become foxes, which die to fertilize plants” (12).
The ever-loving action of God in the universe mirrors and is not separate from the self-giving rhythms of the earth. The theologian Sarah Coakley worked with an evolutionary biologist who studied sacrificial cooperation in nature, from bacteria to humans, which led her to consider that “if there is a … Trinitarian God of compassion, providential involvement, and sacrificial love, this is the sort of evolutionary process he might well have made.” That’s why we call God Emmanuel or “God-with-us,” which I think we could expand to “God-with-reality.”
If God is an eagle, She does not stay up in the clouds circling. And if humans ever were “above” nature, at least some of us now know better. For there to be both spiritual and ecological hope, both God and humanity must empty ourselves and collaborate with all life forms.
To bring this back to prayer and ordinary life: it does not matter if we are stuck without powerful wings because the powerful wings come to us. There’s no use comparing my life to other lives, my little bird self to eagles, because what else could I ask for other than the love of God? I’ll be spending my weekend cheering my kids on at a basketball tournament, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Another way of seeing things…
I don’t spot eagles very often but when I do,
it feels like I’ve just been honored with its presence.
Eagles are elusive.
Also, eagles are known to steal food from osprey and other birds
who have just done a lot of hard work to get a bite to eat.
That feels a bit like empire.
The strength and wingspan of the eagle are definitely bar none.
More and more, though, I hesitate to use it as a metaphor for God.
God’s bird kingdom (kin-dom) is vast and varied.
There’s a steadfastness in the morning cardinal song.
The ubiquitousness of robins is reliable.
There is undeniable strength in these ordinary, everyday
small birds. They show up as their authentic selves.
This feels more and more like God showing up for me.
Yes, I love cheering on our 2 sons, it never stops. What a joy to see then succeed and play. I do love the little things, such a delight to be with that little sweet bird.