Author: Peter Watkins

Tending Our Nest

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20131 Comment

Dear Will:

Every March or April for the past I-don’t-know-how-many, birds have taken up residence in the eaves above our front door. They have treated the nest there like a vacation home, abandoning it as summer approaches and then returning the following year in early spring. Their return always involves some basic home improvement and busy-ness, signaled by random twigs discarded on the welcome mat outside our front door. A couple of years ago we even saw a second nest appear maybe three feet from the original, transforming our porch into a bustling housing tract. We were delighted.

Then last summer we felt compelled to repaint the exterior of our home. In preparing for their work, the painters cleaned the eaves around the full perimeter of the house, discarding (I’m sad to say) the abandoned nests in the process. We wondered if we would ever see our birds again.

So you can imagine our delight a few weeks ago when twigs began appearing outside our front door once again. In no time the vacation home had been reconstructed, and before long we began hearing the familiar sound of hungry baby birds.

To satisfy our curiosity without agitating the mother and her babies, we sometimes stand inside our home and sneak a peek through the window at the young family that lives in “our nest.” Although we do not have the well-placed camera you get on a National Geographic Special, if you’re patient you can stand just a few feet away and see the tiny heads poking out and calling for supper. You’ll also see the mother, coming and going, coming and going, tending to the needs of the tiny birds in her care.

All too soon the little brood will be gone.  Somewhere nearby, our baby birds may stand chirping in a tree or may bounce along the grass foraging for food. Perhaps they will join many others at the birdfeeder in our backyard, or perhaps they will depart, never to return. I suppose it’s even possible that one of them will find a mate and return to the nest beneath the eaves. I don’t really know how it is with birds. But this I do know: For now those fragile lives are almost entirely dependent on the vigilant care of their mother. She will nurse them and feed them, guard them and teach them, prepare them as best she can and then step aside and watch—I imagine with some anxiousness— as they head off to find their way in the world beyond the protection of our eaves.

Inside our home, it has ever been thus. My wife has nursed and fed and guarded and taught, worrying and praying and willing our children from infancy to adulthood. Now she stands aside, watching from afar, as two of our three have left the nest and are trying mightily to take flight in the perilous world beyond our doors. There is little more that she can do at this point, but it does not keep her from worrying night and day about their welfare. It would not surprise me if, even as I write these lines, she is kneeling again at her bedside, beseeching her Heavenly Father to watch over her precious little ones.

I know this also: The love poured out by that kneeling woman is unwavering, heartfelt, as powerful as any emotional force in the universe.  As Dana watches her children take those first tentative steps of adulthood, she feels every misstep, shares every heartache, celebrates every success, and thrills at every opportunity to watch her children rise and answer the challenges of real life. This does not make her unique; it makes her a mother.

Thank God for her, and for those like her, and for the children they continue to bless with their unrelenting love.

PW

A Fitting Symbol

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2013Leave a comment

Dear Will:

It’s Easter morning and I awaken to a quiet house. The scene is very different from the one I encountered as a boy, when my siblings and I would arise on Easter morning to find a basket set out for each of us, baskets filled with that stringy, green cellophane stuff (what do you call that?), jelly beans, chocolate eggs, and other candy. Then my brothers and sisters and I would scatter about the house and yard looking for the Easter eggs we had colored the night before. Although I don’t remember ever visiting the Easter Bunny at the mall the way kids do these days, I do recall that one year we received an actual bunny on Easter morning. That was pretty cool.

Easter was fun. It was exciting. And the candy was delicious. But this quiet house now feels much more like Easter to me.

That change in perspective has been gradual, to be sure. At some point—at an age I do not now recall—I remember asking what bunnies and eggs and whatnot had to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus. I remember that the answer—some convoluted bit having to do with symbols of birth or life or whatever—seemed contrived and completely unsatisfying. It didn’t really make sense.

The problem, of course, is that bunnies and eggs (and bunny eggs, for that matter) have nothing whatsoever to do with the resurrection of Christ. I’m pretty sure these oddments were adapted from some pagan rites of centuries long ago, but no matter. They might have easily been cooked up by the writers of Seinfeld for all they tell us about the event we celebrate at this time every year. And in that sense they are harmless enough, I suppose. Harmless, that is, if they do not prevent us from seeing and feeling and understanding the larger Truth this Christian holiday (holy-day) commemorates.

The essential, truth-telling symbols of Easter are these: an otherwise nondescript patch of ground in a grove of olive trees, stained with drops of sweat and blood; a cross on a hill on the outskirts of town; linen clothes lying in an otherwise empty tomb, the head-wrap neatly folded, separate from the rest; two hands and two feet made perfect by the scars that now remain as a reminder of who He is and what He did for all of us.

When Mary, Joanna, and others arrived at the sepulcher on that historic Sunday morning, they were met by two men in shining robes who said to them: “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen” (Luke 24:5-6). Later that day, Jesus—the Christ—appeared to Mary, Peter, Luke, Cleopas, and many others of his disciples. The “good news” of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was then taken to the world by these eyewitnesses, and it has spread across the globe since that glorious day.

The Apostle Paul, who himself witnessed the Living Christ one day on the road to Damascus, put it this way: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:20-22). In simpler terms, Elder David A. Bednar summarized the message of Easter morning this way: “Jesus died; He is not dead.”

That is good news—fitting for an annual commemoration. And while I treasure memories of my own children dashing about the yard, plucking up fluorescent, plastic eggs, those are not what I would consider Easter memories. If asked to choose, the decision for me would be an easy one: To honor the death and resurrection of my Savior, I will always prefer a quiet house at the dawning of a perfect Sabbath day.

PW

The Wind Is Blowing

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2013Leave a comment

Dear Will:

I was awakened this morning by the wind. It was rushing through the hills buffeting everything in its path. When I got up, I went to the window to see for myself: The trees were shaking and swaying. Many leaves were scattered about while their more-stalwart brethren clung to the writhing branches for dear life. In the distance you could hear our wind chimes going nuts, as if there was some kid in the bell tower signaling to the townspeople that the war had ended.

Because we live in Southern California, I immediately thought: Santa Anas—the dry winds that blow down from the Great Basin  and Upper Mojave and take every ounce of humidity with them. I’m not smart enough to really understand the phenomenon—if Wikipedia has it right it has something to do with adiabatic heating and orographic lift and whatnot. All I know is that when these winds blow, usually the temperature rises and we start to worry about wildfires. I have witnessed that cause-and-effect enough to know about the correlation even if I don’t know the first thing about meteorology.

In such circumstances you can see why the wind has always been the go-to metaphor for God: You may not be able to see it, exactly, but you can see its power and impact on everything around it. For a believer like me, it’s an analogy that is easy to understand. I suppose you could lump me in with Alma, who famously said: “[All] things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator” (Alma 30:44).

Apparently Alma and I are not alone—at least in a general sense. A 2012 study published by the University of Chicago reported that even in our increasingly secular society, over two-thirds of people in the United States still believe in a personal God. Nevertheless, if you look across the world (in Europe, in particular) you find that percentage drops rather sharply. More troubling, in most countries only a minority of people are prepared to say that they know God exists and they have no doubts about it.

Those numbers are not altogether surprising, but I wonder how people can see the same things I see and come to the opposite conclusion. It’s as if they were saying, The wind is not blowing. No doubt they make well-reasoned arguments, perhaps with charts and graphs and a fair amount of science—what has sometimes been referred to as “the philosophies of men.” Even so, I can’t help but think of a favorite story from the New Testament:

A forty-something man, crippled since birth, was carried each day to the gates of the temple where he asked alms. One day Peter and James came to the temple. “Silver and gold have I none,” said Peter, “but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6). We’re told the man leapt to his feet and walked, to the astonishment of people throughout Jerusalem.

The miracle filled the local authorities with consternation, for they couldn’t deny what had been done in the name of Jesus, whom they had crucified. So they called Peter and John to them, threatened them and ordered them “not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus” (Acts 4:18). To which Peter gave this classic response: “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20).

I guess I sort of feel the same way. I do not pretend to understand the philosophies of men which enable others to talk themselves out of the existence of God. I can only speak to what I see and hear. And if you ask me, the wind is definitely blowing.

PW