There’s a tree outdoors the window of the visitor room of my father or mother’s dwelling. When the wind blows, the tree’s branches gently brush the aspect of the home, issuing a quiet scraping sound that’s all of the extra irritating within the early hours of the day. That is white noise, nothing however a background hum to ears like mine that know this place properly. I preserve sleeping.
Maybe that’s why the tree began to name my title.
“Eric,” got here the voice. “Eric. Eric.”
The tree doesn’t communicate, in fact. The noise is one thing else—a chicken, we predict. My spouse—herself puzzled by listening to my title on the wind—produces her cellphone on which has been put in an app that detects chicken cries.
It’s a grey catbird, the app informs us. It’s a cousin to the mockingbird, distinguished by its calls, grey and perky and—our greatest guess—nesting. It lives on this tree, so far as we are able to inform, a year-round inhabitant of the suburbs of Philadelphia. It sings and chirps, sounds simply ignored in opposition to the tapestry of the forest melody.
However there’s that one tune: “Eric. Eric. Eric.”
@joeymad84 Is that this chicken saying “Eric”? #birds #nature #newyork #FYP #iphone15promax #westchesterny #graycatbird ♬ unique sound – joeymad84
A web-based search reveals there are an entire host of different folks—different Erics, maybe—who unmistakenly hear a selected title in that melodic mewing.
There’s a narrative in Scripture (1 Samuel 3:1–10) during which the Lord calls out to the longer term prophet Samuel, who mistakenly thinks the outdated priest Eli is asking for him. Twice Samuel runs to see Eli solely to be despatched again to his room: “I didn’t name you.”
Solely on the third such event does Eli understand that it’s God who is looking out to Samuel. Solely then does Samuel flip his consideration to the Lord. “Communicate, your servant is listening,” he says.
I’m not suggesting that the grey catbird was some divine messenger, not in a literal sense. However I’m struck by this piercing cry so clearly resonant with my very own title. I’m struck by the parallels with the passage from the First E book of Samuel. And, like several good scholar of the Ignatian custom, I feel it sensible to pause and ponder any second during which our lives ring and rhyme so clearly with the tales of Scripture.
What’s there to be taught?
Recall that God is in all issues and that each one issues can lead us nearer to God. So I pause and replicate on that piercing cry from the strange, mundane, fantastic thing about nature that caught my consideration, if only for a number of seconds. I take into consideration how straightforward it turned to disregard that light brushing of branches in opposition to the window, scale back that sound to easy white noise, and ignore the whispering of nature and preserve sleeping. I contemplate how that particular chicken cry felt prefer it was only for me.
My title occurs to sound like one of many grey catbird’s calls. However I consider all of us hear our names whispered within the wind, scratched in opposition to the door, or gurgled within the effervescent stream, if we however pay attention. God may not offer us a selected message, as was the case with Samuel. However God is inviting us to concentrate, look deeper, and see within the easy and the mundane one thing extraordinary and enchanting.
The place is God talking your title? What’s God inviting you to behold? How may God’s quiet phrase be a easy providing of comfort?
Picture by Rhododendrites underneath CC BY-SA 4.0, through Wikimedia Commons.
