THE THREAD | On feeding hummingbirds and misquoting Churchill
As I've prepared our backyard for winter this week, I poured new seed into the songbird feeders, and I also took down the hummingbird feeder. Before packing it away, I unscrewed the jar from the feeder port to dump out the remaining nectar. Dozens of dead ants spilled out of the jar. Apparently at some point this summer the ants had crawled up the post, slipped inside the nectar ports, and drank themselves to death. Their corpses spoiled the nectar.
How long had the ants been in there? How many hungry hummingbirds came, tasted the rancid nectar, and left disappointed with a bad taste in their mouths? And why hadn't I noticed sooner? Had I just grown careless lately?
This reminded me of another risk of hummingbird feeders, which I only learned a few years ago. Hummingbirds are attracted to the color red, which is why many store-bought bottles of nectar contain red dye. But there’s evidence that the dye is harmful to the birds. The blend of glucose, water, and red dye still tastes good, the birds happily drink it, but the dye likely causes long-term harm to the bird’s health and mortality.
So there’s more than one way of being careless.
~ ~ ~
As I've prepared to cast my ballot this week, I couldn’t help but think back to the growth of my own political consciousness: how it has diverged, differentiated, grown distinct from the politics I witnessed growing up in my extended family and church, or on the television and radio.
During a lengthy email exchange in 2008, one of my uncles wrote that he was glad to hear I was becoming more politically engaged, but that my support of Barack Obama was incredibly misguided. It’s understandable, he said, because the young are oh so full of heart, and he quoted Winston Churchill: “If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.”
The quote bothered me. The rigid either-or frustrated me. The stark division angered me. I couldn't exactly say why it bothered me so much.
Then a few years later, I just happened to look up the quote and learned that, in fact, Churchill never said any such thing. It wasn't a real quote. My uncle had shared something that sounded authoritative to underscore his preconceived point -- fact-checking be damned.
So there’s more than one way of being careless.
~ ~ ~
Misquoting Churchill
Your uncle swore you’d share his mind
before the time you reached his age
and somehow leave your heart behind
as if passion departs or destroys the sage.
Your uncle swore to know God’s heart,
how Providence shall come to pass,
that Balaam’s donkey was none too smart
but God can speak through any ass.
Your uncle swore and pledged allegiance
to God and Country, state and religion
until what was once a long walk with Jesus
diverged in a wood and he made a decision
Your uncle swore “Hell yeah” this week.
“Stand back, stand by,” spoke his new sage.
His latest rage, so effortless. Speak!
God’s call to arms, it’s all the rage.
Your uncle swore when you were ten
his love for you would never depart,
but he never could explain back then
how to love after trading away your heart.
~ ~ ~
Why was I so bothered by that fake Churchill quote?
Maybe it is because, during our exchange twelve years ago, it seemed that my uncle was articulating a carelessness toward the common good, a carelessness that placed the highest value on individual rights rather than on the individual's role in community, society, creation. A carelessness toward our potential.
Maybe it is because we have now witnessed what happens when such carelessness is unleashed so openly, so recklessly at the highest levels of our country, which then sets the example and tone for the rest of us to grow more careless.
Maybe it's because this isn't so much about my particular uncle (though it is), but also about The Uncle as some sort of archetype: A figure in your life (or that part of you) that you can easily dismiss or disassociate from, and yet also reveals to you the very person you risk becoming if you give in to your own forms of carelessness. Uncle as inconvenient fun-house mirror.
Maybe it is because this week in particular feels weighed down with the cumulative consequences of carelessness. Beneath such weight, one hand casting a vote feels almost inadequate.
But I have seen a handful of votes make all the difference. I have known again and again what is possible when one hand joins together in good work alongside others. I have witnessed throughout life what is possible when a person, a family, a community chooses to create a new nectar that is equal parts grace, truth, and love.
So I cast my vote for the common good, and for deep care, for the transformation of dualities, for the integration of mind and heart, and for the small daily acts that feed and nourish small creatures.
I cast my vote at the ballot box, and I also cast my vote daily with every choice to not care less.
~ ~ ~
(Photograph by Kate Moore)
~ ~ ~
THIS WEEK:
What I'm listening to and religiously reading about: Tom Petty's Wildflowers & All the Rest (and this interview, and this one, and this one, and . . . you know, you should really just stop what you're doing, listen to this previously unreleased track from Wildflowers, and then take a walk outside).
~ ~ ~