Up with the birds

Almost every morning, I wake up to birds singing. That might sound like a joyful scene out of a Hollywood movie, but it’s not that I sleep with the windows open and awaken to natural beauty.

The birds I hear singing are our pets. And they’re hungry. They’re calling persistently—and specifically for me or any person who can find the bird seed container. They’ve seen the first sunlight coming through the windows. They want their breakfast.

I drag myself out of bed and go to their cages, where I gather their food dishes to wash and refill them. Once I feed them, they stop calling for food for a while and eat. Then they sing a different, happier song.

Every now and then, we have a dreary gray morning, and I wake up before the birds do. On those days, they are still resting quietly in the dim light of their cages. Those mornings, I get to bring them not just food and water, but the first light of the day.

I open the curtains and turn on lights in the house, and our little birds immediately start to chirp and sing. They call to one another, and they urge me on, asking me to fill their dishes quickly, quickly, quickly.

Those mornings are special. There’s something extraordinary about introducing them to the first light of the day. And it makes me think of how we can bring light to one another—in so many different ways every day.

We can send a friend a quick note or text. We can share a story. We can teach a child something new. We can laugh or cry with a friend. We can pray for one another. We can simply make someone smile.

Sometimes there seems to be so much darkness in our world. There are so many large, insurmountable problems we cannot really fix. But each of us has ways to bring just a little light to others through our words and actions. And I like thinking that we might have the ability to do more than we realize.

“Start being brave about everything,” St. Catherine of Siena said. “Drive out darkness and spread light. Don’t look at your weaknesses. Realize instead that in Christ crucified you can do everything.”

I hope we can find ways to spread light to others today—and be open to how they might bring light to us, too.

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