A Warbler Watcher's Guide to Hearing God
On learning to recognize the subtle songs of the divine | Easter 4, Year C
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“Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads.” -From the Collect for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, The Book of Common Prayer (1979)
The white gravel crunched beneath our feet as we stepped from our cars, a caravan of birders, binoculars slung around our necks. Ovenbirds sang from the under-story, and in the treetops a Summer Tanager announced itself with its repetitive clicking call. Few of us had been to this spot, but we had come here because it is one of the most reliable places in Arkansas to find one of North Americas most beautiful and threatened birds—the Cerulean Warbler.
This was one of my first mornings birding at the height of this year’s spring migration. In the symphony of sounds I strained to identify the individual voices. There were easy birds like the tanager, or the loud and steady Tennessee Warbler. But then there were harder to place songs, ones whose singers were just on the tip of my tongue.
It is always this way for me at the beginning of spring migration. Species that only pass through my state on their way to their nesting grounds, singing here for only a few weeks each year, give little time for learning their voices. I’ve birding for over three decades and still it takes time to recognize them. But then, there’s that moment of recognition, and it all clicks into place. There’s a Nashville Warbler, and oh, yes, and that song is a Magnolia Warbler!
God has many voices. Like the dawn chorus of birds that begin singing while it is still dark, and welcome the light each morning, the voice of God is polyphonic. Within God’s voice there are familiar sounds, like the common call of the Cardinal. When we hear it, we know it. But there are other songs, beautiful but uncommon, harder to place in that origin of all things. These songs take careful listening and discernment to know whose voice is singing.
We crossed the road, and made our way up the rocky trail. Soon after, we heard a buzzy song high in an oak. It sounded similar to the Northern Parula, a common spring migrant and summer resident in the state. But the song was different, a bit more musical. I was ostensibly one of the two leaders of this field trip, so I’d taken some time beforehand to remember what a Cerulean Warbler sounds like. I’d played recordings from various guides, and had noted the ways in which its song differed from a Parula’s song. So it was that when I heard this bird singing, I called out with all the confidence I could muster: “I think that’s a Cerulean!”
Shortly after I’d spoken, I saw the bird, high in the tree. It had the black necklace and crisp white undersides of a Cerulean, and I could catch a hint of the blue for which it is named just above. It hopped down the tree, coming eye level with us on the slope. We all had excellent views of this small wonder whose populations have declined drastically in the last decades due to habitat loss.
After the bird returned to the tree tops we went on, following the trail north, then south and west. We added varied birds to our list, most of them by sound: Worm-eating Warbler, Hooded Warbler, Kentucky Warbler, Acadian Flycatcher. Then there was an unfamiliar song coming from a dense ravine. The other field trip leader and I looked at each other, trying to place the bird. One of the other birders in our group pulled out his phone and started using Merlin, the bird identification app. It was as confused as we were, offering obviously wrong suggestions for the bird singing. Finally, we settled on a strange Magnolia Warbler. And sure enough, the bird appeared, singing.
Listening for God is often like this work of identifying a bird. It takes practice and preparation, an immersion in scripture and prayer. These practices help us recognize God’s voice when we encounter it, just as my practice listening to recordings of a Cerulean Warbler helped prepare my recognition for the wild bird I heard in the Ozark Mountains.
But so often we hear something we have never heard before, a song that even the guides cannot identify correctly. It is then that we have to engage in a different work. First we must combine our listening with watching. Ultimately it was seeing the Magnolia Warbler that solved the mystery of this bird’s strange variation of its song. For God, the seeing is not so easy, but the signs are evident enough if we look. As scripture tells us—faith, hope, and love, as well as the other fruits of the spirit are evidence of God’s presence. When we see those things accompanied by an unknown song, we can be sure that God is the one singing.
The second key for identifying an unfamiliar voice is the work of a community. The spiritual life is not to be a solitary activity, though solitude is sometimes involved. Instead, discernment is best done in a group. It was the conversation among birders that helped discern the unknown song. And when we hear what we think may be the voice of God, it is helpful to work with others experienced in the varied music of God’s voice to help us know when it is, in fact, God singing.
We birded the area for hours, encountering more Cerulean Warblers, as well as their varied migratory kin. As we descended the hill, a group of ATVs came charging up the highway. The sound of their engines was artificially amplified, roaring like a Harley, and for a moment we couldn’t hear the subtle songs of the birds around us. This too is a danger of the spiritual life: to hear the most beautiful and quiet sounds of the world we must have quiet.
Quiet can be hard to come by in a world filled with roaring engines and the cacophonies of screens. It is necessary in such a world to carve out places where we can listen. Sometimes this will mean removing ourselves from the noise, going to the wild and quiet places apart from the noise. At other times it will take the cultivation of an inner quiet, an ability to silence the din even in the midst of noise. Either way, this work of quiet takes intention and discipline. For me, most days, it requires me going to the shed in my back yard and sitting for 20 minutes in the quiet, even while sirens blast and traffic whirs in the streets nearby. But it also takes regular retreats into the woods, where, in the best cases, I can pass an hour without hearing an engine.
The voice of Christ is pouring through the world, ready to be heard by those who know his voice. Our work is to listen and be ready to hear God’s song when it comes pouring forth in the morning quiet or in the busy rush of our day. Either way, the call of scripture from the start is to stop and hear, this God who is always seeking to sing songs both new and old throughout creation.
Romans 1:20
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
This was wonderful and insightful. Thank you!