It’s been a while. They rhythms of life caught me up, like a receding tide, and took me out to a different sea. Empty nest. Aging. The end of some creative projects and the beginning of others. Mostly, I’m slowing down the beat of travel and speaking so I find more space to think and write. I’m establishing new patterns of living that come with growing older and caring for mental health in the 50’s; I think of the schedule of medications, therapy, doctor’s appointments, movement, and healthy cooking. It takes a while to adjust to it, but soon, you hear the new drum beat and you dance along.
This morning, I walk to the sound of spring woodpeckers drumming on the trees lining my path. I hear four then five and then six. I imagine the pecking as simply woodpeckers foraging for breakfast, but I learn later it’s a woodpecker’s communication. Rather than a traditional birdsong, the drumming introduces oneself, proclaims one’s territory, and finds one’s mates. I’m here! I’m here! I’m here!
I wonder about this different form of crying out—not in a lovely chirping melody but in a loud kind of hammering that takes me a while to consider as music. The drumming! (I once worried over the poor brains of woodpeckers and all this banging of beaks against those tree trunks. Weren’t they causing concussions? Why would God make a bird that must bang her head against a tree to communicate, to nourish oneself, to find company? Meanwhile, the Robin and the Sparrow enjoy a fine, dainty little time singing in the morning sun. It’s all so lovely and beautiful to hear.)
But the woodpecker? The drumming drones on.
Must she do that? I marvel for a bit. What could I learn? After the ten years of daily blogging at Live with Flair, I know God can teach me something here. I think: it’s the woodpecker who God made to endure massive head shock; it’s the woodpecker whose drumming drills in the hard wood with such precision, depth, and speed to free others in the forest to find homes and food in the cavities she excavates; it’s the woodpecker who uses a beak, not to primarily vocalize, but to add her own rhythm, in her own way, to get to a deeper layer—of nourishment and refuge (both for herself and others).
When we wish we could sing those light and airy notes and God assigns us to drum instead, we realize the special work of it. We’ve perhaps been asked to survive a hard thing, to do a hard thing, to move into a deeper faith because of loss or sorrow. We can’t remember our voice; we don’t have a song to sing. Fear not! Not everything in the forest can handle what the woodpecker must do, over and over again. I’ve heard friends say it’s like beating one’s head against a wall to continue to seek God and hear no answer. But they still pray. They still ask. They still move deeper into a life of faith. Drum, drum, drum. And soon, it’s its own kind of music. After all, it’s the drumbeat that sets the tempo of the song. It’s that crucial foundation of everything else.
A songbird can’t pierce deep into bark, but a drumming woodpecker’s beak can. We keep hammering away into the hard places of experience, of knowing God, of living here on earth. There’s spiritual nourishment we can uncover here and a safe place to nest in God. We become the woodpecker—or follow the people doing that work—so thankful for the rhythm of their lives.