I had the great pleasure recently of visiting Assisi, the home of THE St. Francis of Assisi. Have you ever been? I can’t recommend it highly enough. The entire city practically glows with spirit. Visiting that city gave me a wonderful appreciation for St. Francis.
I wanted to write today, on October 4th, because today is the day devoted to St. Francis of Assisi. He is the Catholic saint who renounced his wealth, devoted himself to poverty and service, and found incredible spiritual connection to the natural world, animals and especially the birds.
Instead of searching for the Divine, he vowed to make himself available instead to be found by the Divine. I really love this idea and endeavor to make it a practice in my own life.
October 4th is also a special day because today would have been my mothers 76th birthday. She passed away in 2020 from cancer. She’s a saint to me, one of my guardian angels… or if not me then for sure my kid.
Just like Saint Francis, my mom loved birds. She fed them all throughout the year, especially during the winter when food was scarce, and could name every kind of bird that fed from her feeders or drank from her bird bath. Did you know that the collective noun for a group of larks is an “exaltation” of larks?
So honoring Saint Francis and Saint Carol (my mom), here is a prayer in the form of a poem written by David White called The Song Of The Lark.
It speaks to the undying spirit that connects all beings. Perhaps today, if we are willing to be found by spirit, it might do so through a poem and the simple and perfect sounds of the birds.
The Song Of The Lark
The song begins and the eyes are lifted
but the sickle points toward the ground,
its downward curve forgotten in the song she hears,
while over the dark wood, rising or falling,
the sun lifts on cool air, the small body of a singing lark.
The song falls, the eyes raise, the mouth opens
and her bare feet on the earth have stopped.
Whoever listens in this silence, as she listens,
will also stand opened, thoughtless, frightened
by the joy she feels, the pathway in the field
branching to a hundred more, no one has explored.
What is called in her rises from the ground
and is found in her body,
what she is given is secret even from her.
This silence is the seed in her
of everything she is
and falling through her body
to the ground from which she comes,
it finds a hidden place to grow
and rises, and flowers, in old wild places,
where the dark-edged sickle cannot go.
- David Whyte