Perhaps that’s why the tree started to call my name.
“Eric,” came the voice. “Eric. Eric.”
The tree doesn’t speak, of course. The noise is something else—a bird, we think. My wife—herself puzzled by hearing my name on the wind—produces her phone on which has been installed an app that detects bird cries.
It’s a gray catbird, the app informs us. It’s a cousin to the mockingbird, distinguished by its calls, gray and perky and—our best guess—nesting. It lives in this tree, as far as we can tell, a year-round inhabitant of the suburbs of Philadelphia. It sings and chirps, sounds easily ignored against the tapestry of the forest melody.
But there’s that one song: “Eric. Eric. Eric.”
@joeymad84 Is this bird saying “Eric”? #birds #nature #newyork #FYP #iphone15promax #westchesterny #graycatbird ♬ original sound – joeymad84
An online search reveals there are a whole host of other people—other Erics, perhaps—who unmistakenly hear a specific name in that melodic mewing.
There’s a story in Scripture (1 Samuel 3:1–10) in which the Lord calls out to the future prophet Samuel, who mistakenly thinks the old priest Eli is asking for him. Twice Samuel runs to see Eli only to be sent back to his room: “I did not call you.”
Only on the third such occasion does Eli realize that it is God who is calling out to Samuel. Only then does Samuel turn his attention to the Lord. “Speak, your servant is listening,” he says.
I’m not suggesting that the gray catbird was some divine messenger, not in a literal sense. But I am struck by this piercing cry so clearly resonant with my own name. I’m struck by the parallels with the passage from the First Book of Samuel. And, like any good student of the Ignatian tradition, I think it wise to pause and ponder any moment in which our lives ring and rhyme so clearly with the stories of Scripture.
What is there to learn?
Recall that God is in all things and that all things can lead us closer to God. So I pause and reflect on that piercing cry from the ordinary, mundane, beauty of nature that caught my attention, if just for a few seconds. I think about how easy it became to ignore that gentle brushing of branches against the window, reduce that sound to simple white noise, and ignore the whispering of nature and keep sleeping. I consider how that specific bird cry felt like it was just for me.
My name happens to sound like one of the gray catbird’s calls. But I believe all of us hear our names whispered in the wind, scratched against the door, or gurgled in the bubbling stream, if we but listen. God might not be offering us a specific message, as was the case with Samuel. But God is inviting us to pay attention, look deeper, and see in the simple and the mundane something extraordinary and enchanting.
Where is God speaking your name? What is God inviting you to behold? How might God’s quiet word be a simple offering of consolation?
Image by Rhododendrites under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
