By Laurel Dykstra

While the word Lent comes from Middle English, quadragesima, the Latin word for the season means fortieth referring to the fortieth day before Easter. And while this resonates with a host of biblical wilderness forties—the 40 days of the flood, the Hebrew’s 40 year sojourn in the desert, Moses’ 40 days on Sinai, Elijah’s 40 day journey to Mt. Horeb, Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness—the actual number of days doesn’t quite add up, so different traditions have different metrics, (don’t count Sundays, Lent ends on Maundy Thursday) in order to get to 40. I love the biblical associations but the 40 Birds of Lent involved some cheating to make the numbers come out right.

“Confession,” my mother used to say, “is good for the soul,” usually in mock seriousness when I was suspected of some misdeed. In this final installment of the 40 Birds of Lent all, or at least most, of the cheating is confessed.

I confess:

• I saw my fortieth bird, a Stellar’s Jay, on about day thirty.
• I saw each bird species mentioned during Lent but the photos of the Raven, the Mallards, the Goshawk and the Wood Duck were taken in January.
• The photos of the Bushtit, the Herons, the House Sparrows, Kingfisher, Cormorant and Surf Scoter, were taken in previous years.
• I did not pray every day.
• The days when prayer was probably most needed—in courtrooms, and hospital rooms, on marches, at lock-downs—were the days it was the hardest to stop and pay attention.
• On the days when I complained that I saw nothing, that there were no birds out there I saw at least nine different species. Nine species, in the city, in ten minutes. And I thought I had seen nothing.

So has this Lenten practice, the (almost) daily setting aside time to be present and attentive in creation, prepared me for Holy Week? For Good Friday? For Easter? The simple answer is no. Of course not.

The trouble with Christians is that we live in a weekly relationship with the impossible. Every Sunday is a little Easter, every year we celebrate Holy Week. And because we know how the story ends there is always an element of play-acting Good Friday, even when some of us are living in the midst of it. We do not enter fully into the devastation of betrayal, of violent arrest and disappearance, the beloved killed by the state, a broken movement, a god that died. The truth of Good Friday is despair, outrage, hopelessness. Blood-proof that the power of empire and its machines of death are absolute, destroying the best and most beautiful. Easter is the perhaps more shattering realization that death does not have the last word. To approach Good Friday with Easter up our sleeve is to cheat both.

So, praying with the birds. To be only present with senses widened–not anticipating. To be close tiny fast heartbeats, rustling feathers, merciless talons, sunlight through wings? It is as good and adequate preparation for the impossible as any.

For those who are keeping track, this year’s 40+ Birds of Lent (at the time of editing) were:

1. 1. 1. 1. Bald Eagle
         2. Anna’s Hummingbird
         3. European Starling
         4. Black-capped chickadee
         5. House Finch
         6. Song sparrow
         7. Dark-eyed Junco
         8. Bushtit
         9. Raven
         10. Wren (probably Winter)
         11. Northwestern Crow
         12. Rock Dove
         13. Northern Goshawk
         14. Great Blue Heron
         15. Mallard
         16. Golden-crowned Sparrow
         17. House Sparrow
         18. Downy Woodpecker
         19. Canada Goose
         20. Barrow’s Goldeneye
         21. Surf Scoter
         22. Double Crested Cormorant
         23. Glaucous-winged gull
         24. Hooded merganser
         25. Banded Kingfisher
         26. Black Oystercatcher
         27. Wood Duck
         28. American Robin
         29. Towhee
         30. Flicker
         31. American Widgeon
         32. Pigeon Guillemont
         33. Eared Grebe
         34. Horned Grebe
         35. Murrlet (probably Marbled)
         36. Common Merganser
         37. Harlequin Duck
         38. Common Goldeneye
         39. Varied Thrush
         40. Bufflehead
         41. Stellar’s Jay
         42. Cooper’s Hawk
         43. Townsend’s Solitaire

         Mammals receiving an honorable mention are: raccoon, coyote, harbor seal, California sea lion, river otter.

         The 40 Birds of Lent documents Laurel Dykstra’s Lenten practice of daily prayer outdoors noticing birds in the lower Fraser watershed. Laurel is the gathering priest of Salal + Cedar, Coast Salish Territories.

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