Finding a Better Way to Wake Up

How birdsong is a ramp to a new beginning

Photo by Maks Styazhkin on Unsplash

The wildfire threat is over. Spring rains tampered down the fires and when the smoke lifted, so did many hearts in this part of the world. The birds are singing in overtime, it seems.

I awoke to birdsong—so bold and loud.

Waking up to birdsong is far, far different from waking to an “alarm” clock. Think of it—an “alarm” clock. Even the name should make us suspicious.

Alarming us to get up and get going; forcing us—before we are bodily and mentally ready to 'get ‘ur done!’. Shouting at us that the rest we have so needed, longed for is now so, so over and done. Get up and get going! Spiritually, we need a ramp—a better way to begin the morning than an alarm clock.

Buzzers and ringing bells jar us to get our act together and get going with the day. Attend to our lists. Check the boxes. Fulfill the tasks.

An alarm clock may be an indicator to our violated souls! Let me explain.

The Catholic monk and well read author, Thomas Merton reminds us:

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence.”

Merton raises the possibility of submitting to a violence that so permeates our very lives that we are woefully asleep to what is happening to us by all this crazy way we live. Perhaps, a violent life begins with a violent beginning of the buzzing of an alarm clock.

Birdsong is an invitation to remain in the morning’s twilight—that space between one world and the next. When half awake, we hold space for a slowed transition—a beginning ramp to a day’s beginning. Birdsong is moving towards the on-ramp of a day but not with speed but with intention to care for what matters most—the care of our very souls.

And why not a little and intentional ramp for a day’s beginning with birdsong? Our habits of speed and production; our addiction to busyness; our compulsion to move fast rather than slow and in doing this, we may miss the birdsong. We may miss more than birdsong. We may miss the invitation to live in a whole and other way to really live and to really live well.

This is what the poet David Whyte describes in his remarkable poem, “What to remember when waking”—

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

Whyte describes that space of paying attention to the on ramp; of honoring the transition from sleep to doing; of not moving fast through such thresholds but paying attention to ourselves and to Another as we awaken. He speaks of a ‘more honest world’; and how awakening is a “small opening” into the new day which “closes the moment you begin your plans.” He’s speaking of this ramp I want to describe…this slow way of waking up into this remarkable world and our “one and only life.”

The alarm clock announces, “Get going or you might be last; You might miss out. There will not be enough for latecomers.’

Birdsong reminds us of a manna of peace; the soil of our grounding; our place in this Cosmos and that we are a part of a larger story.

Birdsong reminds us of a truth we need and a lie we need to forsake.

We are living in a time of violence to our souls. So much intake coming towards us in all directions: news, stocks, tariffs and tragedy. Could all of this not be just put off for just twenty minutes or so? For in these twenty minutes, we could gain our senses and tend to our wits; say our prayers; give thanks and open our ears for a moment to take in the birdsong? Is twenty minutes too much to ask of us—to much to ask the world of production and competition we navigate every day?

How can you practice twenty minutes of quiet? What would you like this ramp to look like to slowly enter your day rather than have the resuscitation paddles of hurry and scurry be placed upon your heart?

Startled by hurry from the beginning of the morning, we make a choice to begin in a whole new way and have a whole new life—all the gifts of birdsong.

Now that it is spring, could you crack your window with the intention of waking up in a different way—a slower way—a better way? What would a “better way” actually look like for you right now?