Columnist: The beauty and the agony

I thought the baby birds were dead. The mother bird had built a nest in a hanging, bell-shaped, wire, tea light holder. I bought it to hang in a tree for the backyard wedding of my son and his bride. That was nearly 15 years ago, and no bird had ever tried this feat; the opening was small. But this spring, while it was hanging on my front porch, a house finch gave it a go.

The porch proved to be too busy for her, and after the birds hatched out, she abandoned them. I thought I spotted her on a wire near the porch, but I can’t be sure. I could see one tiny head, but it didn’t move. The eyes didn’t blink. I thought the babies had died, so I reached up and lifted the holder off its hook and took it to the front yard. As I started to shake it to get the nest and birds out, they moved. These tiny birds with a bit of down covering them moved. I was horrified. I tipped the hanger to get the nest and birds into place and hung it back on the porch.

It was too late in the day to contact the Wildlife Center of Virginia. I knew I had to wait until the next morning when I anxiously removed the hanger to find out if the birds had made it through the night. They had, but they were barely moving. I called the Wildlife Center and took the hanger and birds to their Waynesboro facility. All the way there I was thinking that mine was a hopeless mission.

The drive took 20 minutes. My mind went from thinking about those barely-living birds to the devastating documentary, “20 Days in Mariupol,” about the assault of the Ukrainian city by the Russians. I had just spent an hour and a half seeing images of hospitals where people were desperately trying to save the lives of the injured despite a lack of supplies, shortages of water and food, and power outages. I saw dead children and pregnant women. I saw parents keeling over the bodies of their dead children, howling in grief, and mass graves filling with body bags dumped from trucks.

And here I was cursing the stop light that was slowing my progress to the Wildlife Center with three little birds of some common species. Realistically, not much would change no matter the fate of these 3 birds. There was no equivalence between these birds and any single person dying in Mariupol. And yet it mattered to me, these three. They were in my car and had been born in a nest hanging on my porch. It mattered.

When I pulled up in front of the Wildlife Center, a young man took the birds from me. I admitted I thought it was hopeless. Then a woman came out with forms for me to fill out. When she returned, she told me the birds had chirped and were active when removed from the nest. She gave me information that would allow me to find out what happened to them. I have not decided if I am going to do that.

I am reminded again of how easy I find it to get invested in life on my front porch, and how much harder it becomes, because it is so overwhelming, to be as invested in lives far away.

The documentary about Mariupol put the lives of the Ukrainians on my front porch, so to speak. It brought the horror up close, as well as the heroism of the doctors and nurses who were working under nearly impossible conditions, and the journalists recording the story.

I am aware that I cannot marinate in horror all the day long. That would be destructive to anyone. Still, I do need to be reminded that it is not good to become callused, to count deaths in Ukraine or Gaza or Israel or Sudan or Yemen as “just the way it is” and nothing I need be personally concerned about.

The resilience of those little birds who had not been fed for at least a couple of days and the stubbornness of the Ukranians who refuse to give up with death all around them, the persistence of life in the face of death, all quite stunning. I don’t want to take that for granted. I want to notice, to applaud, to celebrate it.

I want to keep caring. I have not made my peace with the suffering and evil in this world. I still don’t know how to put it all together, the beauty and agony. But I want to keep at it.

This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Hunt: The beauty and the agony