Entering the New Year on Birds' Wings

Owls and other birds are on my mind this morning.
Proud or timid, flying, perching, nesting, or falling from the sky,
they all demonstrate the work of a Holy Spirit,
looking, finding, interceding between man and the Being
who lives in a vast space man fears he cannot reach,

 it being so high and removed
from the steady earth on which we gather here,
always looking up.

This new year, too, we will go on seeking the face of
that God, and depending on intercessors who caw
and cheep and cry out in hunger or victory with all of us lowly beings,
and who sometimes sing like angels and even fly.