Moriah was sitting out in the spring sunshine. She had been watching  a pair of Jackdaws going through the motions of making a nest in a tall tree in the back of her yard. She had a good view and was far enough away that her curiosity was beyond the awareness of the building birds. 

The female was in charge of the nest. The male had the job of bringing little sticks to her to make the nest. She would take each stick in turn and both would go down into the nest and disappear. Them Moriah might see the stick being thrown over the side of the nest and land at the base of the trunk of the tree. 

Then the male would have to go collect a stick form somewhere else and the ritual would repeat itself. It was taking two weeks to complete the nest. Moriah left a piece of colored shiny metal for the jackdaws and it was gone the next morning. She presumed it would make the chicks above average and their feathers full of the blue shiney. 

One morning when Moriah was all wrapped up in her dowdiest brown and green garb, she must have blended in, for the pair of jackdaws, mated for life,  landed near where she was sitting and they proceeded to do their mating dance, with the male trying to land on the female like an unbalanced flying machine. Their coats of beautiful feathers took on a blue hue from the spring sky above as they danced around very close to Moriah.

She remembered a time when she and her sister were about eight and nine years old and her sister decided to catch a baby jackdaw out in the fields. She leaped on the young bird and was so surprised when the sharp black beek, now captured between her hands and her chest was sharply attacking, so that she let it go again with a cry. 

She was looking forward to seeing how the young birds would fledge and she was looking forward to gathering up that lovely pile of kindling dropped at the foot of the tree by the jackdaws. 

Mariah noticed that the sap had risen in the tree above her and the catkins were all peaking out in every direction. She wondered what tales that tree would tell if they could talk to her. She had just seen a sparrow catch another sparrow by the leg, flip him upside down and hold on to the leg in the private part of the branches. She was so surprised and could hardly understand what she was seeing.

The sparrows’ lack of awareness of spiritual rule keeping seemed to be nil. When Moriah threw out the crumbs from the table, they might ignore this great bonus and leap at each other’s heads to try and run off the competition. She concluded she was not in charge of the sparrow behavior, only her own. 

She was surprised to see Druid Bernie coming down the lane when she was on her way in from the turf shed with an armful of sods to get the fire going and get some food cooked. She was delighted at his sudden appearance, with the only herald being a big group of starlings landing in her tree for ten minutes. She knew that meant something, but only after the Druid appeared did she realize the meaning. 

He told her tales of his winter travels through the Wicklow Hills to see Glendalough, to fast and to do spiritual work with the monks. They were determined to find an understanding of the laws relating to the white shadow of the cross, to healing and to talking to Dia. 

“I want to do the same” Moriah said but the Druid waved his hand in the air and did not think she would bother herself, but to leave that sort of thing to the monks. 

Well she had got a hold of some good writings giving her some clues as to what might be involved. She was learning that being disappointed with others was to be used as a stepping stone to better things, and if she would look for the better things and expect the better things then she would stay optimistic and could ignore the depressing disappointment. 

When she told this to the Druid, he said  “Funny you should say that, but I was just thinking about that. The monks asked me to leave and I was disappointed. They did not care for my telling of the rules.” 

He went on to explain that when he started on his way home he was greeted by a double rainbow that shone into the valley and onto the round towers and he took it as a sign that his time there was done and that the promises of Dia for him would be on the road home, where he had some lovely dreams, visions and apparitions. 

He dreamed of a beautiful marbled, black and white stone, twenty feet long, that he found near the top of a cliff. His vision was of the white shadow of the cross and the power he felt when it fell on him, as he fell on his knees before it. His apparition was of a beautiful virgin smiling on him with a smile that put a warmth into him he could still feel. 

Moriah did not have any such good blessings fall on her but she make a concerted effort to pull her thoughts away many times from slights she suffered at the hands of others and only found relief when she sang some chants and seriously asked for blessings on the heads of those she found most offensive. Then she felt optimistic and let go of her ties to revenge and ick feelings. The end. 

Dear Readers, sign up for my blog if you will, let me have your comments and your likes and I will be well pleased and pray for you. I am trying to be oft in prayer  because I notice when I am not, my ideas and thought can run into negative rabbit holes and I sure do not want to stay there. Love from Rose.