Play houses

Now that the leaves have disappeared from the trees, leaving so many crooked spikes to hold up the grey skies, the dreys stand out. I thought these bunches of leaves crammed in the forks of branches were bird’s nests, big bird’s nests. In Oaxaca, I watch parrots weave their nests in crooks of trees, so I assumed some other bird did the same thing here. But they aren’t bird nests. They are squirrels’ nests. The thought of those little furry bodies bunched in those leafy nests high up and out on a limb, exposed to earth and sky, makes me smile.

Robert researched the phenomenon for me, surprised that after all these years I didn’t know what dreys were. Canada always holds new surprises for me (that the government sends you reminders to do screening tests for cancer; that the corn tortillas have wheat in them). Dreys hold together because the squirrels start with green twigs, leaves attached, and weave everything into these to make a tight shell, leaving the top open in the summer for ventilation. Juvenile squirrels play at house-making, building little floppy nests that fall apart, their play-houses, tree-houses. Squirrels leave their nests when they get over-run with bugs—lice or flees. Their nests look so precarious, out there on a limb, to discourage predators, but I saw a raccoon hanging by its hands from a telephone wire once, so I know they would try. Maybe the limb shaking warns the little guys in time, a vibration alarm.

As a teacher I’m fascinated with how God engineers learning right into our instincts. We learn. We grow. We develop. This has to be one aspect in which we reflect God. I think of kittens pouncing on strings, and puppies sniffing out toys, and birds pushing their babies out of nests, and squirrels building play-houses. We practice until we are perfect. That is what this life is about. We are God’s juvenile squirrels building things that fall apart in this life. Sometimes they fall right out of the tree, leaving us exposed to the elements and the creeping raccoons. We feel the vibrations under feet as the limb shakes. But He who began a good work in you will continue until it is finished. “It is finished.”

God loves babies. Jesus began ministry as a baby. He spent more years being God as a child, learning Scripture and carpentry, than being God as a man, doing miracles and telling stories. He spent more time learning to saw boards and to plane them smooth and straight, just as His father taught him, breathing in the pine smell, listening to the rhythmic scruff of the plane, than He did  training His disciples. We so often think of him as the Teacher that we forget how long he spent as the Student.

I have gone so far as to wonder what this quality of God looks like in heaven. Is teaching finished there? Is learning? I have sent an application ahead to heaven for one learning job and one teaching job. I want to learn to be a dancer. I want to dance for God there because there is no chance for that here. Nope. But I also want to be a teacher in heaven. You know all those babies aborted, those sons and daughters miscarried, who never saw a drey perched in the sky in the arms of a tree? I want to teach those kids about God’s wonders—the earth and sky, and squirrels, and kittens, and books and dancing and history, and me. What God did for me. I want to be a teacher for God. I practice a lot now, getting ready, creating my floppy play-houses in the sky, but the day is coming when I’ll get my dream job. Both of them.

Hockey. Who is going to teach those kids about hockey?

Or tlayudas?

Or laser printers?

There’s room for you. Appy here: ________________________________________