A woodpecker’s drilling echoes to the mountain clouds. –Dakotsu Iida, Japanese haiku poet

When I first saw this graphic of a woodpecker’s amazing tongue, I was gobsmacked. For years, I’ve watched Red-headed Woodpeckers bully the songbirds in our yard, chasing them from the feeders as they monopolize the supply of black-oiled sunflower seeds. With their bright crimson heads and long beaks, I’ve always thought them to be sharp-looking birds. But until recently, I had no idea that a woodpecker’s tongue, a unique anatomical feature, makes the species truly remarkable. In her article “Built-In Helmet: How the Woodpecker’s Tongue Protects Its Brain” (AZ Animals), Kellianne Matthews writes that “[t]he woodpecker’s tongue functions as a delicate sensor, a lethal spear, and a life-saving helmet, all at once.”

The woodpecker’s tongue is much longer than its beak, extending back into its skull and even wrapping around it. According to the American Bird Conservancy, “The total length of a woodpecker tongue can be up to a third of the bird’s total body length, although the exact proportions vary from species to species. This includes both the part that sticks out past the end of the beak, and the part that stays anchored in the head. If our tongues were the same proportion, they would be around two feet long!” Many believe the woodpecker’s tongue is a shock-absorbing miracle, protecting the bird’s brain from the force and potential trauma from its pecking. Woodpeckers slam their beaks into trees on average 20 times per second. Whereas some have credited the woodpecker’s tongue as protection from these concussive blows, others claim the bird’s skull bone, which is spongy, acts as a kind of “airbag” for the brain. Still others believe that the size and orientation of the woodpecker’s brain protect it, for even the strongest blows results in less than 60% of the pressure needed to give humans a concussion.

As I read more about this biological phenomenon, I begin to appreciate its metaphorical value. Who doesn’t need some serious brain protection, the type that keeps you from getting concussed and the type that keeps you from speaking or writing unfiltered thoughts? Although I haven’t suffered a concussion, I have suffered too many occasions when my thoughts became words I desperately wished I could retract the moment they were spoken. James the Just, half-brother to Jesus, admonishes us when he writes that all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison (James 3: 7-8). What if I had a metaphorical, self-regulating tongue that instinctively went to work, covering my brain, taming my ill-formed thoughts, bridling my speech, and buying me time to carefully consider what I wanted to say and how to say it? What if such a tongue could protect me from my worst, most poisonous self?

I fear we’ve become a people proficient at pecking. We do much of this from a keypad as we pound out missives through every digital means. From the anonymity and security of our homes, we peck at a speed rivalling that of woodpeckers. Too often, we immediately voice our outrage in response to digital posts that may or may not be true. For who has time to fact-check or consider the validity of sources? Better to peck, peck, peck quickly in righteous indignation. But what if we all had woodpeckers’ tongues? At the very least, they might delay extreme rhetoric until our cooler heads prevail; at best, they might bridle our brains, giving us the time and desire for the discernment we find sorely lacking in much of today’s discourse.

And what if these metaphorical tongues could protect us from the percussive blows of others, from the slings and arrows of sharp tongues? What if we were shielded from the strikes of name-calling and gaslighting, the jabs of belittling and accusing? What if we never suffered the concussions of such hostility? Now, that would be something.

Just yesterday, a Red-headed Woodpecker swooped in from the timber moments after I’d refilled the bird feeders. As I watched him clear the finches and settle in for a leisurely lunch, I felt as if I could see beneath his feathers to where his amazing tongue looped around his brain and snaked through his beak. And watching him eat, I said—aloud and to no one in particular—oh, to have a tongue like that!

photo credit: Félix Arnaudin

Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world. —Robert Frost

Personally, I’m all for being “educated in metaphor.” And I hope, by Robert Frost’s standards, that having schooled myself in metaphor, I’m safe to be loose in the world. My father, poet Don Welch, argued that metaphor is first founded on something’s “thingness, its irreducible, but wonderful value, its one-of-a kindness.” Things must be first valued for their “thingness” before they’re valued for what they might represent. The things of the world, my father claimed, “are the material of surprising comparisons and resonance.”

Perhaps the greatest gift my parents gave me was a love for metaphor, the eagerness to love a thing for its own sake and for what it might represent. What a marvel it is to let things transport you from the literal into the symbolic. Metaphor can take you on a remarkable journey, if you have eyes to see.

A few years ago, I discovered this photo of a group of French stilt walkers. I was fascinated with the black and white images of these men and thought immediately of my own history with stilts. One Christmas, my sister, Timaree, and I received a pair of stilts and a pogo stick. We vowed to master the stilts first. And though our pair only elevated us a foot off the ground, we proudly stomped up and down the sidewalk in front of our house, showing off our newly acquired skills.

In this photo, the shepherds of the French Landes region used wooden stilts that elevated them considerably higher off the ground on what the locals called “Tchangues” or “big legs.” In a September 26, 1891, Scientific American Supplement article, the authors describe their fascination with these stilt-walkers:

The shepherds of Landes… acquire an extraordinary freedom and skill … [the shepherd] knows very well how to preserve his equilibrium; he walks with great strides, stands upright, runs with agility, or executes a few feats of true acrobatism, such as picking up a pebble from the ground, plucking a flower, simulating a fall and quickly rising, running on one foot, etc.

Located in southwest France, Landes is a marshland with few roads, which makes travel challenging. Enter the stilt-walking shepherds, whose unique invention allowed them to travel efficiently by staying above the soggy marshes and, from this vantage point, to keep watch for predators.

In the late 1800s, Félix Arnaudin, a photographer who specialized in Haute-Lande folklore, set out to record the shepherds’ way of life, for he feared that in time, it would be forgotten. In an article from SimilarWorlds.com, the authors describe how Arnaudin captures these shepherds “as tall, ghostly silhouettes on the flat horizon—figures shaped by wind, mud, and patience,” their “balance, a quiet defiance against the elements.” His photographs have prompted others to marvel at these stilt-walking shepherds. In her article, “Rare Photos Of France’s Stilt-Walking Shepherds: Grassland Life From 1843 To 1937” (historyinsider.com), Phyllis Brown writes that although no one is certain about when this stilt-walking practice began, it was first noted in the 18th century. She explains that “[m]oving on stilts allowed the shepherds to match the speed of a trotting horse, making it easier for them to watch over their sheep and cover more ground in the expansive heathlands.”

These men are remarkable enough for their thingness as stilt-walking shepherds. But they are remarkable, too, as metaphors. In them, we can see symbols of human tenacity and spirit, of the desire to literally rise above the Earth to overcome the environmental challenges before us. And through them, we might also see the desire to figuratively rise above the world’s pain and suffering, to elevate ourselves above the muck and mire of life. For what might we see from such a height? What predators and pitfalls might we avoid? Imagine strapping on a pair of metaphorical “big legs” and rising above whatever the day throws at us as we move with ease through the world’s trials. Now, that would be something.

And imagine being a part of the Artemis II crew, looking down at the Earth from space. What perspective might this afford? How might it feel to rise thousands of miles above the Earth and life as we know it? The commander of the Artemis II crew, NASA’s Reid Wiseman, shared his insights:

This was not easy being 200,000-plus miles away from home. . . Like, before you launch it feels like it’s the greatest dream on Earth, and when you’re out there, you just want to get back to your families and your friends. It’s a special thing to be a human and it’s a special thing to be on planet Earth.

As I read Wiseman’s words, I thought of these lines from Robert Frost’s poem, “Birches”:

I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it's likely to go better.

Perhaps the stilt-walking shepherds, like the astronauts of the Artemis II crew, shared this paradoxical desire: to “get away from earth awhile,” but to return to the “right place for love,” that beautiful and painful place we call home. Perhaps, as Frost concludes, to rise and return “would be good both going and coming back.”

He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Matthew 28:6

From an early age, I found myself living vicariously through the suffering of others. My mother recalled that as our family gathered around our big console TV set, and the theme song of the television series, Lassie, began, she would look over at me to find I’d already begun to cry. During each episode, as someone was lost or hurt, I’d be on the edge of my seat, anticipating the impending loss with tears. So, you might imagine how I responded when I first watched Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ. For me—and I suspect for many—the viewing was excruciating, my gut churning, my muscles clenched, and every sinew twitching in response to Jim Caveziel’s portrayal of Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross. Although I always believed that I would, that I must see the film again, I’ve never been able to bring myself to view it a second time.

I’ll forever hold images from this film in my mind, though, as I continue to live vicariously through them in these days leading up to Easter. They still hold the power—as they should—to prompt the physical, emotional, and spiritual reactions I experienced years ago when I sat in a theater with a cloud of witnesses who filed out in silence. We’d all suffered through a cinematic reenactment of Christ’s suffering, painfully acknowledging that as brutal as Gibson’s portrayal was, it wasn’t real. It could only suggest the magnitude of Christ’s physical and spiritual agony.

Yet even as we vicariously suffered, we knew the glorious end of the story. We left the theater in darkness on that Good Friday, as we embraced Jesus’ assurance in John 16:33: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” We got into our vehicles with our hearts already fixed on Easter Sunday and the suffering Savior’s defeat of death.

As I’ve been walking each day at the nature preserve, I’ve watched a stand of cattails in the eastern corner of the pond I pass. In late March, they’d finally split, their brown bodies spilling pale fibers which fell like powder puffs and dotted the trail. One day, as I passed, the wind teased these puffs into the sky and carried them over the trees and toward the sun. And I thought about this death, the remnants of life bright and airborne now.

I thought about these brown, brittle bodies offering their souls to the wind. I marveled at their ascent. And I felt unmerited joy as I remembered the words of 1 Corinthians 15:55: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

May you be blessed this Easter and always with Christ’s unmerited grace.

Scattering Your Ashes
   --for our father

In late March, 
the cattails stand at the water’s edge, 
engorged once but now split, 
their stalks bent and prone across the earth;

their entrails spilt in ivory puffs
and strewn across my path

where the wind will feather them 
into filaments so fine they will rise 
like vapor over the fields.

Into this tabernacle of death you went 
as the marrow of your life ran out,
your bones quickening to fiber
and sluffing from your death bed
with each shallow breath

so that when the veil was torn,
the moment was soft
but no less final.

But now, your ash fibers rise,
catching the current that will bear them beyond

while on the riverbank below, your children look up 
into the warp and weft of your great ascent.