Questions or Certainty

Our city has had 145 cm of snowfall so far this month. On average, we get between 5 and 30 cm of snow in February. We now have a path shovelled in the backyard to the bird feeders. I stood outside in the sunshine yesterday and tried to identify various bird and animal tracks in the snow. A small mammal with a tail made the tracks on the left. The clean, evenly spaced footprints suggest it hopped on the surface of the snow. The prints seem large for the mice we sometimes find under the BBQ cover, but I do not want to entertain the thought that we may have rats in our yard. Rabbit tracks and the tiny Junco footprints under the feeder were easier to identify 

Dark-eyed Junco

I watched Chickadees, Juncos, Downy Woodpeckers, House Finches, Northern Cardinals and Nuthatches flit around the yard. A large Red-tailed Hawk flew low over the fence and settled in a nearby tree. Red-tailed hawks are not as good as Cooper or Sharp-shinned hawks at maneuvering small spaces to catch songbirds in tight spaces. I can imagine how difficult it must be for large birds to find prey in this winter landscape.

As much as I love and observe nature, my understanding of its synergy and interconnectedness only scratches the surface, just as the rodent tracks marked only a few millimetres of the deep snow pile.

I watched the movie Conclave this afternoon, a film nominated for 8 Academy Awards this year. My interest in the story was piqued because of the current Pope's critical illness. Undoubtedly, there will be another Conclave before long.  In the book and movie, Thomas Lawrence, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, gives a homily in which he says,

“....the one sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty.

Certainty is the great enemy of unity. 

Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. 

Even Christ was not certain at the end........

Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. 

If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, 

and therefore no need for faith.”

I must add that certainty is also the enemy of curiosity, inquiry and an ongoing quest for knowledge and understanding. Autonomous thinking allows us to come to our own interpretation of a mystery rather than following the beliefs, judgments, and feelings of others. Great questions lead to a path of discovery.

Now about those rodent tracks...