How lovely is Your dwelling place,
O LORD of Hosts!
My soul longs, even faints,
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God.
Even the sparrow has found a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she places her young near Your altars,
O LORD of Hosts, my King and my God.
Psalm 84:1-3 (BSB)
A “murder of crows” sets the setting in a gothic mystery novel. A writer uses the name of a bird to begin a description of a character. “Stork-like movements,” “owl glasses,” and “penguin propriety” conjure up a memory or picture in each of us.
Flying over our home often is a “murmuration of starlings.” They tell of danger, seasons changing, or the joy of flight. “Soar like an eagle” is something we wish for our children to do when they leave our nest and venture into the world.
I’ve decided to get a bird’s eye view of the expressions about our aviary friends:
“She chatters like a magpie.”
“He stuck his beak where it didn’t belong.”
“It’s graceful as a swan.”
“They’re as cuckoo as they come.”
“That child could charm the birds off the trees.”
If I’m writing a tense scene, will I use the word “albatross” when referring to a weight that hangs about the hero? How about using ‘to make one’s hackles rise,’ when the heroine encounters a threatening situation?
Using the familiar anchors readers in a place and allows them to enter into the imaginary world created with words.
Did you know that “halcyon days” means peace and harmony, and in Greek, halcyon means kingfisher? In Kenya, at a friend’s farm, I watched the kingfishers catching their fill in their garden pond. Perfect visual for me. I too want to catch my fill when it comes to describing scenes my readers can dive into.
I could wax on and on with the references, using Dickens, Tolstoy or Chesterton—I’m ‘on a lark’ with words. But what does Scripture have to share about birds?
God uses His creation to describe our mundane world. Words about birds flock together throughout scripture. Is our everyday existence truly “ordinary” when a robin pecks for worms in the rain-wetted lawn, or when the flash of a cardinal draws our eye to the first buds on the magnolia tree?
God uses His creation to describe our mundane world. Words about birds flock together throughout scripture. Is our everyday existence truly “ordinary” when a robin pecks for worms in the rain-wetted lawn, or when the flash of a cardinal draws our eye to the first buds on the magnolia tree?
In setting a scene, God has revealed his heart in the Psalm quoted. The birds want to nest, raise their young, dwell in His presence. When I describe a romantic relationship in my novels, my characters also want to dwell together in peace and trust.
In setting a scene, God has revealed his heart in the Psalm quoted. The birds want to nest, raise their young, dwell in His presence. When I describe a romantic relationship in my novels, my characters also want to dwell together in peace and trust.
When Isaiah writes of soaring with wings as eagles, I long to be there! Do you?
For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge;
Psalm 91:3-4 (ESV)
Have bags will travel should be Jeanette-Marie Mirich’s life’s theme. She moved twenty-two times before settling in her first home. An Oregonian by birth and who graduated with a B.S. degree in education from Portland State University, Jeanette has swum in the Ligurian Sea, collected shells and sea glass along the Indian Ocean, Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean Oceans, Straits of Malacca, Gulf of Mexico and the Andaman Sea. Her peripatetic lifestyle is courtesy of the U.S. Air Force and her husband’s medical training.
Passionate about needs in the third world after living in Thailand during her husband’s deployment, she has accompanied her husband on dozens of medical mission trips. Mother of three, Grammy to thirteen exceptional grandchildren, she travels from her Kentucky home to an Oregon cabin, scribbling poems and short stories as well as writing novels.
I shouldn’t have made the promise when Harry was dying but…
You know how it is. You want to please when the person you’ve always loved is hooked up to plastic tubing looking peaky.
Delilah Morgan, a woman of honor, is unable to ignore her promise to her husband, Harry, which leads to trouble, with a capital T. The beautiful, unassuming Delilah plans to mourn in private after Harry passed, but he had other ideas—specifically, leaving his wife in good hands and protected from the elite of their small Kentucky town. However, he neglects to include his wife in his plans.
Harry has selected local judge, Lyle Henderson, the heart-throb of most of the women in town, to court his widow. The judge acquiesces to Harry’s wishes until Henderson’s life spins into a maelstrom after the discovery of bodies in his long absent wife’s car. The police and FBI begin to suspect him of murdering his wife and her apparent lover.
Determined to clear the judge of murder, Delilah resolves to hunt down the true story. Their adventure nearly costs them their lives and leads them on what Delilah suspects is a wild-goose chase toward love. In reality, their wanderings reveal what sacrificial love can encompass.
