Prayer Musings from Vireo Videos
- Kevin Burrell
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Last week on a family vacation in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I took to the back porch overlook for my morning devotion, listening in the background for any bird that might have decided that a southern August summer is still worth singing about. Overall, the bird chatter is pretty quiet here in August, but of the few that ventured a song, I noticed several vireos in the mix.
I’ve never truly understood what makes a vireo a vireo. As birds go, they’re rather bird-shaped, and at a glance I might easily mislabel them as a warbler, a sparrow, or any other large category of birdy-looking birds. My Peterson’s guide calls them “much like wood warblers, but usually less active.” Identifying a bird by its relative work ethic is bound to be unreliable (though not entirely useless; the kinglet, for example, is a serious tryhard). You might do better by looking at a vireo’s beak; it’s slightly thicker, slightly curved on the ridge, with a slight hook. That’s slightly helpful, I guess.
For me, though, I’ve found it easiest to identify a vireo by sound, because they’re so darn conversational. I realize that’s not much more helpful than Peterson’s peppiness scale, but it’s definitely how I tell them apart. So let me invite you into the colloquy—complete with vireo videos.
Vocal Vireo Videos
The White-eyed Vireo is the most abrupt and offensively direct of the vireos. As a novice birder, I was told to remember the call as “Hey, gimme a beer, quick!” Honestly, you’d be surprised how many bird mnemonics involve beer. If you’d prefer, some birders equate the song instead to the phrase, “Spit, and see if I care. Spit!” Either way, we seem to have made the assumption that this bird is a pretty demanding jerk. Its song is an ultimatum, delivered spastically. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a very endearing bird (and the most cooperative to see, choosing low visible shrubs over secretive tree canopies). But patience doesn’t appear to be its strong suit.
The Eastern Warbling Vireo is the most talkative of the lot. They’re not as common in the Carolinas where I live, so I’m less familiar with this one, but I’ve read that it’s one of the most popular bird songs to pipe into outdoor scenes in movies and commercials and such, so you may have heard this bird without realizing it. As you might guess from the name, he’s super-talkative, with longer “warbles” and not much pausing to reflect in between. It’s been said that an introvert thinks, then speaks, then thinks again, while an extrovert speaks, then maybe thinks, then speaks again. Let’s just say the Warbling Vireo is a major extrovert. In the video below, when that chickadee finally speaks up, the vireo’s not even sure what to do. Thrown off for a second, he goes back to talking. “So, as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted…”
The Red-eyed Vireo has an affable song that birders often equate to: “Here I am. Over here. See me?” — a humorous game of hide-and-seek from a bird that’s usually hidden and hard to see. It’s reminiscent of your friends chiding, “You’re getting warmer” or “You’re getting colder” as you search the room for your hidden birthday present. The end notes are intermittently upslurred, so it sounds as if he’s asking a question, pausing ever-so-briefly, and then answering it. The whole presentation is chipper, lively, extroverted, free-flowing, but he also knows how to take a breath and let the other birds get a word in.
Then there’s the Blue-headed Vireo, possibly my favorite of the set: a gorgeous grey-blue head with white spectacles thick enough to maybe even call goggles. This bird is a more thoughtful version of the Red-eyed Vireo, engaging in the same questions and answers but with longer pauses in between. I think of him as a Red-eyed Vireo with a Southern drawl. Or maybe he’s just decaffeinated. Either way, there’s plenty of space between phrases for a healthy give-and-take conversation. The same can be said for the also-bespectacled Yellow-throated Vireo, which sounds very similar in its phrasing, but with a raspier voice, like a Blue-headed Vireo with a sore throat.
The Rest Between the Notes
So where is all this going?
With caution, let me plot each of these birds on a sort of “prayer continuum.” I believe each one challenges some of our common practices in conversation with God.
White-eyed prayer makes demands. “Hey, get me an [X] quick,” where X is any urgent need: a job, a fix, a rescue, a spouse, a house, an answer. It’s brash and usually self-referential. Ecclesiastes 5:2 warns, “Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.” The goal in that verse isn’t to shorten the length of our prayer, but to be fully cognizant of who we’re talking to, honoring God as God and being thoughtful in our words. That doesn’t mean there aren’t times when our prayer amounts to a desperate cry; nine psalms contain the hasty plea, “Come quickly!” But if our prayers tend to amount to nothing much more than a grocery list, or if we only pray when we’re in emotional freefall, it’s good to heed that Ecclesiastes' advice and pause for a moment. God desires to give you far more than just some quick answers. He wants to conform you to his own image.
Warbling prayer (of either the Eastern or Western variety) is a one-sided monologue. It’s the sort of showy prayer that Jesus cautioned against: “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling [warbling?] like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:7-8) Jesus isn’t (necessarily) chastising your long-winded pastor for endlessly circling that Amen runway and not just landing the plane. Instead, Jesus is offering a comforting alternative to the sort of prayer that only seeks to mechanically manipulate the divine. Rather than the amount of words used, prayer is about the one to whom the words are directed, with childlike trust.
Which brings me to the option of Red-eyed prayer. The lilt of this cadence is less of a demand or a performance, but instead starts to approximate the look of an actual conversation. Red-eyed prayer asks questions and discovers answers, with pauses for reflection in between. It’s relational, give-and-take, with enough pause to allow God to speak back into our hearts. What I mean is that prayer takes time to meditate. Maybe the reflective Q&A sounds like this:
“Lord, why?”
[Pause to consider]
“Right, I get it.”
The Holy Spirit can do a lot with that pause.
And perhaps that’s why my favorite prayer is Blue-headed.
Speak.
Extended pause.
Speak again.
On some days, it’s even Yellow-throated, weakened by the more desperate notes of a throat-sore plea.
Either way, it’s prayer with your hands off the wheel. God’s driving this thing, not you.
I’m learning, in my own walk with the Lord, that when I carve out longer times to pray, I often pray fewer words, not more of them. The unhurried stillness is a place for me to ask the Spirit to calm my heart, to stir my mind, to be my strength: “Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him.” (Psalm 62:5) This is what it means to listen in prayer. It’s letting the Lord direct my thoughts, trusting him by leaving room for what he brings to mind. I’m often shocked by where that pause takes me; it can surface unnoticed longings, unearth the sins of yesterday, give shape to my priorities for the day, remind me whom I need to call or write or forgive or ask forgiveness of, or assure me of his love with gracious goosebumps. The Holy Spirit can do a lot with that pause.
Seventy-one times the psalms intersperse the word "Selah" into their poetry. Selah was apparently a musical term, and its meaning has been largely lost to us over the span of thousands of years. But it appears to be a sort of "rest note" in the midst of a flourish of quarters and eighths. It comes in at just the right time, a deliberate pause to let the prior words hang in the air, bounce around, reverberate, and maybe find their mark. Those brief silent milliseconds aren't the absence of music; they're part of it. Or to quote Miles Davis, "It’s not the notes you play; it’s the notes you don’t play.” Selah is the all-important note you don't play, to give shape to the notes around it. The Holy Spirit can do a lot with that pause.
I recognize that we all have our own threshold of comfortability with silence. It shows in our conversation with others; some conversations click along seamlessly like dialogue from an Aaron Sorkin script, while others have pauses so wide you could drive a truck through them. But even the most loquacious extrovert can find themselves short of words in prayer, and even the most reflective introvert can be stymied by the apparent silence of God. Prayer levels it all. No bullet-pointed agenda. It entrusts the dialogue to God.
Psalm 131:2 says, “I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother.” The psalmist comes to God without White-eyed demands or a Warbling rush of words. Instead, he models how to say to God:
“Here I am.
Over here.
See me?”
And then to rest and reflect contentedly, knowing that—indeed—he does.
Comments