But fall birding is different. Unless you're at a migration stop, birds can be a little harder to find. And when you do find them, they don't look quite as glamorous as they do in the spring. Most birds undergo a period of "molt" during the late summer or fall, where they have to grow new feathers to replace the wear and tear of a year of surviving in the open elements. As such, they can have a tattered, mottled appearance. And even when their new feathers do come in, many species' winter plumage is decidedly less spectacular than it looks in spring and summer. The colors become more drab and restrained, and for some groups (such as warblers) they so lose their distinctive markings that they can become hard to differentiate from related species.What does this have to do with Christian formation? Most of us try to judge each other by the standards of spring plumage. We put expectations on other people that they ought to be bright, cheerful, and overflowing with happy praise. When we spot sins in their behavior, or even personality traits that might simply rub us the wrong way, we are tempted to judge them against the high standards of Christian perfection. And we too, many of us, try to present our best face towards the world when we show up at church or invite someone over to our home; we try to give the impression that we've got it all together. And if some of our spotty plumage shows, or our drab ordinariness becomes painfully evident, we can often feel the weight of other people's unfavorable impressions of us.
But here's the truth of the matter: all of us, every one, are in the "molt" stage right now. We're still growing our feathers, still developing into the kind of plumage that our Creator intended for us. None of us is a finished product yet. One day we will be--we will shine with a spiritual beauty such as we cannot yet imagine--but right now our life and service as Christians is characterized by the fact that we are all mottled, patchy, and, on the whole, quite ordinary.
That's the reality of our condition. But there's another side to it, too. You see, when I go birding in the fall, and I'm looking to check off whatever species I might see, and hopefully find a new one that I've never seen before, it doesn't really matter to me what they look like.
