The fragility of the birds is a fragility that touches upon transcendence. Franzen explains the relationship between birds and transcendence like this:
When I go looking for a new bird species, I'm searching for a mostly lost authenticity, for the remnants of a world now largely overrun by human beings but still beautifully indifferent to us; to glimpse a rare bird somehow persisting in its life of breeding and feeding is an enduringly transcendent delight.
Franzen calls the delight of birdwatching transcendent because he has been taken outside of himself. Human beings literally transcend our normal, everyday experience when we enter the world of the birds. Their relationship to the world has little to do with ours. Our own lives, our own worries and concerns, are shown, for the moment, to be irrelevant. Watching the birds is to be reminded that, from the perspective of nature qua nature, we do not matter so much. This, for Franzen, does not destroy human meaning. It makes it more precious.
Given Franzen's obsession with birds, it is not surprising to find out that he has also developed a minor obsession with Saint Francis of Assisi. You could say that Saint Francis is the patron saint of Farther Away. Francis was, as many know, a bird man. It was the passage in the gospel of Matthew in which Jesus tells his disciples to live like the birds that inspired Francis to give away all his possessions and put his trust in providence. Jesus says to the apostles, "Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?" Having been convinced to live his life like a bird, Francis could sometimes be found in the hills of Italy preaching only to the birds. Franzen writes that, "For Saint Francis, the crested larks, whose drab brown plumage and peaked head feathers resemble hooded brown robes of his Friars Minor, his Little Brothers, were a model for his order: wandering, as light as air, and saving up nothing, just gleaning their daily minimum of food, and always singing, singing."
Listen.
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