Birding, paying attention and taking your time

Bill Bronn has packed a lot into 81 years. Once a seminarian and then a longtime 3M chemist, he is now a retired grandpa who loves birding and Scripture. Bronn belongs to Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Maplewood and St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis.

Q) Who introduced you to birding?

A) My fifth-grade teacher at St. Leo’s in St. Paul, an elderly nun from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. She showed us these little bird cards you could get for free from Arm & Hammer. I thought, “Geez, these are gorgeous!”

I used to go over to the St. Kate’s campus, which we weren’t supposed to do, but Sister got me a slip of paper, signing on it that I could bird there. They had quite a bit of open and wooded area at the time. I lived one block away, so I would sneak over there and look at the birds.

Q) Does birding relate to your faith?

A) Nature is a big thing! It’s very spiritual. If you read Job, he asks all these questions — why this, why that. Finally, God talks to Job directly and says: “Oh, Job, did you see that fantastic hippopotamus I made?” That’s what nature is supposed to do, I think: make us wonder. Where did all this come from? How did somebody figure this all out?

Q) You explored those questions in seminary for eight years. Has that formation stuck with you?

A) You never leave your past behind! I learned Thomistic and Aristotelian philosophy. It provides an order. There’s order everywhere: how a tree reproduces, for example. There’s got to be something behind that order.

Q) And once you have that rock-solid foundation, everything else flows from it.

A) Exactly! There’s no other way.

Q) How did you discern out of priesthood?

A) It just hit me. I got depressed, and I was losing my ability to study. Something had to change. Depression has a way of shaking you and making you pay attention. That’s what pain does. It makes you self-focus: “Oh, I gotta figure this out.”

Q) What helped you shake the depression?

A) I saw a psychologist until I got my feet on the ground and I got a job. I started working and feeling like I fit into the world better. I still have some depression. It comes and goes. But I’ve learned how to handle myself.

Q) Looking back, do you resent your seminary experience because it contributed to depression?

A) Oh no! That’s one of the best things to ever happen to me. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for those formative years. They’ve been foundational. The way I see it is: I had a vocation to the seminary, and I got it! Then it branched out.

Q) Seminary also fostered your love of Scripture.

A) It’s my favorite hobby! I like to read commentaries like Walter Brueggemann’s “Theology of the Old Testament.” Oh man! It’s so interesting! I’m finally a third of the way through it, and I’ve had it for years. But every time I sit down and open it, I don’t get through more than two or three pages. I’ve spent an hour and a half zipping through the Bible, checking out these passages and comparing, maybe even looking at the Greek or the Hebrew. I don’t think I’ll finish it in my life.

Q) I love that paradigm shift: Your goal isn’t to race to the last page!

A It’s probably better I don’t finish the book because then where would I go?

Q) It’s great that you’re taking your time. Life is not meant to be rushed through.

A) I once read an article in the Pioneer Press about the 10 richest people in the world. Eight of them had committed suicide. That’s what happens when you run out of something to look forward to. It’s not human to have everything. You need to work by the sweat of your brow and make progress. You don’t want to come to the end.

Q) How is paying attention a virtue?

A) To be successful in a chemistry lab, you must be observant. That requires focus! More importantly, in working with other human beings, you must listen to what they say and feel so you can walk in their shoes and really work towards the common good. I heard a commentator on public television address racism. She said: If every white person would truly make a good friend of a black person, the problem would be solved, because then the black person’s problems would become the white person’s.

That’s how our Synod work should begin: go out and befriend and listen to someone who is not like you so you can see what is really the problem today.

Q) Can you recall a time that birding reminded you to pay attention?

A) I had read that the worm-eating warbler liked to find its food by digging through leaf litter, so I was searching for it on the ground — no luck. But my birding buddies were not so tied to that idea. They spotted the bird several times in low branches of the trees, hidden by leaves — an extremely elusive bird! I saw the bird dash from one clump of leaves to the next but never saw it well enough to identify it.

Q) Worm-eating warblers! Is that meant to distinguish from warblers that do not eat worms?

A) Actually, it does not eat earth worms but insects and their small, worm-like insect larvae buried in leaves. That’s its particular niche, among the warblers.

Q) I love their names — the White-Crowned Sparrow, the Rufous-Sided Towhee, the Yellow-Rumped Warbler, the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak.

A) A favorite of mine is the Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker.

Q) And of course the Red-Headed Woodpecker.

A) That used to be the most common woodpecker when I was a boy. I’d see them Red-Headed Woodpeckers on telephone poles in St. Paul all the time. Now they’re gone! You have to go to special places to find them. They stick to certain Oak Savannah territories.

That’s where I bring in Pope Francis’ “Laudato Si’.”

Q) “On Care for our Common Home.”

A) When I see the wide variety of bird species — or look at just the 30-plus species of warblers, little birds — I marvel at all the care God put into creation. And yes, as Jesus said in Luke, “They do not sow or reap. They have not storehouses or barns, yet God feeds them. How much more important are you than birds!” What a magnanimous being God is!