Mourning Doves

And the sounds of God's grace and providence

It’s long been understood that our five senses (smell, sight, touch, taste, and sound) are our God-given time travel devices.

I catch a whiff of a shampoo that I used when I was in my first trimester of my pregnancy, and it transports me right back to morning sickness. I immediately feel like vomiting.

I see a landscape as I pass by in a car on a roadtrip, and I am transported right back in time to a childhood experience.

Recently, my time travel has taken place by route of a dove’s cooing.

My grandfather died last year, which is a feat since I was 41 when he passed! He and my grandmother lived in San Antonio, Texas, which became my second home. As a child, our family moved every 5-10 years; their home was “permanent.” Even though we changed cities and states, I could count on their home staying the same (for the most part—they moved houses within the metro area when I was in high school).

Doves are not only native to San Antonio, Texas. But as a child I only heard them in that place when I visited my grandparents. For 41 years, I associated the cooing of the doves to sitting in my grandparents’ living room in the morning sipping coffee (or eating cereal as a child) and looking out their windows onto the live oaks that dotted their backyard.

For a long time, I thought these birds were pigeons. Then when I heard their name, which sounded like morning doves, I thought they must have that name since I only heard them coo in the morning—very appropriate. Thus, during each visit when I heard the cooing of the “morning” doves upon the first day at their house, I knew I was in San Antonio. I was home.

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One day during the late spring of this year, as I was sitting in my study before everyone else was awake with only the light of one lamp shining in my dark house and the first morning rays piercing through the slats in my window blinds, I heard their coo. Have they always lived in Birmingham, Alabama, and I just never noticed?

With each coo, I was transported back in time to my grandparents’ home and thus to my grandparents. Suddenly, the cooing was no longer comforting. I was grieving. Their morning coo evoked my beloved grandparents’ absence in my life. As each morning passed from this spring and into the summer, I could hear their cooing and I was sad.

A friend mentioned to me in late May a bird app called Merlin. With this app, users can record the sounds of birds and the app will give the name of the bird that was making each sound. Since I’m in my bird-watching era now that I’m in my 40s, I began recording the sounds of birds as I sat on my back porch.

That’s when I saw their name spelled out: Mourning Doves.

They are given this name, I read, because their coos sound like a bird in mourning. How fitting, I thought. Now when I heard their mournful coos, it was as if God was giving me a way to grieve. And thus my mornings began by mourning with the doves.

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There’s a well-known story in Scripture about how a different type of bird brought the memory of something sad to a disciple’s mind by way of its sound.

Last time I wrote on Substack, I shared a reflection on Jesus’s promise to Peter that he would return after his failure. Jesus prayed for his faith not to fail.

As soon as Jesus said these words to Peter, Peter didn’t believe that he would fail. He confidently claimed he would go to prison with Jesus or even die with him. (Something Thomas also confidently asserts in John 11.) “Don’t worry, Jesus; I got this. I’m on your side. I’ll fight with you even if it lands me in prison or kills me.”

Jesus responded: “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.” (Luke 22:34)

The story of Jesus’s prediction, Peter’s denial, and the rooster is told in all four Gospels. This was an important part of the story of Christ’s death, namely that he was abandoned by his closest friends and even Peter couldn’t keep his word, thus fulfilling Psalm 22.

When Jesus was seized and led away, Peter followed at a distance in the shadows. But he was recognizable. “Aren’t you one of his disciples?” “Weren’t you one of his?” “Didn’t I see you with him?” “Your accent gives you away!” Peter, who was peppered with questions of association by lowly servant girls, denied being with Jesus adamantly, even calling down curses according to Matthew’s Gospel.

Then the rooster crowed.

Peter heard the crowing, and suddenly, according to Luke’s Gospel, “the Lord turned and looked straight at Peter.”

Dawn was breaking. The rooster crowed. And Peter remembered Jesus’s words at that moment. The crowing pierced his heart reminding him of his own pride (I will die with you!), Jesus’s foretelling (you will deny me), and his now-failure. The Synoptic Gospels all tell us that he went away weeping bitterly.

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I’ve been reflecting on this story for some time. The mourning dove’s coo brings tears to my eyes, almost immediately. The rooster’s crow brought tears to Peter’s eyes. Yes, for different reasons. And yet, memory is embedded in these sounds. God can use even the noise of the birds to bring about repentance, gratitude, and even grief.

I often wonder how Peter felt every time he heard a rooster crow after that day. Did each crow bring with it pain? Or, perhaps, after Jesus rose from the grave, and Jesus’s prayers for Peter were answered, the sharp pain of the crow was turned to comfort—namely that Jesus’s death was sufficient even for Peter’s apostasy and that he was completely forgiven and fully restored. Jesus has made the bitter sweet.

There is no mention again about the rooster or Peter’s denial post-resurrection by the other apostles. How happy are those whose sins are forgiven! How happy are those whose sins are not held over their heads by others. How happy was Peter when the rooster’s crow was replaced by the voice of the risen Lord saying, “Feed my sheep.”

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As I sit at the kitchen counter in my mother-in-law’s condo in south Florida typing these thoughts, my ears search for the sound of the mourning doves’ coo. (Are they in south Florida too?) My son, who sleeps behind me on her couch, no doubt will one day associate certain sounds, sights, and smells with his grandmother and south Florida.

Mourning is temporary. Sin is temporary. Death is temporary. But even so, in the midst of these temporal realities, the dove weeps. I weep. Jesus weeps. And yet even in the weeping, there is comfort. For our God covers us under his wings like a mother hen, and one day he will come like an eagle, who will carry us home on his wings to a better land, where the crowing and the cooing are mixed in with all the sounds of creation in praise to the lamb that was slain.