The avian dance at the Newman Center

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth installment in the UB Reporter’s tour of spots on campus that hold special emotions, memories and good karma for UB faculty, staff and students.

Toward the end of research for this series about UB’s favorite places, another spot appeared, proof UB’s places of the heart go well beyond this list. Just outside the Bishop Edward Kmiec Chapel in the UB Newman Center at 495 Skinnersville Road are three bird feeders on a small lawn in front of a wooded area.

The three are clearly visible from four large windows inside the chapel, so when the Rev. Msgr. J. Patrick Keleher celebrates daily Mass, the birds can be seen in full activity, swooping, sharing, fighting, returning and eventually feeding from the three stations, all in front of pussy willows growing in the woods.

Keleher, director and campus minister for the Newman Center, says woodpeckers, blue jays, finches, red-winged blackbirds, doves and even a Baltimore oriole frequent the three structures. Anyone sitting in the chapel has a perfect vantage point to watch the quick, confident movement as they taunt squirrels and revel in flight.

Granted, the birds continue their activities during non-Mass times. But their little avian dance is particularly stirring during Mass. On this day in mid-July, Keleher is reading from Matthew Chapter 13, the Parable of the Sower, which given the birds’ objective of finding seeds, fits in very well.

“As for what is sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who in deed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty,” Keleher read that day.

The bird feeders were a birthday gift for Keleher five years ago.

“Those birds make it a better place to pray,” he says of the chapel. “It’s a very quiet room and it has the beauty of nature there year-round. It’s incredible in the winter.

“Imagine if you gave a student an assignment to write a paper and she wrote ‘The sower went out to sow.’ What an opening line. Where is that going?

“Holy smokes,” he says. “I’d give the kid a diploma right there.”

The birds also remind Keleher of the need to be joyful. Moments of joy. The birds are playful. So many grim academic minds. Freud, for one, concentrated on looking backward. Like the Gospel, the birds remind us to look forward. To celebrate joy.

“So when the time comes when it’s coming down on your head, you don’t remember what it’s like not to be joyful.” Keleher says. “Paint the ceiling of the basement white.”