It was her way of therapy as she grieved. Thirty-year old Mary Dana (some 11 years later, she remarried and took the last name of her second husband Robert Shindler) had experienced enough death in her life in the period around 1839-1840, and one of David’s psalm images gave her some solace, as she thought about “Flee(ing) As a Bird” to escape and find in the Lord the One who could provide comfort. Perhaps she’d had enough of funerals and even the beautiful flowers at them that are intended to bring hope and healing (See here the typical habit of placing flowers at a gravesite in a cemetery, like this one in France, on 4 July 2011.) And so, Mary turned to writing verses to express her feelings, crying out to Him on behalf of herself and others like her. Evidently, she had found what she so desperately needed in His embrace, and thus she urged others with her poetry put to music.
Mary suffered one tragedy upon another, then another, and another. At what point in watching as many as four others die did Mary think of fleeing? Her young son and husband both succumbed during a fever that became rampant in Iowa where they had recently arrived in 1839. This was after she had apparently already lost a sister and a brother in the space of the previous two years. She soon thereafter returned to her native South Carolina, perhaps as a way to leave behind the gloom and start anew. She must have felt like she was in flight, much like the bird fleeing to a mountain in David’s Psalm 11:1, even if that psalmist felt that this refuge-seeking method was ill-advised. When one is afflicted repeatedly, the reaction is oftentimes a gut-level response to fear, and one could excuse Mary if she was indeed feeling so much distress that she retreated into a secluded place. Unlike David, she must have thought that the mountain shelter was where she eventually found the succor of the Lord, for her poetry indicates that it was in this isolated place where she could wash in the ‘clear-flowing fountain’ that He provides (v.1). In short, she needed a place where only His voice – not death’s -- was in her head and heart. Instead of standing firm, as some might advise, Mary said to ‘haste’ (or ‘fly’, as some versions have it) in order to avoid ‘th’Avenger’ (v.1). Indeed, could Mary have also read of the many episodes when Jesus retreated, including so often to mountains, to pray by Himself and seek His Father’s face? (See Luke 5:16; Matt. 14:23/Mark 6:46; Luke 6:12-13; Luke 21:37; 22:39-46.) Especially if it’s sin that is ‘weary(ing)’ the soul, one needs to find Him in His space, to find ‘His bosom’ on which one can rest. Other miseries will surely come, but Mary said that He would not ‘forsake’ (v.2) someone who would ‘haste’ to Him, who needed to be free of ‘sighing’. He ‘wipe(s) every tear’, a promise that Mary must have read with hope in her bible’s concluding book (Revelation 7:17; 21:4).
Mary wrote the tune for ‘Flee As a Bird’ in the key of either D- or E-minor, but evidently not as a way to wallow in her sorrow. Instead, the uplifting parts of her lyrics are counterpoints to the burdens she bore that she could not just wish away. The woe she felt was not easily laid aside, but was certainly salved when she realized that He’s the remedy. Part of life’s challenge is not to wear rose-colored glasses and pretend that troubles are insignificant, but to know to whom you and I can go for strength, a most-certain strength. He also suffered in His physicality, and so His own body felt pain and His spirit also felt desolate, but He ultimately overcame. Hence, part of the minor key sensation that you and I hear in ‘Flee…’ must also be an acknowledgement of His awesome power to conquer death. Try hearing 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 in a minor key in your head, which is what Mary might have been thinking when she thought of death. You can hear it too, if you got Him with you.
Read about the hymn’s origin here: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780271096308-004/html and here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40071689 and here: https://drhamrick.blogspot.com/2018/11/flee-as-bird.html
See the hymn’s original verses and the short biography of the hymnist here: https://hymnary.org/text/flee_as_a_bird_to_your_mountain and http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/f/l/e/e/fleeasab.htm and http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/s/h/i/n/shindler_msbd.htm
See information on the image here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2011_Enterrement_de_Jacquotte.jpg …The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission…. https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en …found inside this document -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funeral
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