Confident and Unruffled

Today is the feast day for Saint Margaret, mother of eight and queen of Scotland in the 11th century. According to this story by Amy Steedman, she was, on at least one occasion, given to noticing the qualities of birds that lend themselves to our example.

"Among the weary, spent travellers there was one who was calm and untroubled, whose face reflected none of the gloom of the skies overhead, on whom the dreary foreboding of the future cast no shadow. Fair and stately as a lily the Princess Margaret stood gazing across the angry waters, marking the desolate rocky shores, watching the white sea-birds as they swooped and rose again, as confident and unruffled as one of those white birds herself. For Margaret knew that a greater than an earthly king was with her, and that He, her Lord and Master, held the grey waters and their uncertain fortunes in the hollow of His hand, able as ever to calm the winds and waves of this troublesome world with that comforting command, 'Peace, be still.'"