Friday, September 6, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Birds and men
Thus should one regard us: stewards of the mysteries of God.
Of course all the created creatures are included in the mysteries of God. And we are their stewards, made for such a time as this (since the dawn of creation). We did not claim this responsibility on our own. It has been given to us by God, freely given by our God of mercy.
A brown wren often comes to peck around the dirt in our patio plants. Yesterday a second wren joined up, and they searched the dirt together, not for worms so much as seeds, and for whatever else we might call detritus, but they call sustenance.
Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and be fed in security.
Few men are nearer to the soil than Wendell Berry, and he paints a doleful picture of our treatment of nature, of the land, and how it will treat us as we have treated the earth and its resources with careless greed.
I have no idea how long the world may tolerate such a violation of its own nature and of human nature. But it is immediately a disaster in the fundamental economies of agriculture and forestry. That is because, in any work of land use, the primary standard is not set by the market. It is set by Nature. The standard, inescapably, is health: the health of the natural world, which is upheld by certain laws, certain things that the human land user absolutely must or must not do.
When her laws are violated, Nature immediately begins to impose her penalties: waste, pollution, ecological degradation, sickness, unhappiness, insanity, eventually shortness of breath, hunger, and thirst. (p 435, The Need to Be Whole)
The consequences of our culture’s rapacious appetite catch us unawares. Whether it is others or ourselves who cut down the trees and dig up the earth. Whether we drive a car or a horse or a bicycle. Whether we use plastic carefully or without thinking. We are all in this together, whether we think about and try to care for the natural world around us or we don’t.
The birds too. We’re all in this together.
I greet a goldfinch as he perches a coneflower in my yard.
A red-winged blackbird greets me as I sit in the park in prayer.
The Holy Spirit hovers over me, out of sight.
When we care for the birds, we care for creation,
including ourselves,
and our pace slows,
and gratitude and kindness grows,
and we can fly free and be ourselves.
Noticing bird poop on my windshield,
I wonder who I have treated badly lately,
and I am sorry,
and I ask forgiveness,
and I vow to do better,
flying free. – Clarence Heller
I sit outside and listen in the dark to crickets all around me. If the air is not sooo hot, I can walk around the neighborhood and see the moon, stars in the night sky, and hear the scratching sound of a raccoon searching for its own food. So few of us who dwell on earth have this luxury.
I am the light of the world, says the Lord. Whoever follows me will have the light of life.
In the morning, I open the patio door, and the birds sing and flood my heart with joy. Sleep beckons me back to bed, but … no. How about stretching my arms and legs, singing back to those happy birds? Every day is a new day, full of new wine and song.
And new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins, so that the skin will not burst.
My brother John and his family made New Wine Fellowship their home in Lincoln for many years. Regularly, God poured into them. Outside the church doors, as is true throughout the earth, the birds sang. What mysteries confound us, but do not bother the birds at all?
The Lord does not forsake his faithful ones.
(1 Corinthians 4, Psalm 37, John 8, Luke 5)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
