Morning Meditations
“A bird is three things: feathers, flight and song. And feathers are the least of these.”
- Marjorie Allen Seiffert (1885–1970), American poet
Dawn’s delicate digits have not yet slipped into my bedroom, prying light from the grip of nocturnal darkness, and I have not stepped over the threshold from a place of semi consciousness to wakefulness when I first hear it, just outside my sliding glass bedroom door — the gentle cooing of doves.
It is much nicer than the artificial cacophony of a clock alarm. To have one’s senses roused by nature is so much to be preferred.
I have seen these lovely little brown birds before. Usually a pair (mourning or turtle doves tend to mate for life), they hover on the concrete patio outside a glassed door allowing egress from the family room to the exterior, fluttering away with quickness and sounds of alarm when I slide the curtain to one side, the better to illuminate the room’s interior with natural light.
It was not my intention to startle them. If that is the worst of my infractions this day, however, I will be grateful.
They take quick, dainty steps, heads bobbing, along the curved top of the masonry wall that separates my house from that of my neighbor a scant seven meters away. The tones of the wall — shades of brown with a tinge of green and yellow from fallen leaves that bleed color when they die — are variegated from weather.
Not unlike the skin on my face, I think as I gaze into a mirror and liberally apply SPF55 cream prior to a foray onto the tennis court. Most of the integument blemishes are benign, but the potential for something more inimical always lurks.
If this be the ounce of prevention that forestalls later pound of cure and remorse (a nod to Ben Franklin and his ‘Poor Richard’s Almanack’), it seems a small price to pay.
Memory lingers of those whose lives were cut short by melanoma (it being the deadliest of three common skin cancers, substantiated by information on the Internet).
But lest we become overly enamored with information, which caroms like subatomic particles through cyberspace, let us recall the haunting, cautionary words of poet T. S. Eliot, who in 1934 wrote in ‘Choruses from the Rock’:
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in [the pursuit of] knowledge?
“Where is the knowledge we have lost in [the pursuit of] information?”
(Brackets [] mine).
Poet Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” comes to mind. I think there may be merit to his observation that “Good fences make good neighbors.” I am fortunate to have convivial ones. Still…
In the kitchen, near the sink, I remain silent and as motionless as possible, for I have learned that window glass does not block my movement from the doves’ detection. They seem skittish as a foal. I understand their survival may well depend on their staying alert and paying attention.
As I slip out the front door to fetch the daily newspaper, I encounter several crows, smaller cousins of ravens. Black as transgression, they caw from the swaying branches of nearby trees and hop about the street, ever wary of approaching people or vehicles.
Nature programs remind us how intelligent these birds are, how some know how to utilize tools, as when they, holding a twig in beak, poke into a branch or log in quest of hidden insects or add stones to water in a container to raise its level.
I wonder: did Noah release not an ancestor of the doves into the air from the window of the ark? The first time it returned because the waters had not abated. The second it returned with an olive branch in its beak. The third it returned no more and Noah knew it was safe to debark.
And how privileged was another ancestor, a white dove, in whose form the Holy Spirit appeared at the immersion of Jesus by John the Baptist.
Did not a relative of these crows, a raven, fly out of the window of Noah’s ark, being the first bird to do so, after the Deluge had ceased?
Did not other relatives bring Elijah food twice daily by the brook Cherith during the years of drought, until the brook dried up for lack of rain and he was instructed to move on?
The birds of the air, including crows/ravens, and doves, and their cousin, the smaller sparrow, came into being from the Creator. His perspicacity is such that no sparrow falls onto earth without His awareness.
Scientists estimate there are at least 100 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. They also estimate that there are at least 100 billion such galaxies scattered throughout our vast universe. Their estimates may be on the low side.
If one accepts the above guesstimates, there exist at least 10[20] stars.
If the Almighty created all things, then he created all those stars.
The book of Genesis in the Old Testament of Holy Writ tells us that our earth was created ex nihilo and was spoken into existence.
Scientists estimate that the universe is a little less than 14 billion years old.
There are roughly 525,600 minutes in a year (not counting leap years). 14 billion years contain about 7.36 x 10[15] minutes.
If one accepts the premise that there are 10[20] stars, that number far exceeds the number of minutes in 14 billion years.
Stars (not to mention planets) would have been created at the astonishing rate of 1.5 x 10[5] (or 150,000) per minute.
However, I suspect stars were not created one at a time, but, at least at times, en masse, in clusters, their birth being akin to the streaks of light that burst radially outward from a central point in a firework display.
We’ve had a lot of rain this year. Some of us can bear witness to this firsthand. It seems as if, like a sine wave, weather is cyclical. Drought, floods. Years of little rain followed by years of much rain. Years of plenty and years of privation, as in Egypt in the days of Joseph.
Mark Twain commented, “Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.”
A small cloud, about the size of a man’s hand, as described in I Kings of Holy Writ, heralded the end to years of drought in a place long ago.
Seven times, as instructed, the servant of Elijah looked at the sea. Six times he saw nothing. The seventh he saw a cloud rising from the sea. Thereafter the sky became black (perhaps like unto a raven), and great wind and torrential rain came.
If my understanding is correct, a similar cloud, about the size of a man’s hand, somewhere in the region of the stellar constellation Orion, will one day appear and herald a different, more momentous event. Joyous for some, calamitous for others.
It will be, as poet W. B. Yeats titled one of his more famous works, “The Second Coming” (1919).
In the world to come, there will be no more clock alarms. And, I suspect, perhaps no cacophony of crows; if there be crows, they might make different, more euphonious sounds. Even the soothing cooing of mourning doves may pale in comparison to the sweetness that awaits the ears of those fortunate enough to receive such.
I think we get a foretaste of that when we listen to the finest ineffable classical music to come from the mind and pen of man.
As a sign on a German opera house read: “God gave us music that we might pray without words.”
Classical music was one of the three reasons writer and Christian apologist Philip Yancey believes in a higher power.
William F. Buckley, Jr. once opined that the notion of heaven without J. S. Bach was inconceivable (“If Bach is not in heaven, I am not going”).
I think they may have been onto something.
