Charles Spurgeon, arguably the greatest of Baptist preachers, knew how to begin the day: “The early morning hour should be dedicated to praise: do not the birds set us the example?”
And what an enlightening example God’s creatures perform for their Creator each morning. They are up early, giving back to God what God has given them. They don’t worry about what happened the night before. They have no concern about what the Ground Hog troubling me in my backyard thinks of them. Nor do they care if the corn in my garden approves of their distinctive chirp.
My trouble with the birds is with me, not them. My challenge is separating my personal praise to God from their distinctive songs.
That’s because I’ve become enamored with this new app on my phone. It’s amazing. It records and identifies bird sounds with a particular species, even posting a picture of the bird. I’ve always wished I could identify birds by their voices. Why didn’t I take a class on this? The multifaceted phenomenon of birdsong was never in my academic training. But with my new app, I can listen to and see an image of the bird. Lori and I take our phones on our walks: “Did you hear that? A Common Yellowthroat,” I say. And she responds, “There’s an Indigo Bunting,” pointing to the images associated with the sounds.
I’m wide-eyed, alert to the birds’ sounds and images on my phone. “All these birds are close enough for us to hear even though we may not see them,” I mention to Lori. “But they are all around us.”
The American Robin seems to be the praise song leader in our backyard, accompanied by the Song Sparrow and Morning Dove, with the Indigo Bunting, Northern Cardinal, Common Yellowthroat, and Brown-headed Cowbird making frequent and stellar performances. And we’ve enjoyed guest appearances from The House Finch and Red-winged Blackbird.
It reminds me of snorkeling at Turks and Caicos. Peering into the water beneath us, we were guests in another world, the sea filled with a variety of fish—including some sharks—going about their daily business, apparently oblivious to the tourists peering into their neighborhood. They were always there, though we didn’t see them, so close to us and yet so far. Our separate but intertwined worlds mingle: all part of God’s wonderful creation.
But here’s the rub: identifying the birds and their songs absorbs me. I listen to the recording, testing myself to determine if I know the difference between the American Robin and the Song Sparrow. Soon, I become so consumed with identifying one bird from another that I move from praising God in his sanctuary to studying birds in an imaginary ornithologist’s laboratory.
Thomas Merton, the spiritual master, tells of sitting in a woodshed, reading when a Carolina Wren landed first on his shoulder and then on the corner of his book. The bird took a second look at Merton before flying away. Merton observed that we “can know all about God’s creation by examining its phenomena, by dissecting and experimenting, and this is all good. But it is misleading because with this kind of knowledge, you do not really know the beings you know. You only know about them.” Merton concluded that ” there is something you cannot know about a wren by cutting it up in a laboratory and which you can only know if it remains fully and completely a wren, itself, and hops on your shoulder if it feels like it.”
I must finally let birds be birds and rest in the wonder of who they are: God’s fascinating creatures.
Hopefully, I’ll become familiar enough with the birds in my neighborhood that I’ll know the author of each distinctive song without looking at it on my phone. But I’ll let them praise God as they are and on their terms.
And I do believe I’ll join them, offering myself to God, surrounded by the Eternal’s love, all the wiser by watching and listening.