I stepped outside. The news was too disturbing: Israel responding to Hamas’ atrocities; Iran and others threatening to widen the war; incidents of antisemitism and islamophobia reported around the world.
But outside, it was quiet. The orange glow of the sun signaled its wake-up call to nature.
Two birds were having a vibrant conversation just across the fence row. Turning toward them, I eavesdropped.
With the help of an app on my phone, I identified them by their sounds: a Northern Cardinal and a Carolina Wren.
Back and forth, they chatted, careful, it seemed, to let the other finish so as not to interrupt.
What would a Northern Cardinal have to say to a Carolina Wren? I’m no ornithologist, but they seemed to be communicating with each other, these two species of birds. Back and forth, they “talked.”
I later discovered that different bird species do communicate, though not in the way I had imagined.
The Cardinal wasn’t asking about the weather down in Carolina. Nor were they comparing what kind of worms they had for breakfast or complaining about how difficult it is these days to get their babies to leave the nest. Their “language” is 100% non-verbal, in the form of companion calls, alarm calls, and calls to mark territory, find food, and keep track of family and friends.
But what is surprising to me is that different species can communicate. The Northern Cardinal can converse with the Carolina Wren. Although the Cardinal and the Wren sounded distinctive, they communicated with a universal language. And much of bird language is about avoiding predators. What appeared like a calm morning conversation might have been the chatter of alarm.
Perhaps there was a threatening animal, maybe a cat, in the brush close to the birds, and the Cardinal and Wren were warning each other about it, keeping tabs on the predator’s movements.
And that brought me back to the morning news. We, too, have predators. We feel it, we sense it, we fear it. And we report it on our digital devices and news outlets ad nauseam. Unlike the birds, our analytical capabilities often give rise to fears that evolve into worries. We frequently base our worries on experiences, real or imagined, prompted by memories, personal and collective, cementing them into resentments embedded in our psyche, resentments we sometimes resolve as retaliation. We have a collective memory of wrongs waged against our forebears centuries ago, and we project them on an imaginary screen as threats to our immediate and future survival.
But birds don’t have that capability, of course. The Northern Cardinals don’t wage a war with the Wrens of Carolina to exterminate them as a species. The Northern Cardinals don’t create an alliance with the Blue Jays to fight the Carolina Wrens, who have joined forces with the American Robins to destroy the Cardinals and the Blue Jays simply because they happen to be Cardinals or Blue Jays. Neither do they stockpile weapons of mass bird destruction with the potential of destroying baby birds in the nest, birdnapping for hostages, killing wounded birds in the hospital, or even eradicating the entire Aves world population.
But we do.
Glancing back at the news, now happily skipping on to a story about Taylor Swift singing at a professional football game, I couldn’t help but recall Jesus’ words to us, admonishing us to ponder the birds who “don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns” because, he said, “your heavenly Father feeds them.” And then the question expecting an obvious answer: “And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are?”
If only we would trust God for that.
If only we would rest in God’s love for ourselves and then love God back and love others, all the others, the red, the yellow, the black, and the white.
If only we would recognize how precious each of us is in his sight.
If only…
…we would take a lesson from the Northern Cardinal and Carolina Wren.