The Wing-Beat

Buzzing swarms, snatched crisp;

Sing! Swoop! Swish! Wing syncs with beak,

Swallows’ dusk sortie.

-js

Some loved ones create delight by keeping their bird feeders stocked (with the avian-approved, “good stuff”) and waiting for the delight.  Hours of it come in flashes of cardinals, blue jays, orioles, finches, variegated blackbirds, black-capped chickadees, mourning dove, sparrows, and the seasonal many others.  They are delight on the wing, “wingborne” snatches of a common grace present in the general environment but focused at the feeders.  Yes, there are the fat squirrels and the after-dusk racoons, interlopers in something not intended for them, but who are they to turn down a good deal in that extension of common grace?  All are distinctive, and all take part in what is offered.

That wingborne delight comes from the givers’ provision.  The “good stuff” is not cheap, nor is it second-rate, the kind some birds turn away from–they understand stingy giving and simply choose something else.  The givers give for the sake of present and anticipated joy, liberally, and they get to share in grace redoubled.  It all comes from a life-attitude, not a singular, selfish desire just to enjoy the local wildlife, but to show they share somehow in a common life borne of a common provision.  It is so with the birds and is potentially true for all their relationships!  As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. 

The Father provides, and so do his children.  Grace is a gift received and given.  Providence is divine, but people pass it on to others.  It is not only spiritual or only material, mostly these are inseparable in the gift.  Either way or together, through the Spirit there is provision and there is delight.  It is the wingborne foundation for a life of joy. 

Our international culture lore and our use of domesticated birds abounds with the birds and the “wing-beat” of their work and significance:  storks bring children to parents; the hummingbirds–Mayan divinities incarnate–do they not sip the gods’ nectar?  The gospel dove descending upon the Son of Man (or in gospel songs on people as the Great Speckled Bird or the Snow White Dove); the swallows heralding spring at San Juan Capistrano; the American Bald Eagle, bird of peace first, then war; the albatross of Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; the California Sespe condors–a weak flock though they are outsized fowl.  The pampered peafowl of India.  Moving closer to our hearts, and table habits, the Thanksgiving Turkey (the wild turkey does indeed fly, yes, Sir, Mr. Franklin of Philadelphia and the Pilgrims of Plymouth!), and, just as with the chicken-domesticators of the Indus Valley, 6,000 b.c.e., do we not all (well, most of us) partake of the yardbird, aided these days by the Arkansas Tysons and the Texas Pilgrims?  And eggs, too. 

About the wing-beat, in another entry.

Franz Rosenzweig still challenges the West eighty-plus years after his death.  But as a teen-aged student, his often pithy diary comments suggested the later direction of his thinking and word-speaking.  Consider for example November 17, 1906:

Words are tombstones.

Words are bridges over chasms. One usually walks across without looking down. If one looks down he is liable to feel giddy.

Words are also boards laid over a shaft, concealing it.

To be a philosopher is to open tombs, look into abysses, climb down shafts.

Word-speaking, word-pictures — such as we find in his Star of Redemption later.

[from Nahum N. Glatzer (presenter), Franz Rosenzweig, His Life and Thought, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998]

Have you seen this?

Here and there, in the newspapers, advertisements, books, yes–in student papers–but even in publications from those folk who should know better, I find the expression, “As I was pouring over this idea,” or “I poured over his book,” or some whatnot . . . .

World, let’s not let the vulgar tongue take us down that trail!  One “pores” over something of interest such as a book; one does not “pour.”  The infinitives are, respectively, “to pore” as opposed to “to pour.”

There!  Now wasn’t that snippy of me?  Now, the interesting and instructive thing about these forms is that they both appear to come from the same Middle English “pouren,’ but somehow their spelling reflects a history of either transitive or intransitive usage.  Or they may be considered to have nothing to do with one another.  There is at least one instance of “pore” being used for “pour” in Chaucer.

I cannot resist musing about the avaunts in the concents of Stephenson’s Anathem who just might occasionally suffer from the acedia Kathleen Norris exposes in her new book Acedia & me:  a marriage, monks, and a writer’s life. Can you see, with me, the auts (avaunts) poking their heads out their doors and windows to see what everyone else is doing?

And among the four groups — the Unarians, Decenarians, Centenarians, and Millennarians — does the denomination suggest its members vary in their ability to cope with “the noonday demon” called acedia?  Do the Millennarians, who are allowed to emerge once every thousand years, have a special gift of focused discipline that allows them to endure?  Or do the others do better?  How do they vary in their encounters with boredom, or depression, or apathy?  Stephenson may have some answers from the geek-sci-fi- side; I’m reading Norris for hers.

Opportunity abounds for historical perspective to triumph! At least in tiny cliques of the historically informed here and there, where the sages cluck their tongues and reiterate endlessly, “Here we go again!” I refer to presidential election politics, “of course.” Read more…

From “Goodbye to All That,” by Steve Wasserman www.cjr.org/cover_story/goodbye_to_all_that_1.php

– on troubling changes in the culture of literacy:

The “most troubling crisis is the sea change in the culture of literacy itself, the degree to which our overwhelmingly fast and visually furious culture renders serious reading increasingly irrelevant, hollowing out the habits of attention indispensable for absorbing long-form narrative and the following of sustained argument.” Read more…

Have you noticed some signs of our frantic times? Who hasn’t? Consider, for example, the ways we speak — I mean the way many people are speaking these days in the broadcast media. Where have the verbs gone? Living and thriving the participles (and occasional gerunds) . . . I mean to say, the participles dominate in spoken news reports: “President Bush arriving in Crawford, Texas, today.” “A massive earthquake in Peru killing hundreds today — officials desperately seeking to restore service . . . .” My guess is that this is “headline speech” converted to spoken newscasts, but then it does spill over into the broader reports. I don’t see it in written journalism and I hope I never do.

Such speech could be intentional but probably is not. The style heightens the sense of immediacy and urgency in speech and writing, but the frequent clumsiness in media speech suggests it is neither intentional or planned. The Greek style of the Gospel of Mark employs the technique effectively, though. Mark situates the life and ministry of Jesus in an active, brisk, sometimes breathless setting wherein his divine mission and human needs constantly intersect.
Some words, and some neologisms, get too much exposure; we use them too much. Here are some I could live without, at least in the senses and ways they are typically used:

incredible– It seems to be the omnicompetent adjective of the day and is rarely used in its literal sense. It seems not to mean anything, really. Or too much: despite the intended praise, who wants to be known as “an incredible human being”? Don’t we need more credibility?
in-depth — I weep for the numerous, more suitable adjectives scorned in favor of that awkward term.

impacted — there was a time when the term referred only to wisdom teeth and bowels. It’s still an unpleasant word, even for a universal, verbalized noun-cum-transitive verb. What and who isn’t being “impacted” these days by something or someone? Why, only the other day the local newspaper related how one car impacted another in a crash! Moreover, these days one must surely be most effective or influential when one is impactful.

I could go on, but I need to confess that as we Americans change our speech in ways alternatively annoying and delightful, people around the globe continue to outstrip us as they use and transform English. Someone said the other day that the global language is not English but broken English. I’ll not lament that a language that belongs to everyone must belong to none; rather, I am relieved that I do not have to conduct business and life using broken Chinese or Russian. But I am perhaps no richer for that and my being functionally monolingual. And so my respect for international friends and acquaintances who have made great efforts, successfully, to learn English grows deeper by the year.

Spring on the Plains! and the Red River Valley. Well, not just yet, but soon. The weekend’s winds kicked up some 3-4 foot troughs on Texoma Saturday. They brought some more of New Mexico, West Texas, and western Oklahoma eastward, too, so there must have been a bit of dust-storming westward. I’m sure there will be more of the same in March. This year we have had “more” winter on the South Plains and the upper-Gulf Coast continental shelf. That has meant more rain than in recent years. But Texoma was still low. Other lakes are low. We need more rain, still. I hope it comes in the right places.

per-

(A prefix; connotes modification, intensification, as in perfection . . .)

My Dear, if I say you are gorgeous:

You knock my eyes out!

What if I say Hey, Per-gorgeousness?

Have I eyes enough to last? I hope so.