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.

. . . when God uses any of us to lead effectively, it is nothing short of a miracle. When we place the complex and demanding role of a godly leader next to an honest self-awareness of our sinfulness and incompetence, we are thrown wholly on the grace of God and his faithfulness if we are ever to lead anyone anywhere. (20)

. . . great, godly leaders have always worked at that miraculous intersection where humility and faith meet the awesome presence and power of God’s Spirit–and the miracle of leadership happens. (21)

Lest anyone mistake his drift, godly leaders are first servants, always.

Everyone in life has his work; he must apply himself to it courageously and leave to others what Providence has reserved for others. We must keep from specialization as long as our aim is to become cultivated men, and, as far as concerns those to whom these pages are addressed, superior men; but we must specialize anew when we aim at being men with a function, and producing something useful.  In other words, we must understand everything, but in order to succeed in doing some one thing. (120)

Sertillanges assumed the role of the liberal arts for general, foundational preparation, but he recognized the role for each person to work toward aptitudes, to excel in  special vocation, and to so excel by a “probing of the depths” that all of knowledge and understanding is enhanced.  (119-120)

This hews closely to life in community and in the church: one may not be all things to all the people, but one certainly may strive to be the epitome, the best, in serving out of giftedness.  One’s singular service makes all the difference in the particular and in the whole.

two new hatchlings

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.

9/16–The primary reference is to Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, which should be in release since September 9th.  (See the article in the Sep 2008 Wired .) Set on the planet Arbe where the people are either the Saecular (anti-environmental consumerist, sybaritics) or the monastic avaunts or auts who live and think amid ritual in the mathic world inside walled concents (sounds a bit like “cloisters,” eh?).  The four divisions of auts — Unarians, Decenarians, Centenarians, and Millennarians — are free to venture out of their assigned or chosen (?) concents according to classification:  by year, decade, century, and millennium.

Time is the central focus.

Already this sounds restrictive.  But suppose there could be an inversion of socio-cultural values that prized slowed time rather than life-lived-at-ever-increasing-velocity-with-no-end-in-sight — and decreasing returns on one’s efforts?

Some things to consider short of further comment for today:

First, the Christian tradition holds and provides an ideal, or varieties of the ideal, for maximizing time:  one in forms of the monastic tradition; another in expressions of Pietism; and another in personal expressions of piety and devotion, to name three examples.  And then — shall we never forget? — Sabbath, with an extra bolt of wisdom from the Israelitic/Judaic tradition.

Second, Jesus said something about rest; perhaps we should attend to that, too.

More later . . . .

The Baby is Paradox itself, himself: God the Son limiting himself to become a human person, growing up, showing the way to full personhood, all the time relying on the Father, all the time cradling culture’s captives in his arms of truth, mercy, and grace. Sinless. Yet, at the end is the cross, a cruel cradle, and the cradling Sufferer does his work, though with, only with, both arms nailed wide apart as if helpless, and indeed so, but for the moment. It is a work unto death, yet the grave does not cradle Jesus Messiah long; his cross-work paradoxically is not yet his completed work; the Father does not orphan the Child who in resurrection, his work now complete, again takes his rightful place in the Cradle of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And yet a greater Paradox: you and I are invited to the Cradle. Would we embrace the Child? But we need his embrace more: Can we embrace and be embraced? Now is the time to embrace the Paradox and settle your mind, down to the core of your life. Consider the song by Bailey and Larson:

Cradle the Baby, cradle the Child, sing to Him softly and gaze on His smile.

Infant of mercy, envoy of grace, look at His eyes and you’ll see heaven’s face.

Come to the manger, cradle the Light. Jesus is waiting with arms open wide.

Cradle the Savior, fell His embrace. Hold close the gift of God’s infinite grace.

God reached in mercy from heaven above, sending Christ Jesus to hold us with love.

With grace so amazing and love so divine, He merits our praises, devotion, our lives.

So cradle the Baby, worship the King, join with the angels and joyfully sing.

Love Him and serve Him, bring Him your praise. Cradle the Child, Messiah of grace.

Cradle the Messiah of grace.

(Lynn Shaw Bailey and Lloyd Larson, Glory Sound, Nashville, (c) 2007)

We’ll be singing this at Central Baptist Church, Marshall, Texas, on the 16th.

Nothing surprises us anymore. But the advent and more recent recognition of Pentecostal Scientology reminds me of some persistent verities:

(1) People continue to seek help; whatever is therapeutic holds a primary place in past and present;

(2) People in pain and need tend not to discriminate rationally or theologically — what works, sells;

(3) People need to hear and know truth consistent with ultimate truth, which we Christians in our orthodoxy must not only be able to explain but to demonstrate — and that involves the capacity to meet needs. That should help us to focus our prayer and preparation.