See the land, her Easter keeping,
Rises as her Maker rose.
Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping,
Burst at last from winter snows.
Earth with heaven above rejoices;
Fields and gardens hail the spring;
Shaughs* and woodlands ring with voices,
While the wild birds build and sing.
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You, to whom your Maker granted
Powers to those sweet birds unknown,
Use the craft by God implanted;
Use the reason not your own.
Here, while heaven and earth rejoices,
Each his Easter tribute bring-
Work of fingers, chant of voices,
Like the birds who build and sing.
--Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)
*archaic term for small woods, thicket
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6 comments:
It's good to enjoy the reawakening of creation after the winter. You can see how it brings resurrection to mind (although every Lord's day is a resurrection Lord's day!).
What kind of bird is that?
Thank you for visiting. Happy Easter. And so true about every Sunday being a mini-Easter.
The bird is a North American Eastern Bluebird. There is the very similar Wester Bluebird. This is a male. On the females in both species, the areas that are blue on males are grey. They do have the orange and white on them.
There's a third species in the higher elevations out west, the Mountain Bluebird. They are a lighter blue, with the breast being even lighter than that. They have grey towards the tail. These females are softer grey everywhere, with a bit of blue on the wing bars.
All three species are small birds. They face a lot of various threats, though the mountain bluebirds may not be under as much population pressure.
We have a saying over here, "the bluebird of happiness." Something led me to color all the times "birds" came up in the poem as blue, so I added the bluebird picture.
Easter here... somewhat in the spirit of the holiday. I did go to church. But thing after thing happens that makes me very disenchanted with the public face of Christianity over here... the constant fighting of the culture wars and the inevitable hypocrisy that surfaces on the part of far too many of those warriors.
I do like hearing the Queen's messages around holidays. It's a stronger draw during COVID times. As the BBC puts less overt Christianity into their messages, she adds more. She is unapologetic about being Christian. Yet she says things in a ways that recognize she's head of state of a pluralistic society, and leaves no doubt that she will do her duty for all, regardless of their beliefs. We could take a lesson here.
Anyway, have a blessed season! (We'll celebrate the season all 50 days up until Pentecost.)
Beautiful bird, I love birds. I have coloured doves that come up to my patio doors in the kitchen to tell me that it is time for me to put their food out. Nice poem.
Thanks for visiting, Brenda. We have doves around here where we live now, lots of them! I miss seeing a wider variety of colorful songbirds, but your comment reminds me to exercise gratitude for what I *do* see!
Thanks for the bluebird information; aprt from robins most of our garden birds are fairly dull, although not too far away there are brighter ones.
I'm afraid the mixture of Christianity and politics is a real problem in the US; I spend exv=cessive time on US politics; I am glad have don't have to choose who to vote for. "He is Lord of all things".
I liken the craziness of pushing the culture wars into things you can find in Jeremiah and Habakkuk before the Babylonian Exile. Jeremiah warned the people to quit rebelling, their version of fighting the wrong fights. No real blessings have come to Christianity by fighting the culture wars here; 45+ years of it, and most of it has gone against the religious right. So I feel it's our modern day version of fighting the wrong wars.
The people in Jeremiah's time kept pushing, kept rebelling against the Babylonians when God told them, outright, to stop doing this and they could live in peace in their land. Instead, they ended up with three deportations and, ultimately, their Temple burned. Then when the poorest of the poor were left, they assassinated their governor, one of their own. Then, scared of the Babylonians, they ran off to Egypt, dragging poor Jeremiah with them--- Jeremiah who had suffered so much in warning of the truth.
It makes me wonder if the Christian Right here isn't going to trigger some equivalent of the 'burning of the Temple' and drag some of us off to their metaphoric Egypt, when we'd warned that this wasn't the way to go.
I think it shows a lack of faith in God's Word to try to force things through politics. It's also diminishing the actual influence we have in society and leading to the younger generations opting out of church.
Anyway, despite what foolishness goes on in the church, "nature is never spent", at least not completely (as in Hopkins' poem above), though nature may "groan" (Romans 8). We have the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection, words from one of the Lutheran funeral services. This is but a drop in the ocean of eternity!
God bless!
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