The Eight O’Clock
News October 2016
Egging On I do so love to watch the birds and especially now that I am in the
process of creating an indigenous garden at home. I get so excited when I’m blessed with another new visitor that inquisitively alights on a new plant and examines it cocked-headed and beady-eyed. I love to observe the busyness of birds, their flight, their landings, their searching for nourishment and their building of homes— especially the weavers: how miraculous their grass constructions, some are even duplexes. Then of course their singing, chirping and chattering, the beautiful sounds of the dawn chorus and the daily joy that they seem to express. I even witnessed some plucky starlings sending out a squadron to dive-bomb a crow. At night, I was privileged to hear the rather spooky call of an owl. Going to my window I saw his silhouette. Upon seeing me, I saw him take off in silent blanket flight. Watching birds not only makes me feel one with nature but humble and at the same time transcendent. The busyness and joy expressed by birds leads me to contemplate us humans and whether we indeed do and become everything God wants us to be. I have been trying to encourage a friend to do more and be more, egging her on so to speak—but without much response. To quote CS Lewis, it’s a bit like this: ‘It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad’. My friend is a very decent egg.
October 2016 Eight O’Clock News
8 am Service, Christ Church, Kenilworth
I’d rather her ‘Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings’ (Victor Hugo). I want her like me to know and feel that it is God who is the wind beneath my wings! The nest might be comfortable to the bird, the ground far away, the sky too vast and the food too scarce but in the God-ordained cycle of life the egg must hatch. It’s all about growing and learning, diving and soaring, the joy in the journey and the pleasure in becoming. It is transformation and renewal. Sometimes there are no answers and we must wait on God until the time that He has planned for our hatching is right... but then we must be brave enough to flee the nest. When we’re waiting, ‘Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark’ (Rabindranath Tagore).
- Cheryl Anderson