The Critters
I like to jog before the sun rises. We moderns live in lights, all the time. The normal human experience before our time was to have dark nights and to see myriads of stars. I particularly like those rare occasions when the urban trail’s lights are out, and though it is then closer to dark, there are still nearby ambient lights that shine into the trail. I don’t get to experience what, say, would have been the ordinary life of Thomas Jefferson when he walked a few miles between dusk and dawn. Some of my readers caution me to be safe in the dark: but there really isn’t any significant danger. There’s always light.
Indeed there can be too much light. Over the past year I’ve noticed that many walkers and runners have started wearing body lamps; their light is so intense I turn my head to the side and lift my hand to block it. These lights are like approaching car headlights on high beam: they blind you to seeing anything else. They are so bright that you can’t see the person to whom they are attached.
But other humans are hardly all that one sees. There are racoons in my neighborhood; they cautiously poke their heads out, then amble awkwardly across the path. I’ve also seen a possum with its long snout waddle from one side to another. He also looks like he wished there were less light. Rabbits are all around; they seem more native to the trail. Sometimes they just sit in the middle of the path, frozen as if I won’t know they are alive.
There was a woman recently, stationary at the entrance to a bridge. She waved at me as I jogged past. Peripherally I then saw: cats. She was feeding the felines. I saw her again about ten minutes later but, with heroic restraint, managed not to growl.
It is silent in the very early hours. As dawn gets closer, one starts to hear our fellow bipeds chirping and singing. I never see the birds, but I can tell the hour, if not the season, by their voices. It is actually quite moving to hear the birds: a single chirp, repeated at intervals; a trill somewhere else; a sort of answer-and-response later on. It’s like the world is coming to life.
In a month or two we’ll start to hear the insects in the morning also, their own chirps and scratches and significant sounds (significant to others, not to us).
—
“Morning has broken,” begins the hymn, “like the first morning.” The hymn’s second line speaks of the blackbird’s first speech, which is like the first birdsong ever heard. There was once a first day, a new creation. It had its own morning, and in that morning a blackbird spoke. Every day God gives it to us again: the gift of creation, the many critters who praise him just by coming alive in the day. This day, every day, is the day that the Lord has made.
—
Out & About. On Sun., Feb. 1, the Good Books & Good Talk seminar will meet to discuss The Girls of Slender Means, a short novel by the Scottish writer Muriel Spark. Anyone who has read the novel is welcome to join the conversation (others may come and listen). We meet in Garrett Hall at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Dallas, on the 2nd floor, from 5 to 6:30 p.m.
I am to preach and then speak at St. Philip’s Church in Sulphur Springs, Tex., on Feb. 15.