Joining the dawn chorus

I managed to get up reasonably early this morning (for a retired gentleman, that is) to inspect the world of nature outside before joining the monks for Lauds. The sun was rising and the birds were singing. Another day was in the offering.

Across the world, millions are already on the move in so many time zones - to and from schools and workplaces, hospitals and holiday destinations, visits both joyful and necessary. Millions more are still wrapped in sleep or waiting anxiously in some residential institution or place of care. Some, having no shelter, have passed the night beneath the open sky. Some live in constant terror of drones, missiles or violence.  Today is a wholly new day, rich with possibilities and marked also by challenges, hopes, and anxieties.

For some, this day will be their last on earth, as they are called home. For others, it will be the first day they see the light of this world, newly born.

New-born babies, I am told, can see only about twenty centimetres in front of them. They perceive light and darkness, large shapes, movement—and faces. Hearing, however, is already remarkably acute. Even at this earliest moment, a new-born can distinguish its mother’s voice, though not yet the meaning of her words. It is striking that hearing is also among the last faculties to fade at the end of earthly life – when someone is dying (or rather when they are in the pangs of delivery of birth into eternal life).

To breathe in the scent of spring flowers, to listen attentively to the dawn chorus, and to watch the gentle stirring of creation was a fitting preparation for joining later this morning in the great Eucharistic hymn of praise—the cosmic liturgy in which heaven and earth are united – celebrated in this lovely valley ‘where the mountains sweep down to the sea’.