My owner announced the other day that he was off to see a bunch of starlings. Yes, starlings! The same noisy, greedy and endlessly pooing vagabonds that regularly visit our garden bird feeders. And not for the first time, I began to wonder if he had finally ‘lost it.’ I mean, why go on a mini migration, lasting one and a half hours, to see something undesirable that’s already in your garden?
Well, it turns out that he went to a nature reserve on the Somerset Levels. And he wasn’t alone in doing so. Other strange humans had made even longer journeys to be there, arriving from places as far afield as Sheffield and Cardiff. In fact, there was a crowd of humans more than a hundred strong all waiting for the starlings to appear above the vast, sprawling expanse of reedbeds. And appear they did. The first few waves came in, with around 30 or 40 birds per flock, all flying in a tight formation. And maybe I should give these starlings a bit more credit for their strategy, because there were several menacing Marsh Harriers out on patrol, waiting to pick off any weak birds or stragglers. By flying together in a tight formation, these starlings formed a collective whole, so that the Marsh Harriers left them totally alone. And then, all together, they would suddenly drop out of the sky like an intense shower of black hailstones, disappearing down into the safety of the reedbeds.
As the minutes passed, more and more flocks of starlings came flying in from all directions, -each larger than the one before. Soon there were hundreds, and before long, the flocks were many thousand strong, all adding to those already airborne above the marsh. At its peak, the formation must have been close to 70,000 birds strong, and it was then that the watching humans were treated to the most spectacular aerial ballet display. The dense cloud of birds moved in perfect synchrony, backwards and forwards, ebbing and waning, weaving and flowing, often changing shape, but always remaining as a single entity, as they moved across the sky, looking for the ideal place to touch down in the marsh. The watching crowd of humans was truly mesmerised. They kept exclaiming ‘ah!’ and ‘oh!’ and ‘wow!’ as if they were watching the climax of some spectacular firework display. And then, all of a sudden, just as if someone, somewhere, had pressed a button, all seventy thousand starlings plunged down together out of the heavens, and vanished into the safety of the reedbeds. The show was over for another day, and the human audience left knowing that they had witnessed something quite extraordinary. And maybe one or two took away with them, a glimpse of how this world could be. A world in which all humans could work together, as one, for the common good of all. Because I’m sure that’s how it is in Heaven. I believe that all of us in Christ form part of a collective whole when we die. And maybe that’s what Jesus is trying to tell us when He says ‘there are many rooms in my Father’s house…’
So maybe, just today, I need to eat some humble pie. For perhaps these noisy, greedy and endlessly pooing starlings can teach us all a thing or two, if we take a quiet moment to watch them and to learn. And then this world, like the next, can become that little bit better for all of us!
“The Christian life was never meant to be lived alone. Together we’re a body. A family. The people of God.”
(Matthew West: [1977 – present]: American Christian singer-songwriter).
“We are all connected. What unites us is our common humanity.”
(Desmund Tutu: [1931 – 2021]: South African Anglican bishop and theologian and anti-apartheid campaigner).
“The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptised by one Spirit into one body – whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free -and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”
(1 Corinthians 12: 12-13)
“…So in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
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