The song birds will again be heard

The normal peace and quiet is ruptured early when a cohort of tractors and trailers and other farm vehicles converge on the field which surrounds our house. A vehicle whips round ahead of the other two tractors, literally whirling the cut silage into raised lines of grass. Expertly, the other two farmers zoom round the field in tandem, one machine sucking up the grass and launching it into the trailer attached to the other tractor. It’s all done at break-neck speed as seagulls, pretty far inland, soar and dive overhead, excited at the meal they expect.

Now, two or three hours later, they’ve gone. The field is bare. I don’t even hear the seagulls. Perhaps they’ve moved on with the tractors, groupies in search of the next meal.

The glorious chorus of varied birdsong I heard last night, with the cuckoo as percussion, has gone silent in the mayhem. I do hear the odd crow, but none of the trilling and singing we usually enjoy. I know they’ll be back.

I look across the ‘pond’ at the land of my birth and I see mayhem and strife. In a paroxysm of pain with over 100,000 covid-related deaths. Writhing with over 40 million unemployed. With such a tinder box of heartache and sorrow, anger and fear, a racist crime committed by police has been the spark to ignite expressions of justified outrage. Expressions which began in peace, have been infiltrated and overtaken by noisy disruptors stirring violence and expressions of utter frustration.

There is a vacuum of leadership from the top. Nero fiddles while Rome burns. The commander in chief is playing golf, or eating a Big Mac, or staging a photo op in front of a church, or, worse, preparing to send out the military and quell the crowds with more violence.

It’s past time for dialogue to get serious, to mean something, to shift the endemic prejudice that threads through institutions and to bring about change. It’s past time for justice to break out, justice spouting like a fountain from the core of each individual, changing attitudes, changing traditions, changing expectations, creating a new normal. It’s past time for that new normal to really recognise the equality and dignity of every human being, regardless of race, gender, or creed.

There is no silence yet, and I don’t expect there will be for some time.

But my hope is rooted in Christ, the Prince of Peace. So as we watch in horror, I pray for us all: ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.’

The song birds will again be heard.

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