Sunday, May 2, 2010

Concentric Rings of Praise

My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord; In the morning I will direct it to You, And look up. Psalm 5:3



   God created in all of nature a universal language, natives the world over and several modern trackers give it the descriptive name of "Concentric Rings." It is a beautifully simple, but yet very incredibly complex and subtle language, it is basically pictured as a calm still pond (base line). If you drop a pebble in the middle, soon the ripples will expand from the center and cover the entire pool, and eventually return back off the shore and return to the center. But given time the water will return to its calm still baseline. This is exactly how it works in nature. The calm waters is when everything is going smoothly, the deer is grazing, the male robins are flying the perimeter of their territory singing their happy songs :), the chipmunks feel at ease to do their little daily duties, and the fox is peacefully trotting at his baseline gait or maybe soaking up the sun. Then all of a sudden our red bushy tailed friends tummy feels just a little bit too empty, he takes a little bit longer glance at our little chipmunk than he is comfortable with, and in a moment his subtle hunter body language is all it takes. The pebble is dropped, the peaceful pond is covered in ripples, Chip chirps and dives into his rock pile, RoBen sits up a little straighter fluffs himself up to his full manly potential and lets out a series of calls that all in earshot recognize, they respond by their own calls of alarm, and pretty soon the whole neighborhood of ground feeding birds and rodents knows that something is not right, Mr. Fox is hungry! Ya better watch out. Now Mr. and Mrs. Tohee that were feeding on the ground making their gentle companion calls to each other are suddenly completely silent and nowheres to be seen. Silence is an alarm as well, and depending on time of day and year, probably the most common one.  But you will notice that the Orioles in the tree tops really don't care whats going on down below, they never seen a fox climb a tree, their beautiful song continues, all is just peachy in their world. The deers ears will point in that direction, she might stop eating to look that way for a moment, but a whimpy little fox is really no match for her sharp hooves. She continues eating. A hawk floats over head, now we've got the Orioles attention as he dives down lower into the thickest part of his tree and begins his worried calls. All is calm again, its been maybe 10 minutes since any alarms have sounded. Everyone peeks their heads out, takes a look around and finally baseline is restored. All is well, Happy Day! :) I walk through totally in my own world, completely out of touch with all that is going on around me, "Boy its been a hard day!" a "boulder" is dropped from the sky and a wave of alarms flow out before me for maybe a 1/2 mile or more ahead of my course. "Hmm, I wonder why there's no birds or animals out today? Must be a bad day for everyone!" And so there you have it, that is the concentric rings of nature in a nutshell, there are 2 basic rules. 1) Nothing ever happens without a reaction & 2) Animals are extreme conserver's of energy, if somebody is making a call, any call without exception, there is a very good reason. Companion call, territorial, or alarm. Energy = Food, and food is not that easy to come by. Just try hanging on a tree and screaming "Help!" for 15 minutes, your going to be hungry. At least I was.. ;) lol

So now you wonder why I'm telling you this. The last few days I have been thinking about a certain time of day. I'm sure that all of you have at sometime in your life been up shortly before sunrise and stepped outside to hear what you thought at the time was the most glorious sound you have ever heard. The atmosphere was almost thick with the reverb of song, you feel like you are deep in some jungle. Well, this is the loop hole of bird language. And the predators know this. A coyote, cougar, weasel, etc. can stalk through your forest during these short moments of the morning, and not a bird will "tattle" on them. This is the hawks favorite time to hunt, he can snatch one bird after another without alarm  And also the rules of conservation no longer apply, this short time of song is "technically" of no survival value, but everybody joins in and sings His praises with all of his or her little might. The natives would tell their children that this was a bird in his thanksgiving ceremony and to not disturb them. Now I don't know just how much the birds know what they are doing, but I know they are glorifying God in doing what he created them to do. But back to my point, we are busy "birds," lol, we do our daily work, we call our companions, guard our own little "territories," and spread our own alarms and concerns. But when we wake, is our first thoughts of the day full of thankfulness? Do we sing songs to glorify God, despite the pressing concerns of our lives. Or how often does the enemy of our souls snatch our minds away to our worldly business because we "don't have enough time this morning."? Will we still openly sing our praises to God in those days when doing so means that our lives are in danger?
Jesus says, "If the people keep silent, the stones along the road will praise me."

2 comments:

Caitlin said...

:) This is one of my favorites that you've posted so far :) I really like the thought about singing every day!
I was running the biology trails about mid-morning today. We had hard rain all night and the creeks were full to their gills! So pretty! But I was amazed at the thickness of the birds singing - even at that late hour it still sounded like the middle of their dawn chorus! Just singing and singing! I wondered if they were just excited to have made it through the storm and into such a beautiful day :)

Teddy said...

That sounds really beautiful! I miss spending time in the woods so much. The changes make life feel so much more exciting and alive. I love a good storm, and the clean fresh start that comes after.