Bullfinches

The bullfinches that visit our garden fascinate me because of the obvious closeness of the pair bond. It is in fact very unusual indeed for only one bird of the pair to appear, even in the height of the nesting season. The bright and colourful male is a bolder bird than his partner, although both can be fairly timid and wary as they come to the feeders. Earlier in the year I noted that the female only used to fat-ball feeder, which the male never visited. The pair I'm now seeing regularly may of course not be the same pair as then, but assuming they are the same birds, the female now generally takes sunflower kernels, as does the male. The other day I noted that the male had obviously finished feeding, but took a prominent perch on the top of the feeding station, later moving onto a slightly higher branch nearby, keeping watch until his mate had finished. Once she had indicated she was ready to leave, they flew promptly away together.

Bird Table Update

The birds are very busy at our feeders just now, with many young birds to be seen. At present we are just feeding sunflower kernels, and there are families of blue and great tits there most of the time, plus one or two coal tits, all of these also seen prospecting through the adjacent bushes and trees for insect life. Yesterday a pair of bullfinches were taking cherries from a tree very close to where I was sitting having my breakfast out on our patio - not eating whole berries (though these berries are really quite small), but pecking at them to remove the softer and juicier flesh; today I've seen juveniles at the feeders. Young blackbirds are frequently there, pursuing their parents and demanding to be fed. From time to time the parents relent and feed the youngsters. A family of greenfinches, parents and five or six young birds, were feeding on elm seeds.

Our feeders in the front garden are empty at the moment, and will need a thorough cleaning before being refilled. This has meant that house sparrows, generally only found in our front garden, are making their way to the feeding station at the back, to mingle there with chaffinches and goldfinches. I am still seeing occasional siskins, too, and there are always nuthatches around.  From time to time single long-tailed tits visit, so I presume they are nesting somewhere within reach. The two feeders presently in use at the back are supposedly both squirrel-proof, but the squirrels generally seem to be able to find a way, usually by tipping the feeder over so that seed is spilled out. I don't mind feeding them, really, but I do mind the fact that while they are there the smaller birds do not come close. The wood pigeons and feral pigeons that come to the feeders have little fear of squirrels, and will from time to time drive them away. Yesterday morning there was obviously a major argument within the local squirrel population, with lots of yapping and snarling, though all taking place behind a thick curtain of bushes, so, apart from the occasional glimpse of a twitching tail, nothing to see.

Birds singing include song thrush, garden warbler (I think) and of course the chiffchaff. Swifts and a few house martins can be seen overhead, and families of jackdaws and carrion crows have been noisily present close by. The fine weather is set to continue for a couple more days, then the onward forecast looks rather more wet.

Sunday Talk

. . . based on the previous post

The cuckoo is a pretty bird, she sings as she flies,
she bringeth good tidings, she telleth no lies,
she sucketh white flowers for to keep her voice clear,
and when I hear the cuckoo I know the summer draweth near.

It had been a few years since I last heard the cuckoo call, and then a few weeks ago I was standing on platform 1 of Whitlock’s End station, on the Warwickshire / Worcestershire border on a fine sunny evening, waiting for a train into Birmingham to attend a performance of the Verdi Requiem, when I clearly heard the cuckoo calling. It’s such an evocative sound, the music of which meant almost as much as the quite wonderful singing I was to hear later on in the Symphony Hall.

The other day I heard the cuckoo calling again.  A different bird, though it’s interesting that habitually we do generally speak of the cuckoo, as though there were only one of them. This cuckoo was calling from somewhere on the flood plain of the River Vyrnwy, between Four Crosses and Llanymynech, and he’d been calling for the greater part of four hours by the time I left, by which time I could almost have cheerfully throttled the bird, thus demonstrating that even the most beautiful music can become tiring if repeated for too long. I later learned that this bird in fact went on calling till nearly ten in the evening, which was quite a feat of endurance, I think.

I happened to mention the Whitlock’s End cuckoo on my Facebook page, and got quite a few “likes” from friends for whom the cuckoo’s song is as special as it is to me. But on the other hand, a friend who I think would describe himself as an atheist commented that for him the cuckoo was a conclusive proof of the non-existence of God.

Clearly I couldn’t let that go unchallenged, so I asked him why. “It’s the lifestyle of the cuckoo,” he replied. “It’s revolting!  Every cuckoo you hear calling is only there because it destroyed a nestful of baby dunnocks or reed warblers or meadow pipits, and now its offspring are going to do the very same thing. How could a God who created the world and looked upon it and saw that it was good have created something so horrible?”

Well, creation isn’t just fluffy things and sweet songs, and I suppose one of the issues in life for the believer is how we cope with the seamy side of things, the nasty stuff, of which cuckoos are just one example and, frankly, by no means the worst. Genesis very simply argues that everything was fine until the Fall, but once Adam and Eve had disobeyed God the whole of creation was thrown out of kilter and that’s how the bad stuff got in. I might not want to see it in quite those terms, and in any case what about the serpent who starts that whole story off, and who was one of God’s creatures?

Or perhaps I can just close my eyes to the seamy stuff and pretend that all of creation is all lovely, like the lions and zebras and giraffes in my little grand-daughter’s picture book, who all seem to get on together just fine. In reality lions eat zebras, given half a chance; when scenes of that happening turn up in David Attenborough’s films, my mother switches off. “I’d rather not watch that sort of thing,” she says.

But it happens. That’s how it works. And of course, of itself it’s all morally neutral. Lions don’t have a choice between being carnivores and perhaps (like me) going vegetarian. They are what they are. Nor are baby cuckoos being evil when they throw the eggs or the young chicks of the host bird out of the nest, so as to usurp their place. They don’t have any choice, but to act on instinct.

I tried to explain this to my friend, who came back with the example of the fox that killed all his sister’s chickens, when surely it only needed one, so the rest it presumably killed just for fun. But no, that too is all to do with instinct. Normally the fox would kill what it needed to kill, say one out of a flock, and by that time the rest would have scattered and found safe places to be, and the “kill” instinct would have gone. But chickens trapped in a coop that the fox has somehow entered can’t get away, and they’re flying about in terror, and the “kill” instinct doesn’t get switched off, but constantly restarted.

Even so, those who would want to argue the existence of a loving creator God from a perspective of “isn’t nature wonderful” can find themselves coming a bit unstuck when brought face to face with the “red in tooth and claw” side of things. The Christian writer Bill Vanstone many years ago tackled this dilemma in one of his books, and he compared the action of God in creation to the work of an artist painting a picture. At the outset, the artist will already have an image in his mind, or what it is he wants to express, of what the picture will be. And yet the finished picture is dependant not only on that image in the mind of its creator, but on the materials he chooses to use: water colours, oils, acrylic; paper, canvas or board. Creation is a co-operative venture - the mind of God engaging with the materials he has chosen to use.

It’s not an exact image, but it helps me to understand. In fact, the beauty of nature is no proof of God, and the perceived cruelties of nature are no disproof. And God wouldn’t have it any other way. He has made a world in which we are free - uniquely among his creatures we are free to choose, to make moral and ethical decisions, and to consider what we do or do not believe.

He has not made a world in which his signature is so obvious that we can’t help but believe, for such a world would have no room for love. Love demands freedom, and cannot exist without it. I could make, or at least I could imagine someone making an automaton, a robot, that could serve my every need, and say “I love you” whenever I needed it to. But it wouldn’t actually love me, for love is something you choose to do.

My friend and I never really concluded our conversation about the cuckoo. Maybe next time we meet we shall. His thesis is that I foolishly let my head get turned by the song, while ignoring the reality of the cuckoo’s life cycle and (I suppose) life style, which should lead me in quite an opposite direction. Against that, I’d want to argue that both the song of the cuckoo and the lifestyle of the cuckoo actually nudge me in the direction of belief; and they do so not because of what they are in themselves, but because of how I perceive them and respond to them.

I find myself encouraged to believe in God not because bird song is beautiful and flowers are pretty, but because of my ability to perceive them in that way. Bird song does a job: a cuckoo calls to warn off other males and to attract females, not to brighten my day or encourage me to think of summer. Flowers do a job: their colours and scents are there to attract pollinators and so produce the fruit and seed that will perpetuate the species. And yet we are able to delight in both of them, and great composers have been inspired by bird song, and great artists have been inspired by flowers. It is the fact that I can perceive beauty that encourages me to believe in God.

The call of the cuckoo lifts my heart despite my fears for the dunnocks and other small birds whose nests it may predate. I like the cuckoo’s call despite the seamier aspects of its lifestyle - but I am by no means blind to them.

And as I’ve already said, what a cuckoo does it does by instinct. It doesn’t choose to be nasty to other small birds.  It hasn’t made a moral decision right or wrong because it has no notion of right or wrong. Nor has it any way of choosing. That, incidentally, is why the endless round of animal sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem could never atone for the sins of the people. The sheep and goats and pigeons slaughtered there were without sin, but only because they could not sin, there was no possibility of sin in their lives. Jesus is the one true, pure and sufficient sacrifice because he could have sinned but chose not to sin (and of course he is the one true and perfect High Priest for exactly the same reason). Only in him are our sins forgiven, and what he does he does once, and he does for all.

But to return to the lifestyle of the cuckoo, and the instinct that leads the cuckoo to do as he or she does. I am not encouraged to disbelieve in God by the bad behaviour of the cuckoo, but quite the reverse: I am encourage to believe in God by the fact that I can perceive what the cuckoo does as cruel and unfair and unjust. For I discover in myself an awareness of right and wrong, of good and bad, and an ability to sympathise with those who get dealt a bad hand in life.

So I have an awareness of beauty that encourages in me the desire to create; and I have an awareness of good and bad that encourages in me the desire to reach out and to care. Isn’t this, don’t you think, what is meant when we are told we are “made in the image of God”? I am delighted by beauty; I am angered by injustice and by needless pain; and as I reflect on these two remarkable things I find myself moved into faith. And as I stumble along that road I find my poor and feeble attempts at love to be met by a persistent sense of the way in which I am loved, and by the inclusiveness of that love, the love shown to the world, revealed among us, in Jesus.

Cuckoo

A cuckoo was calling insistently throughout this afternoon at Domgay, Llanymynech, where I was gardening and getting attacked by some rather nasty buzzy flies that wanted to eat me.  Hated the flies, loved the cuckoo - to begin with, anyway.  There did come a point at which I began to long for him to shut up!

It is some years since I last heard a cuckoo call in this area, though I've heard them elsewhere of course - most recently on platform 1 of Whitlock's End station, Shirley, while waiting for a train into Birmingham. So of course it was a delight to hear one today, and reassuring - there are still cuckoos around in this part of the world, despite the sharp fall in overall numbers of this iconic summer visitor.

We delight in the cuckoo's call, and he features in many a folk song, but of course cuckoos have a rather nasty life style. Laying eggs in other birds' nests allows the cuckoo to raise a much larger 'brood', potentially at least, than it might if it had to build a nest of its own; and it also allows the parent birds to leave for Africa much earlier than other summer migrants: "June, she'll change her tune / July, she will fly", as the song puts it. The cuckoo call may be a lovely sound to us, but it isn't to reed warblers, dunnocks and meadow pipits, three species commonly parasitised.

A friend told me the cuckoo is for him a powerful argument against God. How could a benign creator make something so horrible and so destructive of others? Leaving aside the simple fact that there are plenty of examples in nature that might seem to us worse and more evil than the cuckoo, I would still want to argue that in the cuckoo I find displayed some of the reason why I do believe in God, maybe at times rather against the odds.

First, I believe in God because I marvel at our human ability to perceive beauty in the cuckoo's call. Birdsong and bright flowers are not intrinsically beautiful - or at any rate they are not placed on earth in order to be beautiful to us; they are there to do a job. But we find them beautiful, and are inspired by them to compose great music, or to paint great pictures. I am amazed, not at beauty itself but at my ability, and yours, to perceive it.

Second, I believe in God because I recognise the unfairness and cruelty of the cuckoo's behaviour. The cuckoo doesn't - it just gets on with doing what cuckoos instinctively do. How does the cuckoo chick know it must eject the other eggs and chicks from the nest and take sole charge? And how does it know to fly south to warmer climes, long after its parents, whom it has never known, have left? I'm at a loss to understand instinct and how it works. But I know that for me to steal and cheat and supplant as the cuckoo does would be wrong, and, even though I recognise the cuckoo bears no guilt because it does not do what it does out of choice, I still find its behaviour revolting. I am amazed that I know what is right, and what is wrong.

None of this is a proof for God. And, for that matter, I do accept that not everyone has the same ability to perceive beauty, and history (not to mention my newspaper this morning) is littered with examples of human cruelty and brutality whose perpetrators seek to justify and even applaud. None the less, the cuckoo's call leads me not away from faith, but toward it.

Song Thrush

I can hear him, though I do not see him:

the song thrush is invisible, even on his high perch,

now the trees are so well clothed,

but his repeated notes stir the air and make it tremble

on this still and drowsy June afternoon, not far

from where I am kneeling, fork in hand, ready

to attack the weeds.  And his sweet and plaintive music

touches a long-forgotten chord in me, so the memories remain half-hidden

of some other garden, and some other day.

But what I do recall is how I delighted

in the shards of snail shell I discovered

on the pebble path around my childhood patch of ground.

We children each had our own little garden -

I planted feverfew and raspberries in mine, and some peas

(which hardly grew, as I recall), and a houseleek

culled from the flat roof of Granny’s outhouse;

it was a delight and wonder, this growing of things,

but far more, that a song thrush should choose these stones I planted

as an anvil on which to break his snails.

The particular and special stone he used, a little larger than the others,

I brought back from Llanfairfechan, I think.  How good

that he thought it special too.

We always had song thrushes in those days; today,

like the starlings and sparrows that used to compete for our scraps,

the speckled thrushes have mostly disappeared,

or so it seems.

So I am glad to hear this one still singing,

and that he should sing my childhood’s song.

Jay

My 'Nature Notes' column for the coming month :-

I opened my bedroom curtains the other day to find myself almost eye-to-eye with a jay that was perched on the roof of one of my garden sheds. To my surprise, it didn’t take flight immediately but stared back at me for a while before moving on. Jays are very handsome birds, with a mainly pinkish-buff body, a distinctive blue wing patch, and flashes of white on the wings and tail that are clearly seen when the bird takes flight. It has a bit of a crest, too, which is streaked black and buff, and something of a black moustache marking either side of its beak.

The woodland to the back of us is ideal territory for a jay, particularly as it contains a number of oak trees. Jays are omnivorous feeders and therefore share some of the unpopularity of the magpie; they are not above stealing the eggs and nestlings of other birds, and they will also take earthworms, insects and small mammals, but their main food is the product of trees, with acorns top of their list. This bird is in fact sometimes called the ‘acorn jay’, and jays habitually bury acorns as food for winter. ‘How do they remember where they put them?’ you might ask, and the short answer is that they don’t, or not always, anyway - so their burying of acorns is very helpful to the tree, helping to ensure new seedlings can grow some distance away from the parent tree.

The jay’s Latin name of Garrulus glandarius reminds us that this is a bird more often heard than seen (though see my note below). It is indeed garrulous, and will greet intruders onto its patch with a harsh and raucous call that is quite distinctive. If seen in flight, the white markings on tail and wings are distinctive, but so too is the flight itself, undertaken in a slow and somewhat cumbersome style, with rather laboured beats of its rounded wings.

Like that of the magpie, though to a lesser extent, the jay population has been increasing, and, though generally regarded as a wary bird, in my experience this is far less the case than it used to be. Visiting my daughter recently on the Warwickshire / Worcestershire border I had close encounters with two or three jays as I walked along the country lane near her home, and they didn’t seem particularly shy at all. Certainly you can get much closer to jays these days than in the past. (That visit was also notable for a very close encounter with a grass snake, which slithered by, on a pleasant sunny morning, just a couple of feet away from where I was standing looking over a gate. More on grass snakes another time, perhaps.)

Jays build untidy nests of twigs, lined with hair, in trees, and lay between five and seven eggs. The young birds spend about three weeks in the nest before fledging. Jays are residents of the UK and do not generally move very far from home. They can be found through most of the country, but are absent from the far north. Some continental birds, often lighter in colour, may arrive in winter.

The National Botanic Garden

Last weekend Ann and I visited the National Botanic Garden of Wales for the first time, but not, I hope, the last.  This is a wonderful resource, and if here and there it looked a bit shabby around the edges, it was a most enjoyable visit and there was lots to do and see.  The photo above was taken in a corner of the walled garden, and manages (despite a rather cloudy sky) to look quite exotic.  This is still a very new set of gardens, and in its short life I believe it's come close to collapse twice already.  I hope it continues to get the support it deserves, from both the funding authorities and the paying public.  I'd hate to see it go ever!

Gate

It has been my experience so far

that however high and hard the wall

there is always a gate. There may perhaps

be no obvious path, and it could be the handle is rusted

and hard to turn; but in the end there is always a gate,

a way to somewhere better, to a setting right of things

when all shall be well, and all manner of things

shall be well.  If you have not yet found the gate

then it is not yet the end.  Wait, and search,

hope and pray.

Remember

A short verse written for a funeral I'm presiding at :-

As you stand on the shore, 
and you gaze out to sea,
though you see me no more,
remember me.
Love be your guiding light,
as you take the road on;
though no more in your sight,
I have not gone.
As the stories are told,
and the memories stay,
far more precious than gold
is love’s bright way.

The Lizard and the Fly

Adrift from the normal flow of things

he is watching the progress of a lizard

across the window pane.  Someone is speaking

as others listen, but he can find no way

to become part of their conversation.  Time

is running at a different pace in his mind,

in his heart,

and the essential geography is all askew.

The lizard (“Is it a gecko?” some part of him wonders)

is on the outside of the glass,

and on the inside there is a fly.

The lizard is stalking the fly, but cannot catch it,

cannot touch it, cannot understand why;  while the fly on its part

seems oblivious to the lizard.

The fly continues to buzz against the pane,

the lizard continues not to catch it.

People continue to speak.  And so the morning progresses,

this meeting at which he has to be present, even though

he cannot truly attend.  Only a fraction of his self

is even attending to the comic drama of gecko and fly,

which at least has the virtue of novelty.

“What is wrong with me?” he wonders.

What is wrong with me

is that I am still on the wrong side of the glass;

nothing I see is able to catch me, for I am not really here.

I left too much behind;

the beating heart of me is elsewhere, on some other continent.

I remain out of reach

and out of touch.

Nature Notes

Hornets - my monthly 'Nature Notes' column . . .

Visiting a National Trust garden in Norfolk a few years ago, we were fascinated to see quite a few hornets quartering the flower beds. Hornets are our largest social insect, forming colonial nests like their smaller close relatives, the wasps. Hornets have yellow and brown striped abdomens, not yellow and black like a wasp, and in the UK they are found mostly in South-East England. I remember coming across a nest in Kew Gardens, which had been identified by the staff and labelled, also fenced off, but with a suitable vantage point for visitors to watch from. Hornets pack a fairly serious sting, but are in fact much less likely to sting than the smaller wasps - they are pretty even tempered insects.

Anyone seeing a hornet in these parts probably hasn’t. There are, however, a number of other candidates that can be mistaken for them. The first of course is a queen wasp. There are several species of social wasp in the UK and they do vary in size. In Spring only the queens will be seen; they have survived the winter and are now preparing to start a new colony, feeding up and searching out a suitable site. They are of course much larger than the worker wasps, and can easily be mistaken for hornets - except that their abdomens will be striped in yellow and black.

The giant wood wasp can also be mistaken for a hornet (though only by people who have never seen hornets). It is a seriously big wasp, with a narrow yellow and black abdomen. It looks quite menacing, with what might appear to be a long sting protruding from the abdomen. These creatures are also called horntails. In fact the ‘sting’ is an ovipositor, a tube for placing the egg carefully into the wood of a usually diseased tree. The larva burrows into the wood and will live for perhaps two years in the larval state. The adult wasp is in fact quite harmless, having no sting at all.

Two other creatures may be mistaken for hornets, neither of which belongs to the wasp family at all. I remember seeing one on a visit to Lincoln, sunning itself on a stone in the cathedral yard. It was a hornet clearwing moth.  This large moth quite brilliantly imitates a hornet: it has clear wings, hence the name (they are in fact brown bordered), and a bulky abdomen striped in just the same way. They are not particularly common in the UK, but can be found. Other clearwing moths, such as the more common currant clearwing, imitate smaller wasps; the hornet clearwing, however, actually manages to move like a hornet, too. This important protective adaptation sadly doesn’t work with human beings, who routinely kill this harmless insect.  Hornet clearwings fly in high summer - July and August.

Finally, the broad-bodied chaser, a species of dragonfly, can also be mistaken for a hornet, as both male and female can have abdomens in quite a bright yellow when they are newly emerged (the male develops a blue body, and the female darkens). Their wings are obviously dragonfly-type, as is their flight, and though some people persist in believing that dragonflies can sting, they don’t.

Funeral Poem

I wrote a new poem based on the line 'miss me, but let me go', for a family and situation where the words of the existing poem seemed inappropriate :-

When the long day closes at journey’s end
and the sun sets red in the sea,
let there be no prayers of grief or gloom
as you come to think of me.
Though we cannot see beyond that veil
where the lamps burn faint and low,
you must leave me to travel on alone:
miss me, but let me go.

Ahead lies a road through the sunset sky:
it’s a way we all must take,
when the day is done and the shadows fall
and our last farewells we make.
When your world grows cold and the skies are dark,
and the gathering clouds hang low,
remember the sunshine we knew before:
miss me, but let me go.

Blackbirds

Is it my imagination, or are there more blackbirds about this year? Driving along a lane not too far from here the other day, I seemed to encounter blackbirds at very regular intervals all the way along, so clearly those hedgerows (good thick ones, granted) held quite a density of population.

Blackbirds have been very busily present in our garden, with some good arguments between competing males, and some fine singing too - this is about the only song to make it past the sound barrier of our double glazing as the dawn chorus begins!

Yesterday a male blackbird was feeding his more or less full-grown young bird below our feeders. The spotty breasted youngster was the size of his or her dad, and very noisy in demanding attention, but still with a very distinctly orange gape. This is obviously a successful early first brood, and a sign that this has been a remarkable spring, with some fine weather and early growth following our drippingly went but nonetheless very mild winter.

We had a song thrush singing in the trees behind us late yesterday afternoon, too. While this was not such a rich and velvety voice as the blackbirds, the song contained some remarkable flourishes and was full of invention, with each distinctive phrase repeated: quite delightful.

Sunday Talk

. . . for tomorrow :-

I had a very strange conversation the other day, with a friend and colleague. It concerned a lady we both know. Ann and I have known and exchanged Christmas and Easter cards with this lady for years. And as it happens she lives along the same lane as the friend to whom I was talking. What was strange was that neither of us could remember her name. Between us we could have told you all sorts of things about her, except that neither of us could remember her name. It did pop into my head later, so thankfully I don’t seem to be completely senile; but how strange - someone we knew so well, knew so much about, and neither of us could manage to prompt the other into remembering her name.

Now to be fair I always have had a bit of trouble remembering names. And one of the things that stops me from remembering names is that another name sort of pops into my head and gets in the way. In this case it was Doreen. The name Doreen had turned up from somewhere, and though I knew it wasn’t the name I wanted (indeed, it bore no relationship to the name I wanted), somehow I couldn’t make it go away, and while it was stuck there the right name just couldn’t get a look in.

Well, that’s my problem; generally, the issue for me is that I can usually remember faces quite well, but I’m not very good at remembering names. But there are times when it’s the face we don’t notice or recognise, and there are a number of reasons why that might be so. We may see someone out of context, for one, or they may be dressed in a way we don’t expect. I find people often don’t recognise me, for example, when I’m wearing a hat. Last Thursday I was in Ludlow, and I happened to see someone I knew walking straight towards me down the street. I said hello, but they walked straight past me. I don’t think it was a deliberate snub. They hadn’t expected to see me in Ludlow, so they didn’t.

Jesus isn’t recognised in the passage I’ve just read, from St Luke’s Gospel. This a set reading for today in the Common Lectionary used by churches around the world, and it’s part of Luke’s account of Easter Day itself, so as news it’s a fortnight old now. In fact this is the first place in his account where Luke documents the risen Christ appearing to anyone. In Matthew and John Jesus appears to the women, or at least to Mary of Magdala; but in Luke, though the women are given a message to take to the disciples, they encounter only the angels at the tomb, and not Jesus himself. And the story they brought to the apostles was anyway dismissed as nonsense.

So maybe it’s not too surprising that two disciples making their way home like so many of the other Passover pilgrims, should fail to recognise Jesus even though he’s walking alongside them. There’s no way they could have expected to see him; so, in essence, they didn’t. In any case, in their state of depression and confusion, they probably didn’t even look at the other guy, not straight away, anyway.

“We had been hoping that he was to be the liberator of Israel” the two disciples told the stranger, having told him the story of all that had been happening, even including the strange report brought to the disciples by the women who had been to the tomb. They knew the tomb was empty, but they couldn’t think of any good reason why it should be. And to me there’s a world of sadness in that stark and simple phrase, “We had been hoping . . .”

An empty tomb. What difference would that make? God’s messiah had been taken, scourged, crucified, pieced, bloodied, broken, killed. When what should have happened was the revolution they and so many others had been praying for: the end of oppression, the restoration of the throne of David, the purification of the temple and the removal of infidels. It had all gone so badly wrong, and nothing could set it right.

So why on earth should they recognise that messiah now, that hoped for king? His story had ended, and their hopes were dashed. “How dull you are!” says Jesus in response, “How slow to believe . . .” And he patiently begins to explain the truth to them: that these things that have happened were never God’s plan going wrong, God’s best efforts being thwarted, but God’s master plan being worked through as was always intended, his plan to bring salvation not just for one people, but through that people for all the world.

By this time their hearts were burning within them, though it seems still not sufficiently for them to identify the person who was speaking to them. They reach their village, and he makes to travel on; they say “Don’t go on, stay here, it’s almost dark.” And their hospitality leads to recognition.

It’s as he breaks the bread that they recognise their Lord, and at that moment he disappears from their sight. Luke surely wants his readers to reflect that whenever we break the bread of holy communion we are brought somehow specially close to our Lord, and he to us, and we can recognise his presence among us. Anyway, the two disciples race back from Emmaus to Jerusalem - to find when they arrive there that Jesus has also appeared to Simon Peter - a meeting we have no details of, we’re just told that it happened.

I sometimes wonder whether the most important part of this story is contained in the fact that these men turned straight round and went back to Jerusalem. They couldn’t keep the good news to themselves. As the Presbyterian scholar William Barclay has written, the Christian message is never fully ours until we have shared it with someone else. The German theologian Emil Brunner wrote that the Church exists by mission as a fire exists by burning. We learn straight away from this story that what we’re to do with the good news of the risen Christ is to share it.

But I do want to return for a moment to the theme with which I began, this business of not remembering names and not recognising faces. You’ll have seen how this is a repeating pattern within the Easter stories, increasing the general sense we have of mystery and strangeness. As we’ve seen, there could be a simple human explanation - that very often we simply don’t see what we don’t expect to see; and commentators have often gone on to suggest other possible reasons why Jesus isn’t recognised: for example, when you’re walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus at the end of the day you’re walking due west, and you’ll have the setting sun in your eyes; or maybe Mary of Magdala in the garden was so blinded by her tears it isn’t too surprising that she might have thought she was talking to the gardener.

But I’d like to suggest that there’s a deeper meaning too, and it’s to do with the meat of today’s story, and the fact that Jesus explained to the two disciples just what had really been happening, and how all of it had been foretold, and was in accordance with God’s plans. At it’s simplest, it is this: Jesus did not come back to life on Easter Day. Easter isn’t God repairing the damage done on Good Friday, putting the show back on the road, and the resurrection is neither a resuscitation nor a dazzling magic trick.

On Easter morning, with the tomb empty, Jesus has gone forward into new life. He is the same person, and he will show his disciples the wounds in hands and feet and side to prove it. It isn’t as though those things never happened, it isn’t as though he never died. But even so, this is something new, not simply a return to the old. The grave clothes are left lying in the tomb, to be needed no more. So there is now something different, perhaps a new light, a new sense of glory. It isn’t entirely a surprise that even those who know Jesus well don’t recognise him straight away.

Jesus has gone forward into new life, into a new life that we can never attain, it is beyond us. Except that he makes us worthy of it, he invites us in, we are the beneficiaries of his grace. He is, as St Paul reminded the Christians in Corinth, the first fruits, opening a way that we are able to follow. So it is indeed in the breaking of bread that he is fully recognised by the two disciples, that the scales fall from their eyes. For the breaking of the bread symbolises the wonderful truth that we have a share in all of this, and we can dare to call ourselves an Easter people.

Finally, just an extra detail that struck me on reading through this passage again. Another mystery: that while Jesus spends seven miles worth of journey in the company of the two disciples, talking to them and responding to their questions, somehow, back in Jerusalem, he also appears to Peter. How this happened must remain a mystery, but it reminds me of this great truth: that wherever we may travel as Christians we shall never be travelling away from our Lord. This is the good news that has encouraged and empowered the Church in mission throughout the centuries. Indeed, there are many stories of Christian missionaries discovering on their arrival at some place they’d imagined to be desolate and godless, that Christ was already at work in that place and among those people. Their task in mission was not so much to bring Jesus in from somewhere else but to find him and recognise him and proclaim him. At Easter, the risen Christ is let loose in all the world, where no-one can stop his truth. For us as Easter people, we can believe with confidence that we live always and everywhere in a Christ-filled world.

Lord, give us such knowledge of your presence with us, that we may be strengthened and sustained by your risen life, and, infused by joy, may serve you continually in righteousness and truth. Amen.

Sedge Warblers

I love it when our local sedge and reed warblers are back from foreign parts. They are delightful little birds, always very active, and fun to listen to as well. Theirs are not the most musical of songs, but "sedgies" especially produce such an amazing concatenation of sounds that it's hard to remain straight-faced while listening.

There were two or three sedge warblers in the hawthorn hedge along the canal towpath this morning, and I was able to stand very close to them and to get the full blast, so to speak. Unlike reed warblers which really are reed specialists as regards nest sites, sedge warblers, while staying close to water, are happy in a wide range of shrubby and scrubby habitats. These birds were rootling through the hawthorn (which is just beginning to flower), keeping on the far side of the hedge from me, but nonetheless reasonably visible, as there's still a bit of leafing up to do yet.

They were just one of the sights and sounds of a spring walk that was full of variety and loveliness, some of which perhaps I'll write up later on.

Tree Creeper

Two interesting visitors to our garden this afternoon. The first is a bird I've been looking out for all through the past winter, but without success - common enough, but hard to spot: the tree creeper. We had one the winter before (in harder weather, admittedly) that hawked about on our brick walls for what it could find. Today's bird was doing what tree creepers always do - creeping in a mouse-like way up the trunk of a tree, in this case the elm just to the back of us, which is well laden with flowers, I notice. It will often creep in a circular motion up the trunk, and will then fly back down to start again. Unlike the nuthatch, it can't creep down the tree, only up.

The second visitor, arguably less welcome, was a magnificent male sparrow hawk, a pocket version of the female, and very handsome in slate grey. He perched on top of the feeding station, which I suppose gave him a good field of view; at any rate, the speed at which he dashed off would suggest he'd seen something to fly at. We've lots of pigeons around at the moment, so they might be good food for a sparrow hawk, though perhaps too large a prospect for the smaller male.

Robins

Our garden seems full of robins at the moment, and they are fascinating to watch. Our feeding station falls within the territory held by one pair, but is clearly close enough to an adjacent territory for it to be worthwhile trespassing into.  Since all robins look alike to us - though I suppose they themselves must be able to tell the difference, I wonder how? - I can only tell them apart by their behaviour.

The resident pair basically behave as though they owned the place, which, from their perspective, they do. Robins are not as adept at using seed feeders and the like as are the tits, siskins and goldfinches that are our commonest garden birds, but they do all right, and are prepared to dominate where they get the chance, taking up a threatening pose on the top of the pole and at times driving other birds away. This strategy does not work with the nuthatch, it may be noted.

The resident pair are quite often both there together, and they are very busy and active, which leads me to speculate that they may have chicks in the nest. I don't know where their nest is, but probably in the woodland behind our garden, I should think. I know that friends have robin nests with chicks in their gardens currently. One of the pair may stand guard while the other feeds.

The interlopers usually fly in quickly with the aim of grabbing what they can as quickly as possible. Usually it's just the one bird, sometimes the pair together. If the residents are about a fight ensues, which doesn't last for long - the gatecrashers quickly leave. This morning, one of the resident pair managed to dislodge a large chunk of fat from our fatball feeder. It fell to the ground, where the other of the pair pecked at it. Then one of the interlopers arrived, tried to stake a claim to the morsel, and was driven away by the resident birds. Sadly for them, while they were doing that a passing female blackbird seized her chance, and the morsel, making off with it!

Easter Poem

Each Easter morn’s a new blest tide of love,

A world set free from sin and pain of death,

Silver the dew, clear blue the sky above,

The myriad scents of spring fill every breath:

End of each sorrow, cure for every pain,

Risen and free, my Saviour lives again.

An Easter Talk

As I sat down on Good Friday evening to work on my text for today, I took a moment to scan my emails and was distressed to read that an old friend and colleague had passed away on Palm Sunday. It’s nearly four years since I last saw him (in the airport lounge in Dar es Salaam, as it happens), and I recall that he’d been ill then, but his illness was under control. I hadn’t heard that it had returned with a new vigour, so the news of his death came as a shock. But he was a man of firm faith, who will have passed from this life with the cross very much before his eyes, so today especially I can be sure that he has gained his share in the Resurrection of our Lord.

I had in fact just arrived home from visiting another recently bereaved family, and helping them to plan the funeral service which will happen in the week after Easter Week. They were not churchgoers, but neither were they without faith and hope. They shared with me their uncertainty about what happens after death, but also their faith that we are more than flesh and blood, and that what makes each of us who we are is not switched off or ended when our bodies die.

Let me turn from those two occasions of bereavement to the one that begins our story today, as the women journey to the garden tomb in which their friend and teacher Jesus has been laid. What beliefs did they take with them? What did they have still to hope for? They were keeping to the custom of the day, which was to visit the tomb for three days after a loved one had died. It was generally believed that the spirit of someone who had died remained close to the body for three days, but then would depart. But where did the spirit depart to? - this was less clear - perhaps into a sort of shadow world, but anyway out of our reach and reckoning.

So for as long as they could, these women who had served and supported Jesus were doing what they could for him, and keeping close to him. The day after his death had been the Sabbath, and to have gone then to the grave would have been to break the Jewish law. So they came as early as possible on the Sunday morning. Whatever their beliefs, and whatever they were managing to hope, these women were weighed down with a crushing load of grief. This man had changed their lives, had changed especially the life of Mary Magdalene; but now he was no more, leaving only memories and regrets.

The early morning is always a strange and mysterious time, shrouded in mist, and with our eyes still filled with sleep. The Easter stories as we have them are also mysterious and strange;  it can be hard to harmonise the different gospel accounts. John mentions only Mary Magdalene’s journey to the tomb, while Matthew tells us she was accompanied by ‘the other Mary’. Luke tells us this other Mary was Mary the mother of James, and in his version of the story the two are accompanied by several other women, including Joanna. Mark in contrast says that the two Marys were accompanied by Salome, and, strangely, that they said nothing to anybody about what they had heard and seen.

Of course, none of this is mutually exclusive. John, for example, particularly wants to tell us the story of Mary Magdalene, so doesn’t feel the need to mention anyone else. Let’s concentrate for a moment on John’s account; there’s mystery enough just in that story, without needing to look at the other Gospels. Mary found an empty tomb;  and when Peter and John came running they saw the same - and inside the grave they found the grave clothes just lying there.  But none of them found what they were expecting, nor did they immediately believe and understand what they saw.

That sense of mystery continues. Jesus is encountered but not recognised - by Mary in the garden, by disciples on the road to Emmaus, by his closest friends in the room in which they hid, and then on the lake side. It took time to for them to overcome their grief and fear, and to realise that the cross had not been tragedy but triumph. But this truth persists throughout all these Easter stories: that what happened in that garden that day was real, and that as they began to understand, a band of defeated and fearful people were transformed, to become the apostles of a new movement that would in time sweep across the whole world.

If we ask what precisely happened on Easter Day, then maybe we can’t easily find an answer: the stories retain an air of mystery. Why did these people who had known him well not recognize Jesus? But for me it isn't about what precisely happened, as regards the order of events; the real Easter question is about what it means, for me, for you, for the world, to say “Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, alleluia!” And I find the risen Christ proved and authenticated not in an analysis of events or an archaeological survey, but in this simple fact - that what happened changed people’s lives so much that today, two thousand years after a man died a shameful death on a cross, people all over the world are still saying “Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, alleluia!”

Years ago, David Jenkins when he was bishop of Durham made the headlines with the phrase from his Easter address about 'a conjuring trick with bones'.  I expect you’ll still recall that remark and the fuss it caused, but of course it was actually taken out of context and misused in the newspaper headlines.  What David Jenkins actually said is that Easter is not just ‘a conjuring trick with bones’, and that if it was it wouldn’t be worth very much.

For Christ is risen, as St Paul tells us, not as a one-off, but as the first fruits. And, what’s even more important, the message of Easter Day isn’t just about our heavenly future, but also about our earthly here and now.  Towards the end of his time with them, Jesus told his disciples that they were now his friends.  They were no longer to think of themselves as servants or slaves, there to do what their master tells them without needing to know why.  They were his friends, and indeed on Easter Day Jesus calls them his brothers. Friendship is about sharing things, working together, being committed to one another.  Brothers share a parentage and a heritage. Jesus offers us this relationship with him - and on Easter Day that relationship is confirmed. Friendship with Jesus is friendship for ever, unbroken by death.  Jesus offers us a love stronger than the tomb.  That's the good news that claims us, and holds us, and sends us.

That’s what changed the hearts and minds of that defeated and hopeless little group of people, so that they became the genesis of a new movement that in turn would change the world. No longer would Mary and Peter and John and all the rest of them be hiding in the shadows, or timidly visiting a tomb to mourn a dead and tragic hero; they have no need to visit the tomb any more, for they know he is not there - today they are set free to go travelling through life in companionship with the eternally living Lord of the dance.  David Hope the former Archbishop of York once told his people that their Church needed to become less an institution and more a band of pilgrims on the way.  The mysterious events of that first Easter Day began just such a movement - so much so that the first Christians in Jerusalem were simply known as the 'followers of the way'. Another former Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright has said that people who believe in Jesus and in the resurrection must work 'to make that past event, and that future hope, real and effective in the present'.

With that in mind, here's a thought that occurs to me as I read the stories the various evangelists give us of the resurrection:  in those stories, where is it that people meet with Jesus?  They meet him in a garden, they meet him as they walk the dry and dusty road home and recognise him as he breaks bread in their home, they meet him while they are out fishing on the lake, and recognise him as he makes breakfast on the lake shore.  The stories don’t show people meeting Jesus in temples, churches, synagogues or shrines, but in the varied settings of real life 'out in the world'.

In John Masefield's play 'The Trial of Jesus', the centurion who stood at the foot of the cross is asked what he saw, and what he believes.  "He was all alone," says the centurion, "and he defied all the Jews and all the Romans, and when we had done with him, he was a poor broken down thing, dead on the cross."  "Do you think he is dead?" asks the lady, Procula, who is questioning him.  "No, lady, I don't," the centurion replies.  "Then where is he?"  "Let loose in all the world, lady, where neither Roman nor Jew can stop his truth."

For me, what lies behind the mystery of Easter's empty tomb and mist-shrouded garden is this: that we have a friend and brother who has died but is no longer dead. He is not sealed inside stone, nor is he bound into the pages of scripture or limited by the habits of tradition; he cannot be safely and stuffily enclosed within stained glass and carved stone. On Easter Day he is let loose in all the world, so that wherever his friends meet, there he will be among us, and wherever his friends travel, there he will be ahead of us;  and whenever his friends dare to love and to give and to forgive, and wherever his friends are daring to confront the wrong things in our world, there he will be, standing alongside us.

This was the Easter news that changed a band of downhearted, grieving fishermen into apostles.  Jesus Christ is risen today to change and transform us too - for the promise of Easter morning is that this man is our friend and brother, and he has made us here and now citizens of heaven, for whom not only this day but every new day will be the fresh and mysterious dawn of divine and triumphant love let loose in all the world; God’s saving love in which I, and you, amazingly, are given a share.

Garden Bird Update

Spring is well under way, and the sunny weather only serves to enhance its beauty. All our trees are leafing well, and the cherries are in blossom, as is our Japanese quince. The winter's siskins are still around in numbers, and squabbling goldfinches monopolise the front garden feeders much of the time. There are now two pairs of bullfinches in residence, and the rather grating cry (I won't call it a song) of greenfinches is loud in our woods, though the dominant sound most of the time is the chiffchaff.

I have seen swallows, but not here as yet, and of course it will be a while till the swifts appear. A group of town pigeons has found our garden, and they turn up most days. They have a habit of sitting on the feeding station and looking down disconsolately at the feeders themselves, which they can't access.  But down below, they are frenetically active, picking up the dropped and discarded seed. Wood pigeons waddle in too, and there are two or three pairs of collared doves about.

Blue tits and great tits are now more or less absent from the feeders, apart from occasional visits; instead, they are prospecting actively among the new leaves for insect life. Finches have the feeders to themselves, unless there are squirrels about, or the nuthatch is performing his 'quick in and out' operation. Blackbirds are singing in the high trees, and song thrushes have reappeared after a bit of a winter break. We seem to have two pairs of robins, with occasional spats, and from time to time a wren busies through the place.

So there's always plenty to see, and to hear. Buzzards and, occasionally, ravens soar above the wood, and the sparrow hawk has our feeding station on his radar now. We saw jays from time to time through the winter, but I haven't seen or heard one for a little while now.