And God is revealed...
I
Lowly sparrow, you in your stubble field
Are God’s example and encouragement
To stand behind a thinly-feathered shield
With nothing more as an accouterment
Than simple faith in what tomorrow brings:
All things are set before you, every seed
And sunray comes delivered without strings;
God will provide you everything you need
But gives you more, the time and voice to sing!
Sing boldly, bird, across the stubble field,
Show us your color and your gilded wing,
Your air of confidence, that all may yield
And pause, to catch the moral of this fable
Of fearlessness and food at every table.
II
The sparrow chirps, “But who am I to be
The center of attention? I believe
Your story: God is good, even to me,
And daily God provides, and I receive
Abundantly beyond what I deserve,
But that’s the point. You call on me to sing
For all I’m worth; you’re telling me to serve
In song as if my voice made everything
Acceptable, but take a look at me:
My feathers are the shades of sand and dirt,
My wings are short and my ability
To fly will never take me far from earth,
And now you’re asking me to join the choir
Of angels, as if song could take me higher?”
III
Yes, little sparrow, by your very word
You are acceptable; indeed, you were before
The first note of your song was ever heard,
But you will please your maker even more
If you will sing. Sing loud for all you’re worth,
But louder still for all that you’ve been given:
From seed and stubble of your mother earth,
To air and sunshine sent to you from heaven,
For every camouflage and coloring
Designed to keep you safely unrevealed,
For all the intricacies of your wing
Designed to let you navigate the field.
O sparrow, sparrow, know that you are gifted
And by your song the whole world is uplifted.
His Eye Is On The Sparrow,
by Civilla D. Martin
Why should I feel discouraged,
why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely,
and long for heav’n and home,
When Jesus is my portion?
My constant Friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow,
and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow,
and I know He watches me.
I sing because I’m happy,
I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
and I know He watches me.
Whenever I am tempted,
whenever clouds arise,
When songs give place to sighing,
when hope within me dies,
I draw the closer to Him,
from care He sets me free;
His eye is on the sparrow,
and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow,
and I know He watches me.
I sing because I’m happy,
I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
and I know He watches me.
A retired opera singer living in Taos, New Mexico, came to a couple of my classes the other day. She was here to meet her first granddaughter (who had been born past her due-date three months ago, when this Grandma first came to Prague). Her son, our German teacher, asked humbly whether I'd want a storyteller, singer, poet as a guest speaker.
ReplyDeleteOf the wonderful things she did between my Creative Writing elective and IB English Lit 11 class, she sang "Soy nada" in a mixture of English, Spanish and Tewa, all native languages for her. It featured a Vietnam vet that was trying to recover, reground, reconstitute, re'soy'. She played this on guitar at the behest of a rather ambivalent, hard-to-reach 12th grader in the course who is a 'thrasher' guitarist and perhaps wanted to smirk at this 80-year-old's probable lack of technique. I'm sure he was touched, as she played beyond technique. And I was privileged to hear the song a second time, this time at my behest (as she altered her program for the second class). I'm still working on a corollary to a definition of 'art': art compels a revisitation (beyond the way we revisit, for instance, the refridgerator!). No one was filming her performance, she's likely not on the net (her name is Roberta Courtney Meyers, if anyone wants to Google), so my revisitation must remain in my memory.
As I read your beautifully woven triple sonnet, Jon, I'm revisiting that summer you were consolidating your Thirty Birds and finding complementary voices. I think I remember commenting on this one that it reminded me of the tiny poster above Mom's washing machine (and near her NCCAP desk, and whereever it hung in Des Plaines, Glyndon and probably several houses before that):
"A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song."
I remember, probably around the time Dad brought that questionably-compromising-Christianity song by Lennon (see "Never Too Late" below) into our apartment: can we as Christians have such philosophical tenets that don't overtly attach to scripture? To "imagine there's no heaven", to "sing because [you have] a song"--aren't these sort of like that Whitney Houston song so popular in churches 20 years ago: "the greatest love of all is happening to me; learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all"... BUT--
this is exactly our Christian walk. I was none too enamored when Dad involved himself, as sign-painter at least, with the Baders' pheasant run on their Sugar Point ranch. Hunting pre-trapped family-faithful birds that probably fly slower than guinea pigs run? Sounds like something Dick Cheney would do. Why, Dad, do you want to spend your time with that? I'll paraphrase his answer: I'm spending time with the Baders and those that come to Sugar Point.
And as Emma likes to look for the pheasant who lives half-way between our Roztoky home and Nebusice school, I revisit a hundred stories and sing because I'm happy. We worry that this male pheasant has lost his wife, as he gleans things in his stubble field. But then, "For all the intricacies" we wonder about or less-so know, this beautiful creature is provided for, "in due season" as Dad liked to cite in table grace.
Blessed Good Friday, family, and Holy Saturday and Easter. Know that you are gifted!