Prodigal
Altar Boy Blog
20
March 2012
A Lone Bird
Singing In The Darkness
Officially,
spring is here, and we have been seeing signs of it over the past few
weeks. One sign for me has been the
singing of birds. For the past week,
while it is still dark, there’s one bird that starts singing. Maybe his “light detector” is calibrated a
little ahead of his peers, but in the pitch black early morning hours; he is
singing his song for all to hear. And it
is beautiful. With no competing songs, I
can really focus on this bird’s song and the song moves me.
Without
anthropomorphizing too much, I wonder if the other birds fume as this bird
begins to sing in the dark, “Hey, still dark here. Song time starts when it’s light!” When the sun finally comes up, are the other
birds’ songs ones of complaint about the one that insists on singing while it
is still dark?
That
bird’s song moves me because he sings the song God has put on his heart. That bird sings the song in the dark because
he was made that way. That bird sees the
morning light a little sooner than the other birds. That bird is ahead of the curve and we could
learn much from that bird.
How
often do we see things we should address, but because no one else sees it, we
keep quiet? How often do we chastise
those who do speak out because no one else is speaking out? How often when we do speak out, we shrink
back after our peers show their distaste for our song?
To
piggyback on yesterday’s Hans Kung piece, I am amazed at how TQ saw the
implications of the Second Vatican Council and worked to make people aware,
long before the Council concluded. After
the Council, he worked to focus on the theory of adaptation for liturgy to
reframe the gospel for the present day.
While many chastised TQ for those efforts, for many others, the result
was a deeper understanding of the gospel and the role of Christians in society.
TQ,
like Hans Kung, understood the importance of renewal in the church. Like songs in the early darkness, renewal is
usually rejected or suppressed. TQ and
Hans Kung continue to be songs in the dark.
Now is the time to listen to those songs and take them into our hearts.
