First Swallow

Swallow

The first swallow of the summer today soaring over the Downs in Bristol, a welcome black streak with forked tail against a brilliant blue sky. It is wonderful to see them. I always love the return of these birds, and perhaps especially the swifts, which I haven't seen yet. they scream and zoom across the roof tops with such vigor.

Swift

Richard Mabey writes about swifts in his book Nature Cure - at his joy in seeing them each year:

“As a relationship my thing with swifts is so one sided as to be hardly worthy of the name. The birds don’t give a fig about me or any of us. Yet they are connected with us indirectly, even when we are not aware of them, through the environments and senses that we share. We respond to spring, to the lift of fine weather, to the basic biological urge to play… On Ascension Day I was sent this short poem out of the blue:

May, Just into

Double figures.

Everything green

And brilliant-

The first warm day.

Soft shoes, no socks,

Then you call out

The swifts are back!

Listen. Look up!

Listen. Look up! Did birds like swifts arriving mysteriously in the spring, reappearing from nowhere at dawn, play their part in the generation of resurrection stories? Do they still register at the corners of our vision and reason, something immanent? Despite our science and our humanism, our whole culture is infused with myths and symbols of landscape and nature, emblems of the seasons, of decay and rebirth, of the boundaries between the wild and tame, myths of migration and transmigration of invisible monsters and lands of lost content.”

I hope you see them soon, I will be scouring the skies until they arrive.

Scary TV

I watched 3 documentaries this week - one was the return visit by Louis Theroux to the American family (America's Most Hated Family) who are the Westboro Baptist Church - the strangely beguiling, utterly offensive extreme right wing "Christian" group who picket the funerals of the soldiers who have died in Afghanistan and elsewhere, saying it is God's punishment for the US army tolerating homosexuality. They walk around with banners decrying gays and thanking God for cancer. Weird and offensive yes, but dangerous? To some degree - especially their views on Islam and wanting to burn Korans. They are bright eyed, dogmatic, convinced they are right and totally strange.



I also watched My Brother the Islamist last night on BBC 3. That was much more scary. Similar in their dogmatic adherence to the God of hate rather than love, they were deeply disturbing in that they have the desire to kill all those who disagree with them and would gladly die for their beliefs. The similarities between the American family - extreme right wing Christians - and the extreme Islamists is obvious when viewed side by side. They make your blood run cold and I am more convinced than ever that evil is real, finds a home and settles in.



The 3rd documentary - 3 part series - was The Big Silence. I caught up with it at last, it was first broadcast in December last year. It was a lovely, thought provoking series following 5 people who chose to go on an 8 day silent retreat to St Beunos in N Wales. For all 5 the days of total silence (apart form the rebellious chats outside!) had a profound effect on them. God speaking through the silence to people who normally never sit quietly and listen.



I was moved the The Big Silence, disgusted by the bizarre views and offensive antics of the Phelpes family in America and scared by the evil of the extreme Islamists. I don't know where the Islamist cause will end but I hope it does and that somehow the hate will be turned to a positive energy because the thought of more and more young men - and it seems to be all men - finding purpose in hatred is a tradgedy and a terrifying prospect.