Care for creation, red rowans and the resident robin.

The time of year when the garden and the front drive needs tidying up. The front drive is overhung by the neighbours big rowan tree, which in the past month has been laden with berries most of which have now fallen on our side; and the car going in and out squishes and squashes them.

So Sheila, whose enthusiasm for the garden at least matches mine for books, goes out to brush them up, along with the leaves, shovels them into the brown wheelie bin. Job done. But at a price.

Never occurred to me before. Once she had the large pile of berries brushed up the resident robin arrived and looked askance at the sheer waste of all that food. The bird was within touching distance, was pretty agitated, and persisted in flitting around the heap of berries. I can imagine the inner outrage of this small bundle of energy that shares the garden with us.

The reprimand from the resident robin heeded, we will in future leave the berries alone – well at least for a good bit longer. Apart from anything else, the swallow and the sparrow find a home in the house of God – brought up in the farms both birds were familiar sights all through my childhood. And no sparrow falls but the Father notices. And while Jesus spoke of the birds of the air not being anxious, and being provided for – he probably wasn't thinking of what might happen to the birds when with our hoover it all up mentality we thoughtlesly bin their food, and relentlessly interfere with the wellbeing of life around us.

BTW, this post is under the category justice and righteousness in the hope that in trying to be faithful in caring for the small things, I might be more alert to the big things also needing attentive re-thinking, seeing as how my life is lived as only one interested party in a world crowded with equally precious 'others'. 

Emily Dickinson says something similar about developing a humane ecology:

Poem 982, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, (ed), R W Franklin, (harvard: Bellknap, 1998), 414.