To Fly or to Die

Yes, sometimes it's actually that stark,
the choice between maintaining the power of
flight or perishing with the weight of gravity
pressing down on your useless wings,
as we can learn from the story of
the feathered but flightless dodo bird.

The dodo evolved from a normal flying pigeon
and settled into flightlessness because
it encountered no natural predators
after it had flown across the Indian Ocean and
taken up residence on the island of Mauritius,
which is found off the east coast of Africa.

Dodos tended to become overweight,
with adult birds eventually tipping
the scales at around 50 pounds.


In spite of that, dodos were doing pretty
well until some unnatural predators in
the form of dogs, pigs, and cats eventually
arrived in the company of the Portuguese
and Dutch sailors who reached Mauritius
for the first time in the 16th and 17th centuries.

No chance then to fly away to live another day!
Instead, with its limited locomotion and its
offspring vulnerable in nests on the ground,
the dodo's eventual doom was sealed.


Not even its inclusion in Lewis Carroll's
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
could bring the dodo back to life,
but the bones of the birds are still
being discovered and studied,
so that, although the dodo is extinct,
we know more about it today than
at any other time in history.

Unfortunately, that's not much of a
consolation prize when you've lost
the battle to survive. If I'd been
a dodo, I'd rather that my lineage
remain alive, and my choice would
have been not to die but to embrace
the Antigravitational solution,
which is to fly, yes, to fly.

The Lift of Love

 

Cupid is a kind of angel,
though an angel that's more
closely associated with the world
and the flesh than those fully fledged
creatures who descend to us from above.

This little fellow's lower status
is suggested by the stubbiness
of his wings and the fact that
he never seems to stray far
from the affairs of our lower anatomy.

Nevertheless, it would be hard
to exaggerate his importance.
Archangels like Michael and Gabriel
help guide the destiny of us all
by fighting wars in heaven
and announcing earthshaking events,
but it is Cupid who keeps
the human race going.

And in the experience of most of us,
there's no Antigravitational force that lifts
the human heart as high and as fast as the kind
of love that is intensified by the inclusion
of a powerful sexual component.

Cupid rules because
love validates life,
and if you have no love
your life remains unvalidated.

 

Fire from Heaven

Lines from "God's Grandeur"
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil . . .
Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil . . .

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

With Wings or Without?

From the beginnings of civilization and back into prehistory, divine beings were often depicted with wings to show that, like the birds, they were creatures of the sky who observed humans from on high and could hide and frolic among the clouds. Their wings also allowed them to move rapidly from place to place, which explains why one devotee could experience their divine presence at one location and another devotee, far away, could apprehend the same divinity only a short time later.

However, in the Western tradition God's powers are seen to be so overwhelmingly great that he defies gravity at will, as dramatized on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Michelangelo fresco known as "The Creation of the Sun and Moon." Our Father, according to this vision, is definitely in heaven, but he needs no bird-like appendages to keep him there; wings are for lesser beings like angels, not the Lord of the Universe. Obviously, this article of faith has evolved far beyond the one that likened the gods to glorified eagles.

The absolute difference between human beings who are earthbound and a transcendent God who floats about in ultra-reality at will is a reminder that we should cultivate humility. Michelangelo's magnificently famous "Creation of Adam," also on the ceiling of the Sistine, may reveal the Creator and his human creation as approximately the same size, but there's no question about which one claims immortality, keeps celestial companions, and possesses the life-giving touch--and which is an utterly dependent creature without clothing, shelter, full consciousness, or, as yet, a single companion.
>