All the Angels / All the Birds

 September 29

Saint Michael and All Angels

Morning Prayer

The Psalm appointed for the Daily Office today (Psalm 8) tells us that we humans are just a little lower than the angels, that we have been given mastery over everything God created, including “the birds of the air” and “the fish of the sea” — all the living things in all the places plants and animals can live.

Today, September 29, in the early morning I saw the headlines about the declaration of the extinction of the ivory-billed woodpecker, the collective death of every last one of these birds that were called the “Lord God Bird”. (The Washington Post reporter, Dino Grandoni, explains that the name “Lord God Bird” comes from the reaction of those who saw this big, beautiful bird: “those blessed to see it blurted out the Lord’s name”.) 

The same article also tells me that the scientist who wrote the report declaring the Lord God Bird extinct cried, and that 22 other living things were removed from the endangered species list because none of them can be found in the wild. 

This is a pivotal week in the United States in many ways, a standout week even during a period of weeks on weeks and months on months of pandemic in the shadow of climate change, all complicated by the attempts of white nationalism and authoritarianism to rise again (as if the resurrection applied to fascism). There are plenty of unanswered questions, incomprehensible events, complex proposals, and truth-revealing testimony to give us pause, more food for thought than any one of us could ever consume. This early morning, though, I wonder chiefly about two things.

I wonder about angels on this feast of Saint Michael and All Angels. 

The Psalm seems to assume some sort of familiarity with angels. Do we want to know our place in the world? It’s a little lower than the angels, explains the Psalmist. I have no firsthand knowledge of angels. Considering angles is a little like considering alligators and bears for me, in that I’ve read accounts and seen some pictures and, I think, would know one if I saw one, and part of me would like to see such a thing for myself, and part of me knows how frightened I would be if I saw one “in the wild”. What would it be like to see an angel? What sort of experience is that? What sort of knowledge is knowledge of angels?

I also wonder about what sort of “mastery” we humans have demonstrated when that over which we were given mastery is dying, when we have destroyed that which was entrusted to us. The master of a ship does everything possible to avoid wrecking the ship, the headmaster of a school has a duty to oversee the health of the institution and the welfare of the children in the school. We seem to be more than “a little lower” than the angels; we seem to have failed at serving as masters. What does it mean for us to given “mastery” over the other living things?

Wondering about these two things creates more questions as the morning quiet is broken by a raucous blue jay’s sustained call. The Psalm suggests a hierarchy with angels above us and birds below us, but this blue jay is high up in our hackberry tree, way above where I sit on my kitchen porch. What sort of hierarchy is this? I know Jesus supposedly said our lives are worth more than those of the sparrows, but this bird up above me is managing to survive and be exactly what a blue jay should be, and my heart — and I suspect Jesus’s heart — is broken by the knowledge that some of the birds and all the other birds like them are gone, forever gone. 

We, compared to this blue jay that seems alarmed about something, don’t seem to be managing very well the task of being human, of being just a little lower than the angels — whatever that means for those of us who have never seen an angel. We don’t even have the good sense to be alarmed about all the death around us. 

Humans and birds and what we are and why we are seem as mysterious as angels today. Sitting with mystery seems appropriate at the beginning of this day when we consider the angels and at this pivotal point in our history as a species and, more prosaically, as a nation when so much is at stake.