The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning, but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.
The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun, and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.
It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. (paragraph breaks added)
Source: Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton
Birds are so damn flitty, aren’t they? There was a CBC program, many years ago, called “Something and Charles” (no, the co-host wasn’t called “Something”) which tried to explain science simply. We can mimic bird song by whistling, for example, but it doesn’t sound right. They showed that our whistles had to be speeded up many times — MANY times — to obtain not only the right notes, but the right tone to the notes. It makes we wonder if EVERYTHING in birds’ lives, especially small birds’ lives, takes place at a higher frequency.
Jim T
Jim – That’s interesting – about the relationship between our whistling and bird song. Their metabolisms are higher, I think, but I couldn’t quickly find anything better than this essay, which talks about songbird metabolic rates being 30 – 70% higher than other birds and mammals. So, yeah, maybe they do go through life a tad quicker on all fronts.
There is something about house sparrows in London, milk bottle caps, and critical mass, or perhaps tipping points that is sticking in my mind, and won’t come out…
We have a winter feeder outside our bedroom window. It’s fun to watch them, sometimes 20 or 30 at a time.
Ian – Interesting. I didn’t find anything on London, but blue tits were drinking cream off front steps in East Swaythling in 1921. I think house sparrows are pretty, but a friend assures me they’re very aggressive, pushing out other birds.