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
Nice of the little guy to sit still long enough for you to get your shot.
Jim – Yes, he was very obliging. Here in Myrtle Beach I’m chasing warblers that won’t sit still long enough for me to get even an “identification quality” shot – never mind a nice picture.
You have a bird app? Is it like some of the music apps — so that you show it a picture of the bird you’ve just taken, and it tells you what you just took? Or is it more like Peterson’s guides, where you have to have a fairly clear idea of what genus/species/lookalike group you’re hunting for? I mean, with Peterson, you’d better know that this is in the sparrow or finch family and not the eagle/hawk family if you expect to find it on a page somewhere.
Jim T
Jim – Yes, my bird app for my phone is Merlin. I recommend it highly. I can take a picture on my phone and Merlin will, with amazingly good reliability, tell me what it is or what it might be. It can work with pretty fuzzy, long distance shots, and knows all about time of year and the male versus female/juvenile distinctions. I wish they had a version for laptops because I’m usually taking photos with my camera, so have to mess about getting it to my phone. Life is so hard . . .