Wonderfully made (aka the Gospel According to Flavor Flav)

Please be sure your speakers are turned up before you play this video, recorded in the middle of my run earlier today:

If you're like me, you are wide-eyed in awe listening to these glorious Sandhill cranes sing out. The setting doesn't hurt the experience. On top of the West Side Flood Control Dam #5 over Spaulding Brook just off Westside Road here in Norfolk, their impressive calls echo off the old railbed in the background. Feel free to stare and listen again as these majestic creatures strut and call. I've watched this clip at least 10 times, and it still gets me. 

A few months ago my wife, Tina, and I were walking our dog along Westside, and we came across birders from out of state pulled over on this remote stretch of road. They had binoculars in hand as they peered out over the field. I asked what they had seen, and they replied that they were still hoping to catch a glimpse of birds about which they'd only heard rumors: Sandhill cranes. We kept walking, not fully understanding how birds would draw such folks here. Now I know. 

I just played the video again, and I encourage you to do the same. I recommend giving it a listen on a mobile device if possible. As you watch and listen, please mind how you feel. For my part, coming across these beauties during today's run is a gift for which I am grateful and blessed. I feel honored and included, somehow more alive and connected to wild things, deeply appreciative to have been touched by such beauty and grace. I recognize that a video embedded in a blog is not the same as an encounter in the wild, but I hope it makes you feel something, and I hope you've taken stock of what you feel.

"Wonderful are your works, that I know very well." King David writes this in Psalm 139 as the second half of verse 14, and it's a perfect thing to feel or even cry out when we have encounters with stunning creatures, star-filled skies, delicious food crafted with love (or great coffee), or the transformative harmony of live music. My hope is that we might hold even some of this sense of awe and appreciation when we look at each other, but especially when we look upon ourselves. As David puts it in the first half of 139:14, "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." 

I get that it is easy to scoff at this idea, to dismiss any comparison of you or me with the aurora borealis. But it is also too easy to listen to messages that tell us that we need a product or a level of prestige in order to be of value. I personally could use more of the former than the latter, and I would love to see church living more fully as a setting wherein we all encounter less judgment and more affirmation and appreciation. 

As Flavor Flav puts it in Public Enemy's "He Got Game," one of the best songs (Caution: explicit lyrics - skip to 3:37 to avoid) you've probably never heard from the film of the same name, we are cautioned to avoid "spirit snipers" striving "to steal your light." In a song that preaches soundly, he reminds us that "if you seek then you shall find that we all come from the divine." He ends with a call to look inside for peace, then "give thanks, live life, and release." 

Remember your divinity, friends. Let us be gracious with each other and with ourselves, striving to see the person in the mirror with some of the adoration and care that God holds for us each and all. What is your version of the crane's cry, your song or strut for the universe? Let it fly.