SONGSTERS

I hear them before I see them, the quail chirping “Rebecca” as they walk across the narrow wooden fence about four feet away from my office window. Sometimes it’s a Mama Quail with four or five half-grown quail following. “Rebecca, rebecca,” she warns as they teeter. Polite and skittish, their parade makes me smile. Then there are noisy birds, and to encounter them I only need to walk a block and a half to a home where someone has gone all out with bird houses and yard art. It doesn’t photograph well because of the shade, but trust me: I tried counting and gave up at over fifty birdhouses and feeders. In one yard! And the noise! Its nesting tenants are the more vociferous of winged critters.

In summertime, especially, I think of the relationship with nature enjoyed some eight hundred years ago by a simple man we know as St. Francis of Assisi.  He wrote the lyrics to “All Creatures of Our God in King” sometime in the 1200s (yes, 800 years ago) and it was first published in a hymnal in 1623 (yes, nearly 400 years ago). Yet it continues to place high on lists of the world’s most beloved hymns.

Francis was born to a wealthy Italian family in 1182, converting to Christianity at a young age. He served as a soldier in his early years and endured a year as a prisoner of war in central Italy. After a time of personal turmoil, he renounced his earlier life of ease to become an itinerant evangelist to peasants throughout the Mediterranean lands. At 28, he founded the Franciscan Order of Friars, known for adopting his religious beliefs and simple lifestyle that kept him near nature. This was memorialized in a painting by the Italian artist Giotto, showing Francis feeding birds. Francis is said to have written sixty hymns of praise and worship in his desire to encourage church music.

There are many legends associated with his life, including supernatural behavior of animals. In one legend, one day while on a hike he came across a flock of birds.  When they didn’t fly away, he decided to preach them a little sermon about praising their Creator for His protection and provision. Sermon over, they flew away happily. How true this is, we don’t know, but we do have Psalm 148, which tells all creation—the heavenly bodies, the weather, the landscapes, and all living things, to praise the Lord. We now know that scientists have catalogued 5,400 species of singing animals. Francis is also credited with setting up the first Christmas live nativity scene.

The year before he died, Francis was very ill and his vision was failing. It was at this time that he wrote the lyrics to “All Creatures of our God and King,” based on Psalm 148. At his deathbed he requested that Psalm 142 be read to him.  It includes this verse: “When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who knows my way.”

Our paraphrased English version of this hymn came out about 120 years ago through the efforts of a village rector in England, who prepared it for a children’s choir festival. It was forgotten for a time, then reappeared in an English hymnal in 1906 as a canon arrangement.  

As we continue through the challenges and discouragements of the pandemic, it’s always good to shift gears and sing praises to God.  St. Francis’s hymn would be a good start. Then consider two others about nature:  “All Things Bright and Beautiful” (1848, by the wife of an Anglican bishop in Ireland) and “For the Beauty of the Earth” (1864, by an English scholar).

Even better—get out and take a walk, best in early morning when the birds sing their hearts out.  And just listen.
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Sing along with this "You Tube" presentation with lyrics, featuring pipe organ and congregational singing at the large Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdfTekZcgGM