Winged Words

Winged Words

By John Taylor; 2006 December 20

 We moved to Dunnville on the banks of the Grand River in the late 1990's, and only after I came here did I notice that birds actually have a bedtime. They regularly and predictably alight en mass in the branches of a few select trees at the same time in the late evening. They probably get out of bed at the same time in the morning; I just have never seen it. Maybe they get up before it is light. I am no naturalist, as you see, but even I cannot help but notice this phenomenon as I drive along River Road, which runs down the left bank of the Grand, at a particular crepuscular hour.

 You know, crepuscule, that special time when the light is threatening to vanish, leaving the poor birds flying blind in midair. A frightening thought no doubt, if you are a bird. So that is the time when Burt Bird punches out his time clock and Bill Bat punches in, saying in a bored tone of voice, "Evening Burt," and Burt replies in kind, "Evening Bill." The birds come in from dispersal on shore, field, forest or wherever the heck it is birds spend their time during the day and congregate in their thousands in treetops along this left bank of the river. There can be so many in the branches of one tree that if you were near they would briefly block out the sun for you. The slightest scare and they are up and off, looking for another tree to roost for the night. And I have noticed that the saying is true, birds of a feather do flock together; it is all one breed crowding the tree branches, either starlings or sparrows, or maybe other birds that look to my untrained eye like starlings and sparrows.

 Rarely do the flocks of sleepy birds come into town to pick a tree for an avian hotel room, but for some reason this fall they did, once. Burt Bird picked a couple of the large old maples across the road from us in Central Park. Probably Burt was fired as leader of the flock for such a stupid choice. It was so unusual to see this here in the middle of town that I jumped up and got out my camera and tried to snap them from our front bay window using maximum, 10X zoom. Since a car whizzes by every few seconds on Lock Street, they soon gave up on this location, but not before I got some close-ups, both perched and in flight. If I were reading this blog aloud, as I hope to start doing soon, I would show these none too impressive snapshots of many, many nondescript black birds on the ground, on branches and on the wing.

 Anyway, this morning, since we have been discussing on this Badi' Blog Immanuel Kant's discussion of science in the Third Thesis of the Cosmopolitan History, I got to thinking about the question of birds, and wings of birds. As my readers know, Abdu'l-Baha compared science and religion to the two wings of a bird, in fact He used it for that polarity almost as often as for sexual equality. That is what got me going. I flitted about like a bird on the wing, using Ocean and my other research mechanisms, and discovered how very pervasive and ancient this winged example of nature has been on how we see the soul, and heaven and earth. In fact I flew around so lightly and airily from Eastern to Western thought that I began to think that we are wrong to call computer search engines “engines;” we should call them wings. Computer search wings, that is the ticket. For these are not clunky, supercharged, heavy old engines. No, they are wings to the bird of the mind; they allow a skittery researcher like me to soar into the sky and scan books, whole bodies of literature, nay verily, the entire Internet itself. They allow us to take on powers that no mortal reader, however assiduous has imagined possible until now. It is as if we have learned to fly, so why not call them wings?

 One of the first things I noticed when I search winged ancient literature is that Homer uses the expression "winged words" dozens of times. Usually he is describing a message or prayer of supplication to the gods in dire distress, as "Then he uttered winged words and entreated her..." At first I thought that by winged words Homer meant that the words flew up high, like birds do, into the heavens. But then I flitted over to Eastern literature and found this surprisingly apposite bit from the world's oldest scripture,

 "Here on the right sing forth chanters of hymns of praise, even the winged birds that in due season speak." (Rig Veda, Book II, Hymn XLIII)

 This would seem to imply that "winged words" are winged not because a bird flies high but because they are the sounds that winged things make, that is, birdsong. The bird sings its mating song for its own purposes, seeking to reproduce its genes, but the music that it makes is universally beautiful. It pleases all ears, even ours, distant as we may be from them on the genetic family tree. What better definition that that of worship and prayer? Winged words, sung in the mating season out of love, and since love moves the universe, they move us too, and give our souls wings. And so it should be when we intone prayers and holy utterances. We can reciprocate their songs and with our voice charm the birds out of the trees.

 Let us continue this theme another day.