November 10, 2022
The evangelist appears to me in the form of a 70-something man in bright green bike shorts, pausing along the trail and waving frantically in the direction of where I sit below, by the creek. A woman walking a dog passed by–was she the object of his motioning? No, she continues on but he keeps waving, striving, it seems, to make eye contact with me. Do I know him? I do not. In situations like this I hesitate between the uncool of responding to what isn’t meant for me–who hasn’t greeted someone enthusiastically only to sheepishly discover the intended object of the wave and smile is behind you?–and the lost opportunity for connection or awe.
I hesitate, but almost always choose uncool over missing out. I turn to look.
It is the right call. Behind me is not another biker whose attention he is seeking, but a great blue heron. It is only a few feet from my camping chair, wading in the shallow creek, statue still. His long neck extends elegantly at an upward angle, his gaze fixed in the distance like a day-dreamer, oblivious to my presence. He is close enough for me to see the bone-like white of his legs, notice how they widen dramatically just at the thigh, like a little ice cream cone perched atop a ski pole. I can see the contrast with the mottled gray feathering of his body, the distinct overlapping layers, feathers paling at the edges and darker in the middle, the cap of dark gray blue adorning his tiny, upturned head, the tiny tail of dark gray dripping down his neck, the way his bottom beak outstretches ever so slightly past the upper beak. I’ve seen herons in this park, but never this close, this still. He is majestic, bigger than any of the other wild creatures I stumble upon in this forest, as my friend singer Marian Call once said, a bird who absolutely remembers he is a dinosaur, but spare and elegant, like a dancer, proportions long and lean as they are, angles all tilted up. He continues staring out to the forest, I continue staring at him.
Just feet from me, and I would have missed the heron but for the biker, the announcer, the bringer of good news.
Evangelist and its attendant words mean so much more than that in our political landscape, so much so that a good number of sincere and devout followers of Christ can no longer stomach the term. But whatever the capitalized version of the label may mean, the word itself is simple, and hard to dislike: one who brings good news. Behold, a great blue heron! It was a commonly used term in the culture Jesus was born into for an announcement bringing great joy: a wedding, a victory, the reign of a Roman king ushering in pax romana, a birth.
And of course, the primary good tiding of the Christian story is the birth. Go tell it on the mountain, the song exhorts, over the hills and everywhere. Be an evangelist, go and tell the good news that the awaited for light has come to a people waiting in darkness. Jesus has come to restore humanity to God, the kingdom of God is at hand.
But depending on what that God is like, that news might not feel so good. The good tidings of great joy announcing the pax romana wasn’t experienced as good news for everyone. Many cultures have stories of gods whose arrival isn’t exactly cause for celebration; gods demanding painful, exacting sacrifice; gods creating mankind to have an endless supply of servants; gods who come to plunder, rape, toy with mere mortals. Even ambassadors of the Christian story can paint pictures of God that do not exactly compel with their goodness–see, e.g., the mass exodus from the term “evangelical.” So to understand if this is good news you have to consider, would you want to be restored to this God? Would you want this God’s kingdom to come?
“Yes,” the great blue heron tells me, its beauty offering a hint of creative power, masterful artistry, abundant provision, delight. “The God who made these elegant lines is worth knowing.”
There are probably many better ways of answering this question, more weighty and logical. After all, this is not an argument, it’s an emotional response: I feel wonder, and I have someone to thank. God made the whole world and called it good, the Christian story claims; the whole earth is filled with God’s glory. And God made humanity–very good–not for God’s amusement, not as servants, but out of overflowing love, for communion. If the story is true, the dazzling display of this created earth and its infinite possibility for discovery and awe is like an ongoing love letter from its creator. Surely a functional world did not have to be so beautiful–but it is. No matter how awful your circumstances, you can feast on the rosy glow of sunrise making even bare dirt radiant, new every morning. All over the world golden afternoon light catches just so on trees, rocks glisten, sunshine glints off water. Amidst all the pain and injustice in this world, interwoven into even the ugliest places, are inescapable nuggets of beauty. Why?
If God is beautiful, why not?
And not only majestic herons, postcard sunsets. Still yourself in front of the nearest square foot of nature and you will find a glorious universe of activity. (To say nothing of the meticulous and stunning detail revealed in even the most common creature put under a microscope!)
Six months ago, as spring was unfurling, I was walking in the woods. From a distance it looked like a still life, but up close it morphed into an animated short. A spider hops along the underside of his web, spanning 2-3 feet, intricately woven interconnected rings. Black dragonfly wings flutter by and land briefly on a nearby leaf where, momentarily, I see the brilliant blue flash of the thin abdomen before it picks up and flits to another tree. Another movement catches my eye, a dot of orange against the bright green of untamed woodland foliage. There are spindly legs attached–a daddy long legs. My vision comes into focus and I see another, then another, then five, six, ten, more–pop into relief against the green canvas.
I crouch by a log not far along its journey to decay. It’s still log–recognizable, a suitable bench, but vines creep up one side, ferns grow out of another, moss covers most of the cut end like a fuzzy bottle cap, curling burgundy fungi, fuzzy and flexible but firm, like rubber, ripple in waves from underneath a portion of bark, prodding it open.
I look down at the patch of meadow below, anticipating the perfect stillness of imperceptibly slow growing grass. But no. Blades of grass dance beneath me in slow motion. There’s no obvious breeze, and yet, one flutters gently, another unfurls, slowly but visibly shifting its tip more perfectly skyward. I lift my head back up to good posture, neck and shoulders straight; the movement vanishes and all appears still. Crouch back down again and the movement resumes, gentle, subtle, undeniable. There’s a whole world of delight invisible to me at the distance from my feet to my eyes. I can only see it when I bring my head down low, when I fix on the tableau and allow movement to guide my eyes.
I catch a bit of something out of the corner of my eye, as one does the tail of a shooting star when staring at a vast night sky, seemingly static yet ready to explode at any moment, from any direction. A small winged black bug takes flight, whizzing by in a blur before alighting on a small wild strawberry leaf. Wings fold in and disappear; if not for the flickering antennae I’d mistake it for a stray seed nestled amidst the bright red pops of wild strawberries, plump and enticing but too bitter to eat, at least for me. Are they a prized treat for the birds I hear warbling in a distant tree? The whizzing black bug takes another pass by, too close for my comfort, landing and disappearing again, into the grass.
A large ant, body fat and black like loose segments of a blackberry, diligently makes its way across the grass forest, climbing and grasping at blades of grass as my children do the ropes of the playground’s spiderweb play structure. He seems to be making circles. What is he seeking? What does any living creature want? Food? Shelter? Companionship? Can this solitary ant feel lonely? Does he have a sense of the colony and its comparable rightness, and this solo sojourn as somehow not where he is meant to be long-term? I watch him press forward, trekking up one blade of grass, tumbling down from the peak to the valley below, climbing up the stalk, tumbling back down to the next valley. Each inch of ground he covers feels so hard fought, nothing like the whizzing black bug skidding across the meadow. At times he looks stuck, venturing in different directions for a clear path, turning his head, trying one way, going back and trying another. It feels intentional, determined. He seems to catch a scent of the road he seeks, and over the course of a few minutes carves a focused path toward me, crawling under where I’m sitting, so I have to move my feet out of his path. He makes it two or three feet, all the way past me, then turns back around and crosses back under me going the opposite way. I close my eyes to listen to the birdsong, the intermittent quiet, the lone bird’s interrupting cry, the steady hum of rushing creek and distant lawnmower. I open my eyes and cannot spot my friend. I hope he finds his way to what he’s looking for.
My daughter is obsessed with Frozen II, cycles through the songs like a jukebox. “Show yourself!” she sings with dramatic passion, belting out the heroine’s anthem. The character in the movie seeks the being behind a voice which has compelled her on an epic journey, echoes of a song so captivating she would leave everything she knows to find the great and good force behind the song. Show yourself, we too cry to the heavens, stirred by hints of something great and good behind the song of the heron, the ant, the sunrise, the structure of a cell–and God answers with all of creation. Partnering, at times, with evangelists in bike shorts who point to what is beautiful and true and help us pay attention.
This world is beautiful, like its Maker; its beauty is a gift for you, beloved ones, and just the tip of the iceberg. It is good, and this is good news. Go, tell it on the mountain.
