The ice is out and the ospreys are in. They are my favourite birds, fishermen like me. Each year as soon as the ice blows out of Lac la Hache the ospreys show up and begin fishing. They cruise high above the water and when a suitable fish is found they plummet to the lake surface, wings tucked in like a saber jet. They hit the water head first with enough force that you would think they must have broken their neck. Then they immediately unglue themselves from the surface tension of the lake and, soaked to the skin, they begin to winch themselves skyward with a nice fish clutched in their talons. The fish has to be turned to align perfectly and aerodynamically with their body as they defy gravity and inch slowly upward. When just enough elevation has been earned, they stop flying and freefall to the earth while shaking the water from their feathers like a soaked Labrador retriever. Just before they crash, they end their shake and pop their wings and begin to fly again, with fish aligned perfectly, more freely now that they are dry, up and away towards their large nest in the top of some distant inland tree or power pole where the young await their repast.
I greatly admire the osprey. For my money there is no bird that can match their grace, beauty, tenacity and apparent dedication. That dedication is well evident in a story I discovered last summer.
“Nelson” was a proud osprey father of a fledgling family that was housed in a nest on top of a power pole close to Highway 3A near Kootenay Lake. The nest was being monitored by a live webcam that was being viewed by many people. About one month into the lives of the osprey chicks, the very attentive father went missing. It turned out Nelson had been returning to the nest with a nice rainbow trout in his talons, but somehow he touched a power line on the way home and electrocuted himself.
Now this tragedy would not have been life threatening for the rest of the osprey family in itself, as the chicks still had Nellie their mom to provide for them. But in osprey families there is an ingrained characteristic. After the chicks hatch, the father typically fishes and the mother stays with the nest to feed and protect the young. So there they all sat for several days, chicks in nest, Nellie on chicks and starvation ensuing for all of them as they waited for Nelson to show up with supper.
Eventually this osprey tragedy was headed off by a combined effort involving the hydro company, a local raptor biologist and a whole bunch of concerned citizens. The raptor biologist provided the knowhow, the hydro company provided the technology and the concerned citizens provided the fresh-caught fish. The fish were delivered to the nest on top of the power pole with a complicated elevator tray that was winched up to Nellie the mother osprey who would pull the fresh fish off of the tray, rip them into bite size pieces and feed the chicks and herself. As originally reported in the Nelson Star last June, Nellie and two of the three chicks survived the next five weeks to adulthood.
I was sharing this story with a friend the other day with an obvious flare and admiration in my voice for ospreys and he somewhat surprised me with his comment: “Man; that is a really super story about community.”
“Huh?” I said. And then I realized that what I hadn’t seen in the story, my friend had. It is a good story about community, a community made up of hydro employees, raptor biologists, bird watchers, fisherfolk and ospreys. It’s an odd kind of community, so odd that I didn’t see it at first but a community just the same, an odd kind of community in its super diverse constituent makeup all gathered around caring for and about a single common entity, a mother osprey and her young. And as I reflect on this it kind of reminds me of Christ’s church.
The first community gathered around Jesus was an odd bunch, too: fishermen, harlots, political zealots, people from the royal court, tax collectors, prostitutes, housewives and members of religious courts. As Easter and Pentecost came and went it was expanded to include Gentiles and Jews, Roman soldiers, rabbinical scholars, tradesmen, beggars, slaves: the list goes on and on as you read through the New Testament. It’s hardly recognizable as a community it’s so diverse in its constituent makeup and so spread out geographically from Jerusalem to Rome. The one thing they all had in common was a relationship with Jesus the Risen One, the one they called the Christ. And it strikes me as I reflect on ospreys, community and such, that community is often not based on uniformity or even unity for that matter, but people gathered around a central person. So often in the church I expect Christian community to be based upon uniformity or at the very least unity, and when I do I am usually left deeply disappointed. I can never find a group just like myself nor one who agrees totally with me in all things. (One more thing to thank God for, says Linda). What I can find in the church is a bunch of diverse people with diverse opinions on just about everything, but who at the same time are in a relationship with the one Risen Christ. And I can find that profound “community” in Christ in just about any place in the world.
Should I expect something else? I don’t think so. And I hope not. It’s really interesting and rich to hear about another’s unique relationship with Jesus and at the same time explore how they are different from me and have different perspectives than I have. Many times I hear the church referred to as a group of likeminded people, meaning we all think the same and agree on everything. That’s not us at all. We are a diverse bunch of people who are bound in community because of our relationship with the one Christ. Our community is grounded solely in being united with Christ, or at least it should be else we would all wear kilts. Paul summed it up best to the Philippians when he wrote to them to find their sense of community by letting the mind of Christ richly dwell in each of them, the mind of Christ that they would know from knowing Christ (Philippians 2:1-6). We are a community in Christ. We are one in Christ. We are of one mind, in Christ. This allows for a rich diversity in almost every other thing. Historically, when Christians have forgotten this, people have gotten burned.
