On Liturgy

Fear not, little flock.

—Luke 12:32

When he likened us to a flock
he certainly meant sheep
but this morning from the back pew
of a building, stone and chancelled, nothing like
the over lit, shag carpet church of my childhood,
here amid arch and echo I think
we are a flock of birds—
starlings gathering in their murmuration.
The pensive organ, the hushed
chatter now dips, now crests, and at the bells
we all together fold to silence,
as when the helixing black cloud drops
down to feed across a reed bed.
All at once the stillness breaks
into a great applause of wings, the mounting up
in doxology, the downsweep then
of many heads in prayer. How
strange, how ominous almost
for one on the ground to watch
this cluster heave itself
heavenward, obeying powers
invisible as magnetism,
forming and reforming in the shape
of something too large to be likened.

--Jennifer Polson Peterson, poet and teacher, from Image Journal

Photo:  Murmuration of starlings over Lough Ennell, March 4, 2021, by James Crombie and Colin Hogg. Story of the image is found here.

The scripture reference is used in Proper 14C.