JCK-at-large SITE

I couldn’t believe it when I found out.  I thought for sure that seagulls would get out of the elements for the winter, like most sensible snowbirds — somewhere south of the Great Lakes, down along Georgia’s inland waterways, maybe into the Gulf of Mexico. I was about to learn different.  

I discovered our friends at the city dump.  It was a frosty Northumberland Saturday in February.  A friend volunteered to transport some junk. When we arrived with our uneasy load, working our way up the spiral road to the summit of mont les ordures, the great flocks of gulls greeted us.  I hadn’t seen so many in one place, not at the flat rock by the cottage, not at the point across the bay beneath the huge cliff where they like to hang out, not following along behind ferries picking up tourist trash. This must have been one of the great gull gatherings of all time!

Imagine forty-thousand gulls or so, rising up before our van in a pulsating mushroom cloud, turning a bright day dark with their rising.  Then settling back down, as we shed our uneasy load, to the bountiful fare of a growing city’s excess.  Thick and sleek, a glossy sheen on their white feathers, bulging with fat all the way to the shoulder blades — these fowls were doing very well.

But what a come-down, I thought.  These birds are the ones you catch soaring in the summer sun, riding the west wind, mastering the currents so skilfully that at a given point they are almost motionless, then quivering at the top of a climb like Jonathan Livingston in his passion for flight, before falling away again as the wind propels them along out over the water.  A big herring gull can catch the flash of a smelt from forty feet up, plummet, impale and swallow with the dexterity of a Japanese chef.  How could it all come down to this?  Living out the intemperate winter on Mont les Ordures?  How the mighty are fallen!

I could not help myself.  I gave these plump birds, and whoever else would listen, my “Sermon on the Summit.”  It started with a rather abrupt introduction: “You birds were not made for this!  It is wrong for you to live out your days so far below your capacities!  This fare may be easy and plentiful, but I’m greatly disheartened to see you reduced to scrounging in a heap of trash.”  Then came my three main points in good homiletical style. 

Point One,  The Danger of the Easy Way: “My friends, the easy way has always been used to lead us astray.  It is Lot’s choice, the tree of the forbidden fruit, Balaam’s compromise, David’s lingering in Jerusalem, all of the kingdoms of the world for a mere act of worship — this is the way that may seem right, but the end thereof are the ways of death!  Avoid the easy way, my friends!  Just because you happen upon it does not mean it is right!  Better to suffer windchill with your community, yea, hardship, storm and crashing wave, better forty days in the deep — than to enjoy the fruits of this foul wasteland for too long, to be castaway like this.”

My Second Point followed, with The danger of Overindulgence: “Feathered friends, you look so sleek, so plump — how can I ever allure you back to the windswept shores?  You think that this is the blessed life.  You have forgotten the azure seas and the irrepressible wind beneath our outstretched wings.  You are so far from ascent and soaring, I fear that you will never leave this wretched place.  Beware the life of luxury!  Beware ease and plenty!  Remember the sin of Sodom, ‘pride, fullness of bread and abundance of idleness.’  Remember that when “Jeshurun waxed fat… they scorned the Rock of their Salvation.”  Let not your plenty lead to forgetfulness and, yea, even contempt for your high calling!”

Then came Point Three: The Danger of thinking that Plenty Means Fullness: “You may think, gulls, that you have never been so well off.  Oh, I have heard of the efficiency of your dietary tract and that there is no such thing as too much food for you.  Finally, you say, we shall be satisfied.  But satisfaction, my friends, is the very thing you shall not have!  How can you, who were meant to soar and plummet, the very symbols of freedom as you flash your startling white forms against the deep blue sky — how can you hope to be satisfied in this heap of rubbish?  Plenty you may have, but satisfaction must always escape you in this wretched place.”

The impact of my sermon on the summit was not great.  I had to omit conclusion and application — and I suppose all unfinished sermons are for the birds.  But a few days later, an application of sorts crystallised for me.  I had left my hearers and was reading Emerson:

“We forget daily our high call to be discoverers.  We forget that we are embarked on a holy, unknown sea… we are put off from our purpose, and ready to return to the rotten towns we have left, and quit our seeking of the Virgin Shore” (JournalsV).