Part 4 - Estuary Reflections - Diversity

REFLECTION FOUR

A Thousand Wingbeats

KINGDOM THEME: DIVERSITY

I’ve been paying attention to the birds.

Not in any systematic or scientific way. I could not tell you the Latin names of anything I see. But I have noticed something that keeps drawing my attention to something quite remarkable: no two species of birds use the estuary in the same way.

The godwit probes deep into the mud with its long curved bill, finding what no other bill can reach. The pied stilt (poaka) picks delicately at the water’s edge, precise and unhurried. The white-faced heron (matuku moana) stands perfectly still in the shallows for minutes at a time, then strikes with a speed that seems impossible for something so patient. The dotterel (tuturiwatuku) runs in short bursts across the exposed flat, stopping, scanning, running again. The royal spoonbill (kotukuku ngutupapa) moves slowly through the water, swinging its extraordinary bill from side to side like someone sweeping a floor.

Each one has arrived at the estuary for similar reasons: food, shelter, rest. But each one draws life from this place in its own particular way.

And the estuary welcomes them all.

Paul wrote about the body of Christ in terms that always make me think of the estuary. Many members. One body. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you. The head cannot dismiss the feet. Every part is necessary, even the ones whose function is least visible. Even the ones whose way of moving through the world seems strange or slow or foreign to us.

I wonder if we have sometimes misunderstood the world, and the church, by expecting everyone to use the same bill.

We create communities shaped by particular temperaments and then quietly assume that the temperament we have built around is the right one. The extroverts can feel that the introverts lack passion. The introverts can feel that the extroverts lack depth. The people who find God in song feel sorry for those who find him in silence. The people who find him in silence wonder if the singers have ever sat still long enough to really listen. And all the while the estuary is hosting a thousand different species, each one drawing life in the way it was made to draw it, and finding the place richer, not poorer, for the difference.

The migratory birds carry something else worth considering. Some of them have flown unimaginable distances. They arrive carrying experiences of other waters, other climates, other seasons. They do not stay forever. But while they are here, they belong. They feed at the same table. They rest beside the permanent residents without any obvious hierarchy of welcome.

There is a generosity in the estuary that we might all learn from. The gift is not only for those who have always been here. The place is large enough for those who have come from far away, who carry different stories, who will not stay long but are no less real for their passing.

I watch a flock of godwits rise all at once from the mudflat, their wingbeats perfectly synchronised, their movement something between chaos and choreography, and I find myself thinking: this is what the Kingdom looks like. Not one bird, performing alone. But a thousand different lives, each one following its own particular call, somehow making together a beauty that none of them could make alone.

The estuary becomes beautiful not because everything is the same, but because everything belongs.