Green Heron. Anhinga Boardwalk, Everglades NP

As I posted before, Roy Halpin and I spent 30 minutes or more, observing and photographing this Green Heron hunting tiny fish (and a few caterpillars) only a few feet from the Anhinga Boardwalk at Royal Palm Visitor Center, Everglades National Park. We were well above the bird’s eyelevel, on the boardwalk above it, and it appeared to be totally unaware of us. With that much time, I was able to frame the bird in just about every imaginable way…including this tight portrait of one very intent bird. The Florida winter light and the long zoom capture such a lot of detail in this image: from the intricate and highly various structure and subtle iridescent colors of the feathers, to the hard textures of the folded leg and the extended beak, to the light refracted in the lens of the eye. So much to see! So much to appreciate. And that is without the tension, the drama, captured in the pose.

It is Sunday, and several more spiritual thoughts inspired by this image and this experience are competing for my attention. None of them are revolutionary :). I, personally, need a creator, working in love, and with great inventiveness, to explain this vision of bird…beyond the aesthetics of the design, which are simply too wonderful not to exclaim, there is the unique and supremely intense and focused life of the hunting bird…the pattern of its being and how it lives. I see no room for chance in any aspect of Green Heron. I see intent. I see intelligence. I see love. I am compelled to give thanks. I am compelled to worship. As someone said, if I had not already met God in the living presence of his Son, I would be forced to invent a God to explain the Green Heron. While I fully accept that there are others who see the universe and life differently than I do, I can not claim to understand it. To me, loving creation is so self-evident that it sweeps all my objections aside…and I do have objections, especially to many of the things that are done in the name of religion and of God…but they are irrelevant in the face of the Creator I encounter in Jesus and in the Green Heron…my objections do not diminish, can not diminish, what is so evidently real and so evidently present.

The heart is a mighty hunter. I believe that in the end, we have to be able to love creation…if for no other reason than that creation so clearly loves us. That is the message of Christmas. In Christ, in the baby born, God enables us to fully love. How can we not bow down before the mighty hunting heart of the Creator God? Such magnificent intent. Such wonderful love. Such a gift. Happy Sunday, and Merry Christmas.