"The falcon cannot hear the falconer"-Part 2

Mennonite Youth Farm Complex as seen by a falcon . . . and Mark Wurtz's drone. Thanks falcon, thanks Mark.

Last week, I wrote about the image of Christ as the falconer and us as the hawks. The theme was taken from W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming; “Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” Yeats might say that my use of it wasn’t quite what he meant; many critics have expressed diverging interpretations of the poem.

In any case, the centrality of what drives us, what “holds us together” is very much at issue in our times. In the recent Conservative leadership contest, the centre was proposed by some to be an unnamed set of “Canadian core values,” the implication being that there is a centre whose tug on us makes us true Canadians.

“The widening of the gyre—in response to the pull of the world—makes us subject to losing sight of Christ, our falconer.” At least that’s a consciousness in Christian faith that’s historic and oft repeated . . . albeit not in Yeats’ words.

Judging what Christ’s centrality actually means to you and me, day to day and to the churches into which we’re grouped, is not obvious. Does “living for Jesus” figure in how I do the dishes? how I choose a new car? what career I choose in order to earn a living? whom I’m attracted to as a potential life-partner? Is the centrality of the Christ affected by my sexual orientation? my hygiene habits? my hobby/vocation/avocation interests and obsessions? Must the majority of my thoughts and activities on a given day be about and for Christ? Must I, like St. Francis, renounce possessions and live in poverty like Jesus did? Are spiritual disciplines like Bible reading and prayer measures of Christ’s centrality in my life?

There are plenty of people willing to rule on all these and other questions. Churches split and denominations form around the answers. Deductive thinking among us seeks out answers in the Bible, quoting those that support a preferred answer, ignoring those that do not or are ambiguous. Inductive thinking might well conclude that this approach is in itself un-Christ-central-like; it was, after all, Christ’s primary complaint of the religion of his time, namely that it clung to rules for everyone and every occasion and therefore lost touch with the spirit of faith, the spirit evidenced by celebration, love, generosity, common purpose and unity.

There are clues to the message of the falconer in Paul’s epistles and in the words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere. You don’t pick onions off a fig tree. “Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.” (Matthew 7:17) “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5: 22-3)

What do we see in our brothers and sisters of faith, in our fellow citizens, in suffering fellow-humans around the globe? Do we see them through the eyes of Christ? Or of our politicians? Or of our prejudices and fears, or our cramped, restrictive theologies?

Seems to me there’s no real mystery, no deep complexity in the call of the falconer.

But then, I’ve been judged to be an apostate and (what’s worse) a liberal by some, so you’ll obviously need to do your own listening, engage with your own falconer, because it’s not really the widening gyre that draws people toward Yeats’ “mere anarchy,” it’s falcons with their fingers in their ears, still wearing the hood that blinds them, too afraid to leave the safety of the falconer’s arm.

(Please don’t protest with “Falcons don’t have fingers, George.” In analogy and metaphor, falcons have fingers!)

So are we feeling scattered, not hearing the voice of our falconer in the clangor of a thousand others screaming, “pick me, pick me! I’m your true falconer?”

If the voice of the scriptures that we go to for guidance were a clarion call, that would be one thing, but some hear in it the call of doom and apocalypse, some of peace and joy, and others hear a legalistic, demanding set of obligations. Some find freedom there, others find fuel for their natural angers. Some find merit in reading all of scripture all of the time, others hear and preach only that which they’ve decided beforehand constitutes the falconer’s call.

A few suggestions: 1) make your spoken prayer the Lord’s prayer as a daily exercise of focus, make the rest of your praying a time of quiet listening, of centering around the words of the prayer; 2) meditate daily on Christ’s word in Matthew 5:13-15: “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.”

Falcons, hawks are trained to hunt and to bring back to the falconer what they’ve captured. Here we could definitely take the metaphor far afield; salt and light improve the earth as a home for the children of creation. When you meet salty, light-shining Christians, your day gets brighter, tastes better.

The Falcons of Christ can do that.

Or they can peck out your eyes. We’ve seen that too.