This month the topics for the church’s writing group where, sparrows, favorite books from childhood, and how do you strive to be the same or different than your parents. You’re supposed to pick one subject to write about. I choose to write about all three. Here’s what I wrote:
Let me start by telling you everything I know about sparrows. It’s a kind of small bird. That’s it, all I know. It’s likely that a sparrow or two has visited our bird feeders in the backyard. I wouldn’t know, there’s a lot of small birds and I’ve never bothered to look up who’s who.
As you know there is a Who’s Who for birds just as there is a Who’s Who for people. The book for people just lists people who are kind of important – rich, famous, movie stars, politicians, that sort and leaving most of us out. In these days of social media, you could likely just look people up there without buying the book like you had to do back in the day.
Who’s Who for birds in North America is, of course, the National Audubon Society’s Guide to North American Birds. Unlike the book about people the Audubon Society attempts to list all birds, not just the rich and famous birds. I didn’t look up sparrows in that book. Yes, you’d think I would have looked up sparrows before writing about them. I’ll get marked down for that.
While I’m not sure if we’ve been visited by sparrows, I think we’ve had finches. At least we have a bird feeder with finch food in it and a lot of tiny yellowish birds feed on it so I’m just assuming it’s finches that feed on the finch food. I could be wrong. I mean squirrels have been known to eat bird food and I’d hate to apply labels without knowing for sure. I did try asking the cats, but they seem to classify birds as easy to catch, hard to catch, or could eat you (like hawks).
Since I was going to write about sparrows, I did look up the symbolic meaning of a sparrow and checked to see if sparrows are mentioned in the Bible. Turns out sparrows are mentioned five times in the Bible – not bad for a small bird. Sparrows are mentioned in two gospels, in a Psalm, a Proverb, and in Hosea 11:11. In general they are symbols of God’s care and attention to detail. The gospels talk of God knowing everything, including what happens to sparrows and suggests that people are worth more than sparrows. In Matthew, Sparrows are listed at two for a penny, but you get a better deal in Luke where you can get five for two pennies. People cost much more, but an exact price isn’t listed
And apparently sparrows are good at overcoming bad times and a symbol that things are going to get better. According to my sources (all both of them), sparrows also can represent hard work, a positive attitude, endurance, or perseverance. All good stuff.
I blame my lack of knowledge about sparrows on the books I read as a child. I grew up in the 60’s and while we had books back then, I didn’t read much until 1974 when I started reading Science Fiction Novels. Sparrows aren’t a big topic in Science Fiction. I do recall loving the Cat in the Hat book and Where the Wild Things Are. I do recall reading Green Eggs and Ham at a friends house, but couldn’t understand why anyone would want to eat moldy eggs. Some of my fonder memories of children’s books was from Mr. Clark’s sixth grade class. He had a practice of reading us a book every afternoon just after lunch. He was great at story telling. He read books like James and the Giant Peach, Charlotte’s Web, Charlie and Chocolate Factory.
Mr. Clark also read this great story about a 12 year old boy who lived in the Swiss Alps. The boy’s father was a mountain climber and guide and was teaching the boy how to climb. The father becomes trapped on the Matterhorn and the boy climbs up to rescue him. For the life of me I can’t remember the name of the book.
I have tried looking it up, but most of my on-line search results come back with links to a book tilted Matterhorn, which turns out to be a very good novel. It’s set in the Vietnam war where a young Marine lieutenant leads his platoon in a fight on a mountain top they nickname, Matterhorn. It has absolutely nothing to do with the book I remember from sixth grade or even anything to do with this essay. Just thought if you like war novels, you should look this one up. I might still have a copy if you want to borrow it.
Recalling childhood books, I can’t help but to think of my parent’s relationship to books. My father treated all books as almost sacred. He didn’t allow you to write in a book and turning a page down or “dog-earing” a book would land you with a long lecture on the importance and value of books. Strangely enough though, I rarely saw my father read a book. Mostly he watched TV and sometimes read a news paper. He did talk about novels he read while serving in the Army in WWII. He did have an uptick of reading after he joined AA in 1972 and had a small library of AA books and other general self-help kind of books. In our home there weren’t many books other than what we had for school.
My mother on the other hand was a voracious reader. She read constantly, even in the bathtub. I’m serious — I don’t know how she did it, but she’d disappear into the bathroom with a book and read for an hour or two. Every 20 minutes or so you’d hear her run more hot water. She never dropped a book into the water. Mostly she read romance novels. My mother used to trade grocery bags full of romance novels with her friends and I’m guessing that she’d finish two or three a week.
I still have a great sense of reverence for books and never write in them or dog-ear them. Partly out of respect for the book and partly out of fear of my father finding out. I still strive to have his respect for the written word, but actually try to read more books than he did. I don’t read as much as my mother did and never in the bathtub, but I do know that I should read more than I do. I tend to read a lot of stuff on-line, but it can take me months to finish reading a real book.
So when I think of books, I think of trying to achieve a balance between not reading and over reading. In my youth I did read a lot of science fiction, but these days I’m more likely to read poetry.
Well, if you do know any good books about sparrows, let me know. I should probably read them.
Andrew's View of the Week 