Psalm 9:12

for the birds

Sing ye to the Lord, who dwelleth in Sion: declare his ways among the Gentiles: (Psalm 9:12 DR)

My wife and I both enjoy a good board game, and one of our favorites is called Wingspan, which is about birds. The narrative goal of the game is to attract birds to your various habitats, and you do this by collecting various kinds of food that each bird likes and then “pay” the food to earn the bird card, which is both worth points and usually has some sort of ability that can be used on subsequent turns. This engine-building quality of the game along with the randomness of the draw and the sheer variety of birds makes each playthrough generally require a slightly different strategy which keeps the game fresh.

The physical game has also been adapted digitally and is really well done, for not only are all the mechanics implemented, but also some fun animations for the birds, nice background music, etc.

One of the more striking aspects of the digital version is that they have the calls or sons of each kind of bird, and it is fascinating just how much variety there is even among birds of similar kind or size. They range from the beautiful like the Meadowlark or the Nightingale to the annoying like the Peregrine Falcon or the appropriately named Noisy Miner. There’s also the rather creepy Turkey Vulture which sounds like; well, I’m not sure how to describe it.

Of course, not all birds are as delightful, as I have a woodpecker currently drilling a hole in the side of my house…

The songs of birds can be beautiful to us, but our apprehension of that beauty is somewhat artificial in that we call the bird’s song a song because it has the tonal modulation that we associate with music. But while there are a lot of things for the birds, music isn’t one of them, for to them their song is simply them communicating as they were created to do. There is almost a virtuous envy we can have of birds, for what we have to strive for years to achieve they do so as part of their nature. That is, we humans have to learn how to sing, but for the birds it is what they were born to do.

The Psalmist now transitions from the interior dispositions of his relation to God to their exterior expressions. The two are—of course—not as distinct as the terms imply, for as a body-soul composite the things we do exteriorly flow from the interior motivations, just as what we do externally impacts our internal life. However, notions such as trusting and knowing have an interior movement which will then be mirrored by the exterior movement. That is, if our knowing of God is made actual by the experiential reality of a will and life subjected to Him, then this becomes a sort of outside—>in movement. On the other hand, the exterior expressions of praise come from that interior charity towards God, and thus is inside—>out.

It is the soul that trusts in the Lord and knows that it will not be forsaken who then will have reason and motivation to sing to the Lord. Like the bird who by nature raises its voice in song, the soul which has been transformed and made a new creation (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:17) likewise raises a new song to the Lord (cf. Psalm 95:1).

However, the relationship of the soul to God does not exist in some abstraction; rather, the Psalmist states that the saints are to sing to the Lord Who dwelleth in Sion. For the Psalmist Sion is the place of God’s dwelling with His people, both the city of David and later the temple of the Lord. In the New Covenant, however, Sion stands in for the Church, which is now God’s dwelling among His people, but this time in an even deeper manner. After all, the dwelling of God in the tabernacle and later in the temple was in a physical location as manifested in the cloud of glory which overshadowed the ark of the Covenant (cf. Exodus 40:34, 2 Chronicles 5:14). But in the New Covenant God dwells in His Church which is the mystical Body of Christ:

And to this Church it was said, “For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are:” [1 Corinthians 3:17] again, “that Christ may dwell in the inner man in your hearts by faith.” [Ephesians 3:17] It is enjoined us then, that we sing to the Lord who dwells in Sion, that with one accord we praise the Lord, the Inhabitant of the Church. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 9, 12.)

St. Augustine earlier notes that the term Sion also has a prophetic aspect to it, for he interprets it as meaning watching, and Jerusalem as meaning vision of peace. The Church on earth thus is the Church Militant which is journeying towards the heavenly Jerusalem:

He “dwells in Sion,” which is interpreted watching, and which bears the likeness of the Church that now is; as Jerusalem bears the likeness of the Church that is to come, that is, the city of Saints already enjoying life angelical; for Jerusalem is by interpretation the vision of peace. Now watching goes before vision, as this Church goes before that one which is promised, the city immortal and eternal. But in time it goes before, not in dignity: because more honourable is that whither we are striving to arrive, than what we practise, that we may attain to arrive; now we practise watching, that we may arrive at vision. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 9, 12.)

The song we sing to the Lord—while it certainly has a literal meaning to it—is ultimately about this watching that leads to vision. That is, this reconfiguring and reorienting of our souls to conform to God’s will is how—to use another metaphor—our eyes become accustomed to the glory cloud of the Lord that in the past occluded the vision of the those who beheld it (cf. 2 Corinthians 3:13-15). In Christ dwells the fullness of God (cf. Colossians 1:19), and thus those who are joined to the Church as His Body now behold God with unveiled faces (cf. 2 Corinthians 3:18) and are transformed into that same image.

The growth in virtue and in the spiritual life just is this transformation as we are configured into the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. And as the birds by their very nature sing, so we who are renewed in Christ come to sing as well, for it is an overflow of the same charity that God ours into our hearts; as our Lord says:

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth that which is evil. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. (Luke 6:45 DR)

The Psalmist finally prophetically looks forward to the incorporation of all the nations into the Church, as the poetic expansion of the first half of this passage by means of the second reveals. That is, the very Lord who dwells in Sion will be known among the Gentiles, and it is those who are in His Church who will be the medium of this proclamation. Notice that the song which arises within the Church as thanks for God’s constancy is then expanded to be the declaration of God’s ways among the nations; these are really two sides of the same coin. The Psalmist also ties God’s dwelling in Sion with his being known among the Gentile nations, which entails that Sion is not merely a single physical location but diffused throughout the world in the Holy Catholic Church, which is itself confirmed by the prophet Malachi:

For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 1:11 DR)

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Since I focused so much on birds for this, I decided that this animation would use some singing birds. I found this nice photo of what I think is an Eastern Meadowlark and isolated it in Photoshop.

In After Effects I precomped it and rigged it up using the Puppet Tool and Puppet Tools 3. I then animated the bird singing and bouncing around a bit in song just to give it a bit of life and expression.

In the main composition I recolored it and then duplicated the bird and added a Time Remapping so I could offset the duplicates in time. I finally added in some textures and color correction.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: