I saw a video of Carrie Newcomer's song "Abide" the
other evening. The words were tuned to
what had happened during the course of the day, the music was of the sort to
gentle one into the close of work and things external, and her voice... oh sigh...it
is one that makes me nearly incapable of moving while I can hear it, so drawn
am I to its full, round, depth.
That said, along with the admission that I promptly purchased two
of her songs when I returned to my room, it is a specific image in the video
that has stayed with me and continues to resonate:
Murmurations of starlings.
I watched their free-flowing, shape-shifting, group flight in awe
of its beauty and in immediate curiosity about the science behind it.
It turns out that the movement of the group, be it composed of
ten or a thousand, is prompted by the need for survival. That initial motivation might be some sort of
threat or the need to find a mate--either way, the result is a bit of living
art with connections to particle physics, magnetism, and even avalanches. This discovery prompts one of my most
frequent bits of prayer. "How cool is that?? God, you astound me!"
The more I read, though, the bigger the connections I could make
with this aerial wonder. When scientists probed the question about how a single
bird ten birds or a hundred birds away from those birds nearest the provoking
need sense the shift and are able to move in unison, they discovered that
"The change in the behavioral state of one animal affects and is affected
by that of all other animals in the group, no matter how large the group
is." (Georgio Parisi, theoretical physicist, in his paper from The
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2010). Further study indicates
that each bird's movement affects its seven closest neighbors. When that gets extrapolated outward,
yowza...flying, flexing, DNA spirals! Möbius strips!
Or, more simply and perhaps practically, it could be a model for
asking questions about how other large groups move, shift, change, and what my
part plays in that movement.
- How do my choices, my behaviors, affect what I bring to those around me?
- What are the seven closest relationships I am directly affecting by my choices and behaviors? Those relationships might be with people, and they might be with the earth, with justice, emotion, violence, etc…
- What are the seven closest relationships directly affecting me? What does that look or feel like? In other words, how would the bird next to me know?
- What does the sum of all of this say about the larger group?
- If, as science indicates, a large flock is able to respond to a move as effectively and fluidly as a small flock, then the system works no matter the size of the group. It's about relationship, affinity, energy, biology… What is the connect between this truth and what can happen when two or three gather in the name of Jesus or when 5000 gather for a meal?
One of the things I especially loved was the fact that when this
beautiful science was fully active, the form it took was non-linear. It flexed, pulsed, expanded, contracted,
concentrated and loosened. And still,
the movement was all. It was of a piece.
Each bird had a place and an effect.
And the result was utterly ALIVE.
Yowza.
Kimberly King, RSCJ
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Halifax, Nova Scotia
