The Windhover: The Kestrel is Back

This morning after I had watered my gallardia flowers out in the golden greenbelt and was climbing up the little hill just south of the now dry headwaters of Calaboose Creek, I saw a bird on top of the power pole on the brow of the hill. I thought it might be a red-shouldered hawk so I watched it closely as I climbed and then stopped to observe it. Finally, the bird dove from the top of the pole and showed his blue-gray bow of wings--not the red-shouldered buteo hawk but the kestrel, the smallest of falcons.

Gerard Manley Hopkins saw in this bird a sacramental representation of Christ as it appears in his poem, "The Windhover," which begins:

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing,
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, --the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act. . . .

My "Confessions" Is No Bedtime Story

In the first reader review of my Confessions of a Demonized Christian on Amazon.com, Mitsi wrote, "I was literally attacked by some unseen forces while napping after reading a few chapters. I screamed,"GO!!!!" in Jesus' name of course, and the terrifying forces left!!! Perhaps they did not want me to read the author's story. "

I had neglected to warn readers that they might be subject to demonic attacks and to tell them what they should do if they were attacked. Well, Mitsi did it just fine.

So if you read my book, be ready to rebuke the devil in Jesus name if you are a believer. If you are not a believer and are abruptly convinced by such an attack that you need his protection, then call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ who loved you, died in your place for your sins and was raised back to life for your justification.

"For 'everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,'" as the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 10:13. He also writes, "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your hert that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9). Do keep in mind that "Lord" means "Master," the "Boss."