Starlings, the rats of the bird world, are one of the most populous species of bird here in the U.S. and are not even native to North America. They were brought to Central Park, N.Y. in the 1880’s to help control the insect population and their numbers exploded, threatening indigenous species in a kind of John Bull’s revenge.

Last year the elders planted a cherry tree outside my office window in honor of my father’s passing. It is a young tree, but already a favorite with the birds who find it a perfect perch for scouting out insects among the clover. Cardinals come, and sparrows and two pair of Eastern bluebirds – a real treat. What I don’t see are the starlings, which is fine with me. Starlings, the rats of the bird world, are one of the most populous species of bird here in the U.S. and are not even native to North America. They were brought to Central Park, N.Y. in the 1880’s to help control the insect population and their numbers exploded, threatening indigenous species in a kind of John Bull’s revenge.

You won’t find a starling in that most famous printed aviary ever – John James Audubon’s The Birds of America. When Audubon first started painting American birds in Pennsylvania, then later in Louisiana, the two most populous species of birds in America were the Carolina Parakeet and the Passenger Pigeon – both now extinct. Both birds lived in large flocks, numbering in the billions, darkening the early 19th century skies for days. The Carolina Parakeet, the only parrot native to North America, did major crop damage, the passenger pigeon did not. By 1900 the Carolina Parakeet had been hunted into extinction, and on September 1, 1914, the last passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati Zoo.

In the 1820’s, when Audubon was putting his book together, no one imagined that inside a century both species would become extinct. Neither was the victim of planned extermination the way American Bison were. Both species became extinct through “the avarice and thoughtlessness of man” according to the inscription on the monument to the Passenger Pigeon in Wisconsin’s Wyalusing State Park.

I’ve been watching the 9-11 hearings in New York (in brief spurts, my “fight-or-flight” hormones can’t take much more) and I’m wondering what happened to all the good-will and unity we had after that tragic day. In the days following the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers would anyone, anywhere, have presumed to say the NYPD, NYFD and Port Authority Police would have been better replaced by boy scouts? Florence King points out in her book With Charity Towards None, that in a melting-pot nation such as ours one of the glues that makes “Unum” out of “Pluribus” is the good will generated by terrible events such as Pearl Harbor, or the Kennedy Assassination (p.50). The attack of 9-11-01 was more terrible, more evil than that of 12-7-41 because it was made against civilians. “We the People” were directly attacked, and for a while – you remember it – the American people were a “We”. Now we are a fairly irritable group of “us-and-thems.” The good will and un-self-conscious patriotism so ubiquitous two years ago has been squandered by the same “avarice and thoughtlessness” blamed for the demise of the Passenger Pigeon.

Peace and Good-Will, like good health, are illusive, hard to obtain, easily taken for granted, and quickly squandered. It isn’t hard to drain the reservoir of Good Will. Peace can flame out as quickly as flash paper. One unsaid word, one catty remark made in a moment of stress, one ill-chosen gesture, one forgotten date, one unrecognized kindness and the peace of a friendship, a family, a congregation can sour into peevishness overnight.

Peace has to be planted and carefully cultivated (James 3.18). Maintaining peace is hard work (Ephesians 4.3). Peace is more illusive than the golden snitch – it has to be relentlessly pursued (1 Peter 3.11). Peace isn’t a product of dumb luck, but of deliberate living – it doesn’t just happen; peace is “made” (Matthew 5.9).

The peace we have in Jesus is of a unique quality (John 14.27). It is built upon the surest of foundations – a right-built relationship with God (Ephesians 2.14). But here on planet earth, among flawed humans, peace is hard to come by and hard to cultivate. Let us never treat it cavalierly, thoughtlessly.

Let us cherish Peace, it is the gift of God in Christ Jesus (Colossians 1.19-23).