Pigeons, Puritans and Poverty

The row about pigeons at Norwich Market has continued for several weeks. Market traders and residents said that they’re pests, an unhygienic nuisance, complaining about people who feed and encourage them. Norwich City Council brought in a hawk to scare off the birds…

Yesterday, on TV, local pigeon welfare campaigner Jenny Coupland, said the birds were ‘brilliant’ creatures, defended both the pigeons’ right to be in Norwich city-centre and people’s right to feed them.

Then Councillor Carli Harper talked about ‘irresponsible people’ feeding the birds…

Apparently irreconcilable differences of opinion rumble on.

Sue Mayfield’s ‘Hill of the Angels’ tells of childhood friends Abigail and Grace. Set in 1640, in a West Yorkshire village, the Civil War is dividing neighbours and families. Cavaliers support the king and the pope… roundheads are puritans who support parliament…

Abigail tries to understand: ‘Why would neighbours go to war – and blast one another with gunpowder and slice one another’s limbs with swords and spill blood until there was no more blood left to spill – all because one cuts his hair short while another leaves his long? Because one lights a candle and another prays in a bare room? Because one addresses God in Latin, another in his common tongue?…’

Such religious and political differences still bring bloodshed today…

In Shakespeare’s King Lear… Rich, powerful, aging Lear, steps down from the throne and divides his kingdom between his daughters… They undermine and betray him… Lear goes insane… Fleeing their treachery, wandering on a heath during a thunderstorm, he thinks of – and understands – what it is to be poor, hungry, homeless..

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this!

He experienced human empathy – understanding the ‘different’ by being like them… and somewhere there, is the Christian mystery of incarnation where God becomes man… the different… to experience and understand humanity…