Billy Graham Is Calling All Birds

They don't know him, but he knows them. It's Revival time under the big tent of the sky for the evangelicals among them (Billy's Boys), and vespers for the liturgicals like me, prayer meeting for all, whether it's Wednesday or not. I used to wonder what this nightly heavenly glory story was all about, sangfroid from a faith I was never baptized in. They fly in without fail every day when day is done; same hour, same place over water, where following ritual circling, they make lake-fall for meditation until one of them by signal known solely to the divine, flutters his feathers, and, as if at Benediction, they lift again and drop again in a rhythmic rosary the pagans named a wheel. There are no words for the sea birds, only cries that break the sound barrier of the skies, where they Were before earthly worship in the baptismal font of the faithful. Lake water made sacrosanct