The falcon’s call

Awed by an encounter with a bird of prey high above a Texas river, Anthony Baker ponders both the place and his place.

Anthony Baker

Anthony is a theology professor at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas.

A view of a lightly misted valley to mountains in a desert area.

The view from the South Rim of the Big Bend National Park.

National Park Service Digital Image Archives, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Seeing God in Big Bend

The scream from the sky shattered the quiet calm of my cliffside campsite. I'd never heard such a sound—it was like a large crow had decided to try and quack. I rushed out of my tent, where I'd collapsed after making the seven mile trek up the mountain, to find the source of this alarming noise.

I was up on the rim of Big Bend National Park in southwestern Texas, where I'd come on a solitary backpacking retreat. The "big bend" is the abrupt L-turn of the Rio Grande river, as it changes course from southeast to northeast. At the heart of the park rise the stark and severe Chisos Mountains, and the crown jewel of the Chisos is surely the South Rim. A thousand feet beneath me, a sheer drop from where I've staked my tent, there is a whole other mountain range. And ten miles away to the southeast I could see gorgeously striped limestone ridges across the river in northern Mexico.

It's a place that puts you in the presence of the sublime. Everett Townsend, the pathfinder responsible for bringing the region under the protection of Franklin Roosevelt's government, was particularly awed by this view. As a biographer put it, the view from the South Rim allowed him to

"see God as he had never seen Him before and so overpoweringly impressed him that he made note of its awesomeness…"

What does it mean, though, to see God in a place? Do I need to be up high and far away, staring into sublime depths? The South Rim gives me the impression that I'm hovering like an eagle over the earth, not standing on it like a human. Why are these the places that we think we sense the divine?

I'd like to think that seeing God in a place can be just as much about close and near attention as it is about sublime distances. What does God look and sound like here, if I stand on the ground and pay as much attention as I can to what I see and hear around me?

The Falcon's cry

I had no Internet connection on the Rim, so when I heard that bird cry out over my head I tried to burn the sound into a mental audio file. Jumping from my tent, I saw a large predator bird shooting directly above me and out over the cliff's edge. The size and shape—a large flying crossbow—told me that I'd been hailed by a peregrine falcon. A sign near my site told me that the section of the ledge where I was camping—where the South and East Rims meet—is in fact a protected nesting ground for the birds, closing to human trekkers each spring.

The peregrine is the world's fastest animal of any kind. They can dive at 200 miles per hour. That means they can only hunt birds in flight, since if they attacked anything on the ground at that speed they would both wind up, as my Granny would put it, "nothing but a greasy spot on the pavement."

A display down at the park's visitors' center had already filled me in on the near demise of the remarkable bird. DDT, a killing-machine of a pesticide that Rachel Carson called out in her book The Silent Spring in the 60s, triggers an immuno-response in female birds who have ingested it into their bodies. This response limits the calcium they can supply to their eggshells. As a result, the eggs were too vulnerable to predators or simply weather, and the embryos were not surviving.

We gave the Nobel Prize to the scientist who discovered how to use DDT to kill insects. It made so much sense, after World War II, to find ways to kill the pests who were spreading disease among the wounded soldiers and other victims of the war. But we were not yet thinking, in those days, about what else we might be killing. Now we're at least thinking, even while we're still killing.

Sin and redemption on the mountain

What does the falcon, soaring off the Rim, reveal to me about God? Consider, for instance, the doctrine of sin. Taken as an abstraction, sin is what theologians call the manifold ways that humans can turn from their holy God. But what if we fill that doctrine in with attentiveness to the story the falcon tells us? Here on the Rim, sin looks like failing to be awed enough by this remarkable life form to notice, until almost too late, that we are killing it.

Similarly, redemption, in the Christian telling of things, refers to the way that God overcomes sin and restores holy relationship. Here on the rim, redemption looks like a shared grief over the damage we've done. It looks also like the effort to protect this space as a bird sanctuary—literally a "holy place." It looks like a hope that falcon and human, like the bird and its own prey, can find a balance of mutual respect and coexistence.

The warning call of God

When I came down the mountain, I got on the Wi-Fi at the lodge outside the park and went searching for bird calls. I found a match for the sound that I'd heard - that caw-quack of a scream. It was the warning call of a peregrine falcon who has found predators in its nesting grounds. The bird was talking about me! Maybe somewhere in her DNA she recognized me as one of the DDT users that ruined her ancestors' eggshells. Hearing that call, as the bird flew off into sublime depths and distances, I suspect I was hearing about the mystery of life, the damage of sin, and the beauty of redemption. In other words, I was hearing the voice of God.

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21 May 2025

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Third Space: the gym that offers belonging, but at a cost

The real third spaces are not about cost and exclusivity.

Jessica Norman

Jessica is a Formation Tutor at St Mellitus College, and completing a PhD in Pauline anthropology,

An exercise class underway in a smart gym.

Third Place.

In the past 25 years, London has been overrun by a new luxury health club chain called Third Space. There are now thirteen sites across the city - and one just opened down the road from where I live. You can probably guess what happened next.

I was in the market for a new gym, so I enquired. And I must admit, it was stunning. There’s a beautiful reformer Pilates studio, a state-of-the-art gym floor, spin classes, even a spa. All of which made sense of the monthly fee. But there is also a two-month waiting list to join.

Living in London, where waiting more than five minutes for a tube feels outrageous, this was baffling. When I asked about it, I was told the list was to prevent overcrowding, as spots were “limited.” But when I visited, the gym was nearly empty.

This wasn’t about capacity—it was about exclusivity; a classic case of the scarcity principle: the idea that things become more desirable when they’re harder to access. It’s a tactic brands like Crocs and Stanley have famously used—make something hard to get and everyone wants it.

In its recent report, The Quiet Revival, the Bible Society noted how society has recently lost community “third places” such as pubs, libraries, and local clubs. Home is the first space; places of work are the second space. The loss of traditional third places—those informal, accessible gathering spots—has left a vacuum; we are becoming increasingly fragmented. Changes in work patterns and costly financial barriers to recreation mean fewer people feel rooted in their communities.

As humans, we are wired for connection. Research confirms what we intuitively know: deep community strengthens mental health, reduces loneliness, and brings a sense of purpose. With traditional third places in stark decline, many will now look to curated, branded “third spaces” like exclusive gyms, co-working lounges, or members-only clubs. These new spaces offer belonging—but at a cost. They are often expensive, exclusive, and subtly suggest that you need to be someone to gain entry. There is a bitter irony in Third Space’s success, built as it is on the exact opposite principles of what its namesake was all about.

The Church, by contrast, is radically different. It is not about earning access but receiving grace. There’s no waitlist to get in. No premium fee. No scarcity model. In fact, the more disqualified you feel, the more welcome you are. Grace doesn’t limit access—it throws the doors wide open.

While I have kept my Third Space membership (it really is incredible), I have tried to step more into community life in other ways. I take part in my weekly Parkrun and recently joined my local library. These things have been a gift to me in allowing me to connect with people in my local area in ways that everyone can access.

And I am a big fan of Church, too. Where Third Space focuses on my endeavour to be better, fitter, or stronger, it – and the Parkrun, and the library – encourage community, connection, and mutual care for other people. They are a reminder that grace isn’t scarce, community isn’t earned, and you don’t need a membership card to be welcomed. The doors are wide open—everyone is invited.

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