Do you feel the words tweet and twitter have been stolen from you? Once used to describe the lovely sounds of birdsong in garden, park and woodland, they've been more recently been snatched away as media tools to let everyone know where you are and what you're thinking. When the new "tweeting" first appeared, a young woman was invited onto the news show to demonstrate how it works. Her message to all her friend-followers, "I'm sitting in the coffee place on X and Y streets — stop whatever you're doing and join me." Stop whatever you're doing? School? Work? Taking care of an ailing parent or child?
In our own day, we're perhaps more familiar with tweeting as the favorite pastime of bullies: menacing, threatening, contradicting, insulting, mocking others. Instead, reclaim this:
"The birds of the sky nest by the waters,
from the branches they sing their songs."
Psalm 104:12
So if you'd like to enjoy some real tweeting and twittering, you might like to tune in here. This video is two hours long. Straight through. No looping around so you're actually listening to the same ten minutes over and over. A little while into the soundtrack we hear a real cuckoo!
Maybe you're tired of listening to the garbage truck beeping and grinding up and down the street. Maybe you're frustrated with the lawn mowers and leaf blowers blowing up the silence of your neighborhood. Maybe there's non-stop traffic invading your place. You can tune in here.
No one has to listen to the whole two hours in one sitting. It can be background sound while working. The bar on the bottom of the screen can be moved this way and that. We control the volume. But there you have it — revel in the psalm verse and click on the woodland scene above to take back the words tweet and twitter.
P.S. A science teacher told me she intended to play the soundtrack as soft background while her classes took their next nerve-wracking test. How kind!
