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Carolina Wren, Canadian Goose, White-throated Sparrow…birdsong at dawn on a Sunday morning.

The light has shifted and arrives later now that daylight savings is over. More bird sounds rise as the weather warms. The birds appear to harmonize and get along with each other with their different pitches and warbles and squawks. Most sing from high in the trees, out of sight, occasionally flying overhead. The geese and ducks glide silently on the water but talk to each other from the air.

I sit in the gathering light and listen to the birds chirping and trilling on this chilly March morning. The sun is about to break over the trees on the horizon. Here it comes…a full golden orb ascending…coming quickly now so that I can’t write about it and take a photo at the same time before it is fully above the horizon.

My dog sits beside me and is also listening to the birds and watching the sun rise. I wonder what she sees. I’m told dogs only see in black and white…what they miss of the resplendent golds and greens and blues. But she hears sounds I don’t hear. Before I hear or see the squirrel approaching the bird feeder, she races off, and (thankfully) never catches the squirrel who defies her with its own special power of scrambling up trees. I don’t think my dog is predatory so much as territorial and just wants to play and to chase.

The animal and aviary kingdoms have much to teach us, perhaps more than ever these days. I hesitate to romanticize, but of course that is what I’m doing. I’m sure there are hierarchies among the animals and even among the birds, but they appear to get along better and to abide with their differences, not to cancel out those they don’t agree with.

Back among the human species and body politic, I recently visited, along with other members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the “Submarine Capital of the World” in Groton, CT where submarines are built and docked. In touring inside one of the submarines, we saw and tried to imagine how 130 men (and some women) existed together for eight months in spaces not much larger than the size of a coffin, moving along corridors barely as wide as a person, with missiles and torpedoes at bedside and cables and electronic equipment running throughout. It clearly takes accomplished sailors and those who know how to live and work in extremely close quarters. It also takes leadership that encourages and helps foster the bonds of community. An understood and shared mission helps, but it must be more than that. It must be a commitment to respect each other and operate as a community in spite of differences. I’ll resist romanticizing these submariners, but those we talked to were committed to their vocation and to getting along with each other.

These days there is a need for such lessons among our citizenry and our leadership, and if leadership at the top doesn’t have that goal, then person by person, day by day, action by action, citizens I hope will.

[Along the same theme I hope you’ll find of interest two articles, one about the White Helmets helping in Syria in the March 25, 2025 Christian Science Monitor and the other “The Politics of Love in Turkey’s Protests” in the March 26 Christian Science Monitor.]