This column is continued from the Big Horn County News May 29, 2013, at the seventh paragraph below.
Living with animals on a daily basis can be amazingly instructive. I've written about my turkey adventures in the past and their lessons continue this spring, with our new brood of little poults. I know that we humans are not turkeys, but sometimes the similarities are too close to ignore. Like our tom, Lightning, when it comes to the common good, we often just don't get it.
Last week Lightning refused to let one of the hens alone after her successful brooding. Annabelle graced our yard with her brood of eleven poults, in the image of their father, each with a lightning streak of baby fur across its tiny forehead. As Lightning recklessly pursued their mother in his single-minded urgency, he began tramping over the little ones. The object of his affection attempted to shelter her offspring under her wings, but this protection was short-lived, and we ended up losing two to hypothermia. I eventually separated Lightning and Annabelle between the garden fence and the yard. Unfortunately, the poults were small enough to squeeze between the fence wires, breaking out of their captivity to explore the wide world. To his misfortune, one strayed too long on Lightning's side of the fence. The tom was pacing and strutting along the fence opposite Annabelle, desperate for her attention, as she protected her little ones from the harsh wind.
Seated at lunch, I glanced out the window just in time to witness the heartbreaking episode. I saw Lightning pounce, peck, and grasp a fragile furry yellow lump in his beak. I dropped my turkey sandwich and rushed out after him, arms waving aggressively. He dropped his progeny, its neck broken. I briefly held the tiny dying bird. In rising rage, I found my hatchet by the chopping block and marched back, cornering the bad tom. Reaching for him with my left hand with the hatchet in my right, I froze in mid-air. How could I expect he would voluntarily extend his head over my chopping block while I held him with my left arm and wielded the hatchet with my right? I was so filled with rage that I actually considered stupidly hacking my tom to death were it not for the simple fact that I only had two hands.
After I cooled down for a minute, I realized the ridiculousness of my actions. On further contemplation, I could see parallels in many of our human behaviors. As people, we are capable of astonishing feats of self-sacrifice to protect our common good. Look at how selflessly adults have given their lives to save children in recent national disasters. On the other hand, we can so easily let our emotions push us into socially and personally destructive choices.
Lightning lost it. Like him, we humans get fixated with quick perceptions of good vs. evil and our worldview takes on a rigid black-and-white formula. Under this spell, our nation's technological power to threaten ultimate destruction blinds us. Fearing the loss of our domination of the world's economy, we become oblivious to the plight of the "least of these" (see Matthew's gospel). We often don't understand the fragile circumstances of those caught up in collateral damage, as we attempt to recreate the world as we would like it to be.
This memorial week we honor those who sacrificed for our common good. The most redemptive honoring would take us away from turkey thinking and restoring our humanity with others of our species. We, after all, unlike Lightning, have the stamp of the Creator's image. Let's learn from the sacrifices of victims on both sides of warfare waged over the past decade. While we're praying for the soldiers and children who have lost their lives to warfare waged around the world, let's steady our own hearts and lay down our need to punish. In that way, we can become more like the image of our Creator and less like stampeding toms.
The following is continued from the shorter version of this column in the Big Horn County News:
Here's an example of the kind of sacrifice some humans, honoring our Creator's image stamped on us, have been making to benefit our nation. It's not the kind Lightning the tom turkey lived and died for.
A Christian Peacemaker Team group suffered serious injury in a vehicle crash while fleeing Baghdad in the first wave of our bombing ten years ago this spring. They desperately needed help, one with life-threatening bleeding. No one was available; there were few drivers who braved that road under bombardment. A car finally came along with Iraqis who knew the area. They stopped to help, ignoring the danger. They took them all to Rutba, a town just off the road to Kuwait.
As they approached the town, they were dismayed to see the hospital in total destruction. It had been destroyed by our bombs three days earlier. But local Iraqi doctors found essential supplies and had set up in a nearby house. Using the few medical supplies and equipment that survived the bombing, they stayed and worked to save the lives of those Americans. They ignored the reality that the bombs destroying their hospital and wreaking casualties among their staff and patients were as American as these casualties, now under their care. They gave aid and comfort to their enemy (gregbarrett.org/tag/christian-peacemakers-team/March 13). They were not like Lightning the Tom Turkey.
These Americans and Iraqis can inspire us to a fitting honor for those many in Big Horn County who have suffered the ultimate sacrifice for our nation. Such sacrifice is most redemptive when we as a nation can be freed from our own misguided aggression. We have so much more hope than Lightning, since we do have a real Master, Jesus, and a Book to follow, the Bible. Jesus' protective and healing mission was primarily to the "least of these" who encountered raging rejection by those who wanted to do everything by the book.
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
graberdb@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment