Monthly Archives: November 2012

My brief war with a chicken and keeping off the dogs

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I was at a friend’s house and she had some chickens. Cute. Free range. But the neighboring chickens were not just cute and free range, they were aggressive.

One attacked my friend’s chicken. I reached for the back wing of the aggressive chicken and pulled it away from it’s prey.

Not a big deal, a quick calculation of size and risk. I was pretty sure I could take the chicken.

I don’t like guns and wars are nightmarish. But there are times when it is criminal to stand by and do nothing while Rwanda or Mali burns.

I learned this from history.

I lived in Germany as a child, Panama as a teen, Asia–all places deeply influenced by conflict and injustice.

I would say the best way to stop war is for the individual in society to advocate for the civil rights of each individual–children, victims of crime, the hungry.

But we don’t
Long before someone puts a gun in our hands and tells us we have to fight
We are chicken.

Church for the stubborn hearted

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We do the parable of the king who invites people to a wedding feast for his son. People ignore the invitation so he finds street people to come. There are some messengers hurt and killed in the process.

When the indigent dudes get ready for the clambake (uh, wedding) one is wearing his beat up, stinking work clothes. The king asks why he has not changed into the provided wedding clothes.

He was oppositional defiant and didn’t feel like it.

So he got kicked out into darkness with “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

We talk about the messengers–prophets who told the truth and got hurt for it.

My daughter, who was five when we discovered and stopped what was happening to her, begins to tear up as she talks about the church and friends and family who could not handle our story.

We cherish those who did.

It is a hard thing to tell the truth and lose your community.

It is a harder thing to lie and lose your soul.

Writing Therapy

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I have been writing a lot this month and today I thought–ugh, I don’t want to write. I also did not really want to tackle bills, letters, grammar instruction or going to the store.

Gives me a headache just writing it all down.

But I know that writing is good for me. It forces me to own my thoughts and organize them. It results in a greater sense of control. All the things I dread are still there but now they are neatly ordered by want, need and fear.

It is the fear group that concerns me. Each of them is an unblinking carnivore, taking it’s place in line with all the other monsters

..waiting to devour my soul.

Answers for hard questions

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I force myself to ask a mixture of hard and easy answers–
Do you like scary movies?
Do you do puzzles
Mixed with
Where is your anger
He has a self-effacing way of saying he used to “act up”
This is a little like saying Mussolini used to be into public oratory
So I ask
How is your anger (anyway)?
He says his psychologist
Tells him he is letting it out
(like a Jack Russell terrier roaming the cul-de-sac?)
…When he does ordinary things

It is gone now
the subtext
I am always reading the subtext

Head injuries

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The pictures are often similar–tiny faces surrounded by tubes, bruised little faces and bodies.

Shaken babies.
So heartbreaking, so preventable.

In 2007 my father died as the result of head injuries from a helicopter crash. What happened to him was painful, traumatic and deadly. But he knew the risks.

I compare the last stage, the dying stage, of my father’s life to the pictures I see of small children abused to death by caregivers.

No helicopters
No choice
No escape

And no reason on earth why we should look the other way while more than 5 children a day are abused to death in America.

Shame on us.
Do something

A first time voter on election night

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My adopted son voted today. He seemed excited about it. I congratulated him.

His biological sister is fully supported by Ohio but I do not know if she voted.

I did not vote.
I did not vote because every republican and democrat I contacted in the last 3 years either washed their hands of us or lied to us.

One party washed
The other lied

Kicked the stuffing out of me.

Democracy. Better than oligarchy, inching toward very expensive anarchy

For something to change someone besides me would have to be alarmed by my story.

The Pittsburgh painted dogs

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I like to think there is a multiverse somewhere where African painted dogs gorge themselves exclusively on dandelions.

And another where a hapless mother keeps her grip.

And another where the boy stays away from the railing.

But in one multiverse everything happens the same except there are no lawyers and the adults are very brave.

It is as though they had been training for this their whole lives! They spring Into action.

One adult shepherds the children away.
One dials 911
One hollers for the zookeepers

And every other able bodied human leaps over the rails and starts punching
Kicking
Yelling
Wielding sticks
Whacking wild dogs with cell phones
Cameras
Loose change

In the wild brouhaha that ensues one of these brave souls pulls the child away quickly

Hurt, but still living.

We don’t believe in these brave, fictitious people

Because we are unwilling to be them

Toddler Mauled by Wild Dogs

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The story is haunting, devastating, nightmarish–a little boy is killed when he falls into a wild dog exhibit.

I grieve for the family.

And I say we must treat this as a preventable death.

There should have been a secondary safety barrier between the railing and the ground.

Any able bodied adult attending the exhibit should have immediately called 911 and alerted zoo officials.

And yes, we ordinary citizens need to expect that it is our job to insert ourselves between a baby and a pack of wild dogs.

I know I am asking for heroism. And I know this is a rare occurrence (thank God)–but one we must examine closely.

The wiki link above says that these dogs have an 80-90% kill rate. 2/3rds higher than lions. They hunt in communicating packs and will run prey down. They are extremely aggressive and work together.

And here is the terrible irony–these dogs were raised by an ordinary domesticated dog. The Pittsburgh zoo brought her in to nurse the wild pups in 2009.

They were raised in that zoo.
Did the zoo cultivate their predatory hunting skills? I don’t know.

But I do know that they are deadly. The wild African dogs hunt to sustain the life of their pack.

Human predators have no such excuse for the terrible things they do.

To keep our kids safe we must educate ourselves about the animals that live so close to defenseless children.

My prayers remain with this little one’s family.

stats on dog attacks

Church for the rest of us

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I don’t go to church. I should. I used to speak in church. Also teach aerobics, Sunday school, and youth group. It was like a one-man band.

The reason why it was like that was the apathy at the heart of that church. It was a social club, not a place of worship, a fact that became quite clear when I went to the leaders about a self-confessed pedophile.

Church is not a building
Church is not good coffee
Church is not the offering plate
Church is not babysitting
Church is the cathedral of the world, built by God not man.

Maybe you are like me–so burned by the wolves in the sheepfold that you don’t want to risk yourself on God or His messy people.

If you feel burned by it all, you probably have a good reason.

So try this–
Ask Him to show you His love
Falling leaves? Squirrels? Snow? Your children?

The world is full of signs of Grace. Look for them.

Then try Jesus. He is church–the strong tower of love. Open the books of Matt, Mark, Luke, or John and read a story –a verse, five verses.

Then listen. Find a quiet place and listen.

He loves you.
That is church.

(God loves us so much that He sent His only true soul’s child to scoop us out of despair and the hells we make for ourselves and give us hope, love and a place of sanctuary close to his motherly heart)

Church.
Built by the hands of Love