Search Results for: chicken dance

 

In my photography, I’m drawn to the idea of the Peaceable Kingdom, and Maria has brought that into focus. When she appears by the barn, the donkeys, chickens and cats gather around her while she talks to one, then the other. My animals do sometimes care for one another. The donkeys protect the chickens, Minnie the barn cat loves the donkeys and the dogs, Lenore loves the cats, Frieda seems more and more to be guarding everyone.

But in the animal world, the Peaceable Kingdom is constantly interrupted by life. A fox enters our lives. He injures a chicken. The other chickens try to kill the injured hen, as chickens do. Simon protects the chickens but doesn’t like dogs or cats and drives them off.  Another chicken is killed by a hawk. A barn cat kills a bird. In my experience, animals that have good, water and shelter and are around calm and attentive humans become calm and loving themselves. But the Peaceable Kingdom, like St. Augustine’s City Of God, is a notion, an ideal. You learn quickly on a farm that life happens, all the time. That is the nature of life, and of spirituality.  There are moments of beauty, love, peace and calm. They are punctuated by challenge, surprise, sometimes pain and loss.

The Peaceable Kingdom is something we aspire to. But it is not an escape from life. It is life itself. Life makes our peaceable and loving and spiritual moments all the more meaningful, but we cannot escape life any more than the animals.

The fox is a wonderful metaphor for life, one of the reasons we follow his story so closely, and he captures our imagination. He takes many forms, and can appear anywhere, in any life.

 

Inspire yourself.

Buy the camera.

Take a painting class.

Beat some drums.

Say good things for one hour.

If you get angry, think of a puppy or a kitten or a flower.

Make something pretty.

Look for light.

Cross the street,

when gloomy people appear.

Do not talk about the old days,

or how much better things used to be.

Or young people today.

Or how the Internet is ruining life.

Or listen to the debates of politicians.

Or watch their news.

Or talk about this economy.

Ever.

Leave something pretty behind.

Encourage somebody.

Encourage yourself.

Leave a legacy.

Wish somebody a good morning.

Make somebody smile.

Tell your story.

Inspire yourself.

 

I continue to be mesmerized (photographically, maybe spiritually) by the kinetic ballet of the chickens when they eat – heads down, tails up, in sync. I am growing fonder of chickens all the time. They have more distinct personalities that one might think, and I am glad to hear they are returning to cities in large numbers. It is true what they say – once you eat a fresh chicken egg, you may never eat another from a supermarket. Cluck local. I have taken hundreds of chicken photos and Maria thinks some of them might work as notecards or single photos. Maria is putting a small number of  chicken, egg and flower notecards up for Spring and Easter on her website at 4 p.m. today.

 

The dance. I got a royalty check, and it was the smallest royalty check I have ever received, and at first, I felt a flash of anger, even panic. It should not have been a surprise, royalty checks have been shrinking for a few years now, and I am a lucky writer in more ways than I can count. I am publishing four books this year and have 16 in print.

Still, that was my way of thinking, the way my mind worked for so many years. Oh My God, what happen to me now?  But I have been working hard at this, and changing, and so after the first flush of alarm, I thanked my royalty check, and was grateful for it, and for all of the other gifts that pour into my life almost every day. And the fear, and the sense of alarm and diminishment receded. That is the power of a spiritual life, as raggedy as that can be.  It is a choice, after all. And I don’t choose to think that way anymore.

 

The chickens have their dance, and we have ours. We can join in the General Dance, and make our own lives purposeful, meaningful, conscious of the beauty and light in the world. Thomas Merton believed this was the writer’s work – to call up the beauty and light and meaning in the world.