Not crows, but not robins either

Spring’s serenity outside our den’s window was shattered recently by the caws of crows and the sounds of struggle.

My wife and I turned to look. A crow was pinning a robin to the ground with its beak. The robin seemed to be struggling a bit, although it was hard to tell whether it was moving on its own or being shaken by the crow. Then the crow flew up, carrying its prey a few yards farther before landing again. That happened one more time, the contending pair coming down too far away to see them clearly. I assume the crow got its meal.

The two were not the only actors on the scene. Five or six of each of their species darted and flew and called through the air, apparently encouraging them the way fans at a boxing match cheer on their favorite. Did the spectators carry lingering feelings of victory or of loss home with them after it was all over?

The robin and the crow are perhaps two of the most common and universally recognized of birds. We grow up being taught to know robins when we see them, and that they are signs of spring. They make their way across our yards listening for and consuming bugs and worms we cannot see, so feel little sympathy for. We sing songs and recite poems about them, and celebrate the blue of their eggs. Robins are good, the more the merrier.

Crows, on the other hand, eat flesh we see sprawled out on our streets, and make a really ugly sound. Plus, to their ever-lasting shame, they are as black as Darth Vader, not to mention as people who are by some wrongly regarded as inferior. Crows are bad, and we’d rather not have them around.

Because we humans have loaded robins and crows with conflicting moral values, it is tempting to assign moral judgment to what Maxine and I witnessed: The bad crow killed and then ate the poor, innocent robin.

But nature, operating without human interference or judgment, is not subtle about moral good nor moral bad. The natural world’s ethical norms are no more refined than those suggested in the razor-sharp dichotomy of eat or be eaten. Extended to entire species, eat or be eaten becomes reproduce or go extinct. To the extent nature itself measures good and bad, survival, whether at the moment or in the future, sums it up.

What the crow did was good for the crow. What happened to the robin was bad for the robin.

Something fundamental to humans—something animal, if you will—is attracted by the clarity of an ethic of eat or be eaten, of reproduce or go extinct. In this ethic, living is all about me, and perhaps about people like me. If another gets hurt or exterminated in the process, that’s too bad. It’s the way things are. It’s much easier to be a crow if you do not have to consider the interests of the robin. You probably sleep better at night.

But something else in us is repelled by that kind of ethic. As appealing as it is to make ethics and morality a series of stark contrasts between what’s good and what’s bad, we know it is not enough. Consideration of the other must play an important role in our decision-making when it comes to right and wrong or we become something less than human. We become inhuman, and do and participate in deeds of inhumanity.

When we consider ourselves or those like us to embody all that’s good, and people other than ourselves or unlike us to embody all evil and therefore to have no claim upon us, our ethic is for the birds.

Memorial Day follow-up

As we usually do, last weekend Maxine and I watched the PBS-sponsored Memorial Day Remembrance. We appreciate it for the performances (even though we know few of the performers), but more for the stories of heroism and sacrifice that are told.

I was particularly moved this year by hearing again what our POWs in Vietnam went through. Surely there were times when they must have wondered if it would have been better to have been killed than to suffer as they were.

The piece about World War II reminded me that it was about preventing a racist and ruthless tyranny from overtaking human existence and history. WWII was about preserving democracy, in all its inherent messiness, as the preferred means of human governance. My life would have been very, very different than it has been if the Allies had not won.

I am deeply grateful to the men and women who gave completely of themselves so that I have been able to enjoy the one life I dare call my own.

At the same time, it seems to me that the decisive fights for human dignity and freedom are waged not on battlefields, but in the halls of government and the court rooms of justice, and usually in times of peace. Military victories that save us from others must be secured and preserved in the political work of those we elect to serve us. If they do not do that work, the war dead will have died in vain.

If I get it right, soldiers must know—deeply—that the battle is not about them. It is about a larger and more inclusive us, and they—the soldiers—are players in a larger enterprise whose goal is the survival of some still larger enterprise. That is the only way their willingness to sacrifice their lives makes sense. Otherwise, why do it? Why join the fight at all if your only concern is preserving yourself?

So if we celebrate soldiers who have sacrificed everything for us, should not we who are beneficiaries of their sacrifices be willing to sacrifice as well? They served. Should not we?

A renewed sense of service and sacrifice could help us get back to the business of being one nation of liberty and justice for all. Our elected political leaders can show us the way by their examples. What we choose them to do is not about them, or their success. It is about us and our flourishing, together.

When our public servants speak and act to call attention to themselves as if they alone could save us, or to crassly appeal only to their subsection of the populace, they encourage us all to flail about, punching at ghosts and apparitions, instead of confronting realities. It’s a fight we all will lose.

To lead us is to serve us, and to serve our nation is to serve as many of us as possible for the good of all of us. Leaders who serve and sacrifice honor those we remember on Memorial Day more than all grand parades, passionate speeches, and waving flags.

Pentecost's Wings

We were just about ready to leave home for our church’s Pentecost service—wearing a bit of red so we’d fit in and stand out—when I heard that awful thud against our patio door’s glass that told me a bird had smashed into it. A soft feather was stuck to the glass, and below it, a few feet from the door and on the concrete, lay the victim. Its back was toward us. I am guessing it was a young robin.

It made a couple of pathetic moves, then lay still. I was quite certain it was dead. But it was time for us to leave home. I figured I’d have to do something with the corpse when we came back.

When we returned, the bird was gone. No sign of it. As if nothing had happened.

Had the body been carried off by another animal, a scavenger? Crows and hawks nest in the trees behind our house. Or perhaps a turkey vulture had swooped down from soaring high above to claim its meal.

Or what if, after a few still moments of repose, the robin had caught its breath again? What if it was as good as dead for a time until it was able to right itself and spread its wings and fly away on its own power?

I will never know who took wing from our patio while I was reciting a Pentecost liturgy in a church somewhere.

Republicans deny democracy in Ohio, again

How does the Republican Party show its disdain for democracy? Let me count the ways…Damn! I cannot count that high!

Here in Ohio our Republican gerrymandered super-majority legislature just voted to call for a special election on August 8. The purpose of the election is to vote to amend the Ohio Constitution to make it harder for citizens to make future changes in it. Among other things, it would take a 60% yes vote to amend the constitution instead of the present (and for the last 100 years) 50%.

Why the rush to put this proposal up in August, especially when about 6 months ago, Republicans were against holding special elections in August except under certain well-defined circumstances? Because if enough signatures are gathered in the next few weeks, Ohioans will be voting in November on an amendment that would assure access to abortions in Ohio. (That’s simplifying it, but it works for my purposes here.) A 60% threshold would make such an amendment much harder to pass. But a 60% threshold, if more than 50% of the votes cast are yes, would result in minority rule on abortion rights…something we already are subject to, are we not?

Despite widespread opposition to the measure—including by former Ohio Governors and Attorneys General of both parties—the Ohio legislature and Governor DeWine will not be denied what they thirst for, kicked in their asses as they are by Ohio right-to-life and pro-gun lobbies (“politics makes strange bedfellows,” you know) that fear the majority. (Let’s make sure babies are born so they can be gunned down in school, perhaps?)

Well, we ought not be surprised. It’s just business as usual for our unrepresentative representatives in Columbus.

Sorry if this post is a bit chaotic. It’s written out of incredulous frustration and even fear at the direction these yokels are taking us. I am disgusted in so many ways I cannot count them, either.

"Some victory for humanity"

 

In today’s Writer’s Almanac, Garrison Keillor reports the following about Horace Mann, “the father of American public education”:

When he left politics, (Mann) moved to Ohio to accept a position as president of Antioch College. “I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words,” he told one graduating class: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

At my age, those words struck me hard: ashamed to die. Whoever considered being ashamed to die? Maybe being willing to die, or afraid to die. But ashamed to die? What shame can there be in dying? We all do it.

Have I ever in all my years won any victory for humanity? That’s a question I’d rather excuse myself from having to answer. I suppose I’ve helped one or two humans win a personal victory or two in my eight decades. But a victory for humanity? Not even close. And I do not have much time left.

Some part of Mann’s condemnation makes sense to me, and even motivates me. What, if anything, might I yet do to “win a victory for humanity?” Horace Mann’s challenge will not easily leave me.

In the meantime--or better in the eternity that holds time in their hands--I believe I am loved by a Savior who at my end will deliver me from any and all shame. Love overcomes shame. I work on whatever victories I might achieve assured of love. And you can, too.

P.S.: Here’s another line from Horace Mann that seems particularly relevant to our times: “If any man seeks greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.” I know you want to make it more inclusive, and that’s okay. I’d like to reformulate it this way: “If any nation seeks greatness, let it forget greatness and ask for truth, and it will find both.” Make of that what you will.

Truth or Consequences

It’s not hard to imagine how a 21-year-old National Guard guy lost his way in our ongoing national journey into fantasy. He is both a participant in the game and its victim. The consequences of his leaking of U.S. government secrets may be enormous.

We are constantly surrounded by forces that intend, first, to confuse truth, and second, to seduce us into believing versions of “truth” that serve their purposes. No better example of this is Fox News, which knew that Trump had legitimately lost the 2020 election but continued to tell its viewers that he had won it in order to hold on to Fox’s audience and maximize its profits.

A lot of advertising works the same way: make people believe their happiness, worth, or success depends upon buying this or that elixir that we happen to be selling. Explicitly or implicitly, suspicion is planted that I am not as happy, valuable, or successful as I could be if I had that. Truth and reality be damned.

I am not into what is called virtual reality, but from what I do understand it depends upon drawing us into something more interesting, more entertaining, more satisfying than reality itself. Of course, there is that philosophical question about reality itself, about what reality really is, championed as I understand it by advocates of post-modernism, a term that continues to escape my ability to understand, as surely it is intended to do.

It’s hard to keep your eye on the ball when you are not sure the ball even exists. or when you are confronted by multiple balls simultaneously demanding your attention and response.

I claim no special ability to keep my head on straight in the middle of all this. I may be as confused as I think you are.

But however we do it, it is important to try to stay grounded in reality humanity can generally stand on and in truth we can commonly defend. After all, virtual reality is virtual and artificial intelligence is artificial. That a young man raised in so unsettled a society as ours would apparently not know how to handle information far beyond his pay grade is not surprising. And it is most troubling because he is far from alone.

Thaddeus's job

"Write a paragraph about a cat with a silly job.”

(Janine’s prompt for her second grade Abbott Elementary class)

There’s this about cats: they do not have “jobs.” You might say a cat’s only job is to take care of themself, on their own schedule. So I was surprised when our otherwise undistinguished domestic short hair, Thaddeus, started doing something regularly on his own, without being taught (as if he could have been). He began to patrol our house (well, his house) every three or four hours, like a prison guard, apparently checking every closed door to determine if it could be opened. Not that he could or would open it himself. No, he stops at every closed door, then meows until a human shows up to open the door and show him that it is unlocked and can be unlatched and that its hinges have not rusted closed. And not that he goes into whatever space the now-opened door leads to, but that he just watches it opened and, perhaps, closed again, and then moves on to the next door. He does this for about fifteen minutes before he tires of the game until next time. But perhaps the routine is not a game to him but a service to everyone in the house. After all, what if I wanted to go through some door sometime—or, God forbid, had to open a door to escape a threat like a fire or a robber—and I could not open it to save my life, all because Thaddeus had not done his job and forced me to check it regularly? I mean, what if that happened? Not silly at all, is it?