Growing up, my best friend, Debbie's grandparents lived on a farm in Michigan. During the summer, they would visit them, and I occassionally went also. To my eight year old eyes they lived and worked a big farm. It had a large vegetable garden, dozens of cats, dairy cows, pigs, dogs and chickens.
Her grandfather, wore the blue denim uniform of a farmer and seemed to be endlessly working on a tractor. Her grandmother was small and round and seemed to spend her time going between the clothes line, baking, cooking and canning. There always seemed to be a pie cooling on the window ledge, while she also stopped everything to take care of the cars that honked when they wanted service at her outside fruit and vegetable stand.
One morning, she gave us a basket and shooed us out of the kitchen, telling us to go to the chicken coop and bring back some eggs. Her grandpa told us to be quick about it though as those chickens were just plain nasty. Excited and dizzy from the heady smells of the barn and the chicken coop in back we had the idea that one of us was to distract the chickens while the other snatched up the eggs. Yes, they squacked and pecked, but I thought it really was because they were trying to protect their young.
Recently I read an article in Mark Nepo's book Finding Inner Courage, that chickens peck at each other when they don't get enough light. For many years farmers thought that it was the "nature of chickens" to be nasty, as they were loners and couldn't mingle. Come to find out, they are nasty when they are cooped up in small spaces and live without much light.
I think our nature is similar. If we don't allow ourselves time to bathe in the light of love and to refresh ourselves with good food, sunshine, open air, exercise, and building relationships with one another, we start to peck; first at ourselves and then at each other.
Blessings, Rev Janice
