Pecking Order

I remember asking my dad if we could have backyard chickens back when I was growing up. I thought it would be fun to have chickens running around. His answer: "They'll shit everywhere!"

That was as far as that went.

Erin has been raising three chickens in her backyard for the past few months or so. Normally, I am not thrilled about having pets at this stage of life, as the workload and every day commitment can be a strain--weekend trips, late nights and coming and going at odd hours can be difficult if an animal is relying on you back home for food and companionship. However, these chickens are pretty easy to maintain.

They stand ready at the gate of their coop to be let out to roam every morning. Her backyard is multi-faceted and full of different terrains--tall weeds, bushes, tilled-up garden, flower beds--anything a chicken would want. They spend all day eating grass, bugs, grubs, compost or bird food, which makes me quite happy as the less they eat of the stock chicken feed the more healthy and nutritious their eggs will be. It also makes us more environmentally responsible as grain feed involves lots of transportation costs and has a carbon footprint.

At first, they didn't seem to be as messy as my dad predicted. However, as the weeks and months go on and the longer the chickens peck around the yard the more prophetic I realize my dad's words were. I have left a pair of shoes there strictly for backyard use, if you get my drift.

It's also going to be a problem during the planting season of the garden. No issue with them walking around already-grown plants, but when the land is bare and we plant seeds, I have a feeling there will be some turf wars between us and them. Methinks they will have to be limited to a certain part of the yard until the garden gets a chance to grow.

I noticed that one of the chickens is treated poorly. When food is delivered, the others try to squeeze her out and keep her away. I intervene and try to establish justice, but there's only so much a guy can do. I talked with Andy about this, and he related some gruesome stories about pecking order. Sometimes chickens will abuse a single chicken so bad that it gets utterly depressed, deprived and even dies from the treatment. Then they move on to the next, most vulnerable chicken. His words have haunted me for weeks.

It makes me have some serious doubts about animal (and human) nature. I tend to believe that our God-given nature is a key to our personal growth. I don't buy into that ugly strain of Christian theology that holds that our natures are utterly depraved and that we must forcibly resist our innate urges in order to be good. I hold a more holistic, modern approach that we can work with our natures in harmony and outgrow petty issues. This isn't to say that we are rosy-cheeked angels at all times, but it does mean that working with our nature is the path to growth, not working against.

I've seen pecking orders in many groups I've been in. I was in a rock band a number of years ago. There was always one member who was "the problem." For a while it was our singer, until he left and then the new singer became the new "problem." When he left, the three remaining members identified someone else from among ourselves, then when he left and there were two of us remaining, I was targeted and I knew it was time for me to be outta there. It wasn't that we were trying to bully, but there was something about focusing our angst on one member to weed out who we perceived as the weakest link. The complaints about that person were always valid, too, but there was something about the way in which it was done that concerns me. It is also amazing that the whole group was able to feel very unified while that "problem" member was present, but when he left the remaining members started being upset with someone who they had previously gotten along with!

Had we reached out and tried to work together, we might have been able to stick together as a band rather that always weeding out people as the way to solve a problem. Had we been more driven in our mission--rather than directing our energy toward picking each other apart--we could have moved forward together.

And maybe that's the key--we do have some issues in human nature that we have to work with. We can pick each other apart, for better and for worse. But if we remember to focus that same problem-solving energy on our mutual mission, maybe we can work through stuff. In this band, we were not even overtly mean to these people, but our level of angst with them probably created an environment that made them feel unwelcome and made it hard for us to work through problems.

Just because we should work with our human natures does not mean everything is perfect in our human natures. It is probably more about redirecting the same impulses for good rather than for not. The person is not the problem-some behaviors are. We should still focus on problem, but with the goal of working through them rather than culling the whole person from the herd.

The Freedom of Jail

There's a line in a Civil Rights protest song that goes:

"I ain't scared of your jail, cause I want my freedom."

I heard it on the Pete Seeger album, We Shall Overcome: The Complete Carnegie Hall Concert. Great album, by the way.

It is such a simple line that maybe the deeper meaning can be lost if one doesn't pay attention. Isn't it counter-intuitive to want freedom so bad that you risk jail? Isn't jail, like, all about losing your freedom?

It gives insight to the spiritual depth of the Civil Rights movement. Life can be a ledger sheet--you weigh the pro's and con's and try to come up with the best possible solution considering all variables. You live with what you can and try to eek out for yourself the best possible circumstance given all variables.

Then others end up in some place that doesn't make sense to that account sheet. Folks love life so much they are willing to risk losing it. Folks want freedom so bad they are willing to lose it. Folks want the hungry fed so much they are willing to go on a fast.

If you try to hold that up against some standard of measured productivity objectives, it isn't going to be deemed sensible. Yet, the greatest saints and leaders for social change did these very insensible things.

Christianity often comes up with theologies that are all screwed up and they miss the point. There have been strains of Christianity over the centuries that have deplored the goodness of creation, imagining that the human body or sexuality were a bad thing. Others have wanted to follow Christ's passion and death so much that they were not just willing but actually eager to die. But true martyrs die because they love life, not because they are in a hurry to lose it. Some people misinterpret the suffering that many Christians have historically gone through--martyrdom, or the fasting and deprivation that many monastic communities have supported--to be a sign of hating this life or hating the human body or creation.

Martyrdom is the opposite of suicide. A suicidal person thinks they have nothing left to lose. A martyr probably feels that he has everything to lose and everything to gain. As G. K. Chesterton pointed out, Christianity has a bad history when it comes to a lack of compassion on people who commit suicide--yet it loves martyrs. While there should be compassion to suicidal people, particularly now the more we understand about mental illness, Chesterton is at least able to understand why there is such a cold shoulder given: Suicidal people hate life, martyrs love life.

The danger can come in when you follow any strain of theology too far and get too literal with it. It is easy to start off and say that "God is the souce of all goodness" and end up saying that logically speaking, if that is true then all creation must be a totally depraved place with no goodness in it. Well, God said that creation is good, too. Is it good because God flows in and through it, or does it have instrinsic goodness in it? It is hard to say and various theologies take that in different directions. Somehow a love of God is tied to a love of life. Somehow loving God and loving neighbor become the foundation of Christianity, and perhaps they are not two separate guidelines but actually one expression. Somehow charity and good deeds are tied to religion, somehow, deep down, we know this.

ADDED LATER: Another way to look at it is that the person in the song won't let the fear of jail imprison them. Sometimes the very threat of being in jail is enough to paralyze people and cause them to back down out of fear. The person in the song refuses to let their spirit be chained like that--imprison the body if you can, but the spirit will always be free! Hang him on the cross, if you can, but his spirit will rise!

Dec 2--Martyrs of El Salvador

We used to laugh at the Soviet Union.

What a tragic waste it was that they had to drain their economic and intellectual reserves just forcing all their citizens to stay in their country and maintain obsessive censorship of speech. Checkpoints, endless scrutiny of the citizenry, what a shame. Not only was it a colossal humanitarian disaster, but it was also unnecessary and, in fact, counter productive of the very goals they were trying to achieve.

The more you let something go, the more you have it.

In America, we knew better. The more freedom you have, the more benefits. Our citizens can pretty much go where they want and say what they want, and we are stronger for it--not weaker. We used to shake our heads at the former USSR. They just didn't get it. No surprise that the system ultimately crumbled

But don't think for one minute that that same knee-jerk reaction out of fear isn't always still present in America. It goes back to that fundamental struggle of love and openness versus fear and control. Many people feel that the only way to arrive at a goal is to forcibly control others--the only way to have national security is to silence all opposition, the only way to be prosperous is to oppress all the competition.

Business needs to be reminded of this every day. Business thought that the whole system would fall apart if we had child labor laws. Turns out business prospered.

Business thought that the world would come to an end if we had labor unions. Turns out now that we all miss the days when daddy went to work at a union factory shop and made enough money for mommy to stay home with the kids.

Business thought that capitalism itself would be ground to its knees if they had to be accountable to safety standards. Turns out they did just fine and we have a lot more healthier people to show for it.

Business thought that the 40-hour workweek would be the end of life itself. Turns out it was a new beginning.

Business always thinks in the short term--don't believe the myth that the free market knows all. The truth is that in the narrowest possible sense, an increase in these rules and regulations can and does spell a decrease in profits for an individual business--but when enacted over the whole system, it actually improves business overall. There are simply lots of healthier, happier, richer people to spend all their money back into the system. We thrive. Forget the humanitarian outcomes for a minute--it just makes good business sense to treat people right.

The problem is that business never really learned that lesson. Citizens demanding a marginal increase in their wages, the right to organize, the right to learn and study and say what they want to say can and does often spell malicious death in Latin America and other parts of the world--at the hands of soldiers trained, supported and supplied by the US government.

This may astonish most Americans, as these run contrary to some of the most fundamental values we have--we're all about spreading democracy, right? Well, all those "anti communist" actions we've been involved in over the past 50 years have often been a ruse for putting down labor organizers and others clamoring for a small raise in wages. Somehow, we still seem to think that our entire standard of life will fall apart if all these countries we exploit somehow got their feet on the ground. But wait--isn't this what we shrugged our heads at the USSR about?

Colonialism meet neo-colonialism. New boss = same as the old boss.

On Dec 2nd, 30 years ago today, we saw it in El Salvador. For some reason, soldiers trained, supplied and supported by the US military found that it was essential for our security that two nuns and their two female co-workers needed to be run off the road, raped and murdered on the spot.

The dirty little secret ain't so little. While we are lulled into thinking that we are the freedom fighters spreading democracy and toppling terrible regimes all around the world, our country in fact supports about 150 militaries, and the track record of the kinds of activities they get involved in would make the jaws of most Americans drop. Can someone explain how a massacre of an entire village of peasants in Guatemala is justified? But as long as Americans aren't coming home in body bags and there's no draft to awaken the Nintendo minds, it all goes on unnoticed. Clothes from sweat shops in southeast Asia are pretty cheap and no one asks any questions.

It is easy to turn a blind eye and say it's all about national security. To that, I refer you back to the top of this post. Don't we know that freedom and prosperity are good for all? A tight grip doesn't work. Isn't that a big part of what we're all about?

The only difference I see between the former USSR and the USA is that the former acted as if their national security depended on keeping their own people down, and the latter behaves as if national security depends on keeping everyone else down.

Way To Go, LCWR!

I couldn't believe the news today. This has got to be the biggest thing to hit the Catholic world in a long time:

This just in: Women religious not complying with Vatican study, as told in the National Catholic Reporter.


You may have heard that the Vatican has been conducting an investigation of women religious orders--to examine the "quality of life," which includes a "doctrinal assessment." This has caused quite a stir that this has been an unfair "inquisition" and little more than a thinly-veiled power grab. Tensions have been raised for the last several months.

I'll defer to Colleen Kochivar-Baker's fine summation on her excellent blog Enlightened Catholicism:

Three cheers for the LCWR and may this polite and non violent response reverberate through out the Vatican. This is real leadership and I am impressed beyond my wildest hopes. Thank you once again sisters for reminding us what it really means to respond with integrity and Christian charity in the face of inauthentic religious power and control.


I agree wholeheartedly and this is one of the proudest moments I have ever had with my Church.

The Early Church

I have often heard about the "Early Church"--its values, its sense of community, its commitment to justice, its closeness to the roots of Christianity. People use it to back up their claims, "the Early Church did this, the Early Church did that."

Still, I was hesitant to take a course of the Church Fathers. So often, they are quoted in reference to some debate on the nature of the Trinity or some monotonous theological speculation. Many of their works haven't been translated for a century, so you end up reading them in wordy Victorian English with not quite enough paragraph separations to keep your eyes open.

I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the Church Fathers in my recent class. In so many ways, they remind me of those in the modern peace & justice movements, those in base communities in Latin America or others who have the wisdom honed through facing persecution and struggle. They do have a lot of theological speculation. But they were also truly holy men.

None of these Fathers were pure academic theologians in the modern sense of the world. They were preachers, monks, bishops, many faced martyrdom or lived a severe life of sacrifice in order to follow their Christian call. They seem to embody what many Liberation Theologians today say: To really do theology requires the involvement of our whole being. Theology is always woefully inadequate when turned into a detached mental exercise, confined to the dry halls of academia.

These are some of my favorite quotes about charity and justice, not necessarily in chronological order. I've been quoting some of these on the Columbus Catholic Worker blog:


Tertullian, d. 222 A.D. :

I shall now speak about the characteristics of the Christian society. Each month, if he likes, each puts in a small donation, and only if he is able: for all is voluntary... These gifts are not spent on feasts, and drinking, but to support and bury poor people, to supply the needs of poor children and orphans, and of old persons confined to the house. We help those who have suffered shipwreck, people in exile, or those imprisoned because of their fidelity to God's Church...

"See," they say, "how they love one another."--from The Apology


St. Justin Martyr, d. 165 A.D., says almost the same thing:

The wealthy among us help the needy; and we always keep together... Those who are able and willing give what each thinks fit. What is collected is deposited with the president, who helps the orphans and widows. He also helps those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in need. Those who are in prison, and strangers staying among us: he takes care of all who are in need.--from The First Apology

St. Basil the Great, c. 329-379

O man, be like the earth. Bear fruit like her and do not fall short of what mere inanimate matter can achieve. The earth bears crops not for her own benefit but for yours. You, on the other hand, when you give to the poor, are bearing fruit which you will gather in for yourself, since the reward for good deeds goes to those who perform them. Give to a hungry man, and what you give becomes yours, and indeed it returns to you with interest. Just as the wheat that falls on the ground falls there to the great profit of the one who sowed it, so the bread given to a hungry man will bring you great profit in the world to come. Let your husbandry be aimed at sowing this heavenly seed: as scripture says, Sow integrity for yourselves.

You are going to leave your money behind you here whether you want to or not. As for whatever share of glory you have received through your good works, that you can take with you to the Lord. All the people will stand round you in the presence of him who judges you all: they will acclaim you as one who feeds the hungry and gives to the poor, they will name you as a merciful benefactor.

Do you not see how people throw away their wealth for a moment’s glory, for the shouts and praise of the crowds in the theatre, at sporting events, at fights with wild beasts in the arena? Where can you get that sort of glory for yourself if you hold on to your money or spend it meanly? God will give his approbation; the angels will praise you; all people who have existed since the beginning of the world will call you blessed. You will receive eternal glory and the crown of righteousness as a prize for rightly disposing of your wealth – wealth that in any case cannot last and must decay.

Why do you think nothing of the future hopes that are stored up by those who despise the cares of the present time? Come, spread your wealth around, be generous, give splendidly to those who are in need. Then it will be said of you as it is in the psalms: He gave alms and helped the poor: his righteousness will endure for ever.

How grateful you should be to your own benefactor; how cheerful you should be at the honour he has conferred on you, that you do not have to make a nuisance of yourself at other people’s doors, but other people come and bother you at your own! But at the moment you are grumpy and no-one can get to you. You avoid meeting people in case you might be obliged be part with even a little of what you have. You can say only one thing: “I have nothing to give you. I am only a poor man.” Indeed you are poor and utterly destitute. Poor in love, poor in humanity, poor in faith in God, and destitute of any hope of eternal happiness.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, c. 335-395 A.D.

Let us consider what peace is. Surely it is nothing else but a loving disposition towards one's neighbor. What is the opposite of love? It is hate and wrath, anger and envy, harboring resentment as well as hypocrisy and the calamity of war. Do you see how many different diseases this single word is an antidote? Peace is equally opposed to every one of the things mentioned, and wipes out these evils by its own presence.--from Sermon 7 on the Beatitudes


St. John Chrysostom, c. 347-407 A.D.

In order that you may wear one pearl drop, countless poor people are suffering from hunger. What excuse will you make for it? Do you wish to adorn your face? Do so not with pearls, but with modesty, and dignity... Take off all ornament and place it in the hands of Christ through the poor.--from Second Baptismal Instruction

If you wish to show kindness, you must not require an accounting of a person's life, but merely correct his poverty and fill his need... Need alone is the poor person's worthiness.. We do not provide for the manners but for the person. We show mercy on people not because of their virtue but because of their misfortunes.-- from the Second Sermon on Lazarus and the Rich Man


Pope St. Leo the Great, c. 400-461 A.D.

What is so suitable to faith, so much in harmony with godliness as to assist the poverty of the needy, to undertake the care of the weak, to help the needs of others, and to remember one's own condition in the toils of others. Not only are spiritual riches and heavenly gifts received from God, but earthly and material possessions also proceed from His bounty. These things He has not so much put in our possession as committed to our stewardship. God's gifts we much use properly and wisely, lest the material for good work should become an occasion of sin. Wealth, after its kind and regarded as a means, is good and is of the greatest advantage to human society, when it is in the hands of the benevolent and open-handed, and when the luxurious man does not squander nor the miser hoard it. Whether ill-stored or unwisely spent it is equally lost.--from Sermon 10 on Almsgiving


St. Benedict, d. 543 A. D., father of Medieval monasticism

All guests are to be received as Christ himself. He himself said: "I was a stranger and you took Me in" [Matt 35:35]. To all, fitting honor shall be shown, but, most of all, to servants of the faith and to pilgrims. When a guest is announced, the abbot or brothers shall run to meet him, with every service of love. First they shall pray together and thus shall be joined together in peace... Christ, who is received in them, shall be adored.--from The Rule


Picture above is of Sts. Basil the Great, John Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen

Hanging Laundry!

You've got to fight. For your right. To . . . hang your laundry?

Yes.

Glad to hear some others are turning this into a movement.

I guess one person's "trailer trash" is another person's treasure. I'd rather see clothes hanging on the lines than sterile cookie-cutter rows of suburban homes any day. But if sterility is your thing . . .

It is not simply a matter of aesthetics, though. Clothes drying by electric or gas dryer is an absurdity of the wildest proportion. According to the above article, it accounts for 6% of residential energy use. And the biggest issue is that it is simply not necessary. How in the world are we going to manage the world's resources better and potentially make some sacrifices if we can't eliminate something that is energy intensive and absolutely unnecessary? In all honesty, drying by nature doesn't take much more effort than drying in a dryer.

I restrict the use of clothes dryers to when I am in an urgent hurry or if weather conditions are so unfavorable that I have no other choice. Every so often some items can be fluffed up a bit, but more often than not they dry just fine by Mother Nature.

If I can't hang them outside, I have a large wooden drying rack inside. You can put one right next to your washing machine if the physical labor of carrying wet laundry is unmanageable. The only caveat is that I don't like to spend much time in the room where they are drying. Fumes from the detergents bother me, and I do question the health effects.

On hot summer days, a load of laundry can be bone dry in less than an hour hanging outside, and not much longer drying inside. Even on the murkiest, dampest days, it rarely takes longer than a day or two to dry anything. Putting an electric fan directed toward them can speed up the process with less energy inputs, and that is a better alternative than the dryer.

I don't understand at all why people have reservations about laundry hanging outside. It is simply too practical to avoid, in my opinion. Just dry your underwear inside, like the woman in the article does. What other problems can this possibly cause?

Fats and Oils

What's the most nutritious part of a chicken?

That's sort of a trick question.

The answer: All the gelatinous juices left in the bottom of the pan after you cook the chicken.

Why is this so nutritious? It includes all the extracts from the bones, cartilage, and organs that you either can't (or won't) eat. It is full of minerals and important fats and oils. It is also the exact nutrition that most of us eating westernized diets lack.

I share the concerns of folks at the Weston Price foundation when it comes to fats and oils. It scares me when folks think that a low-fat diet is somehow ideal. Skim milk, zero calorie this or that, meats with all the fat trimmed off, etc.

Let's get one thing straight: Fats and oils are nutrients. Nutrients! You need them. You won't be doing your body good to dismiss them en masse as empty calories.

There is an important distinction to be had between good and bad fats, though. This is where it gets tricky.

Our ancestors sought out fats and oils in their diet. They hungered for them. Killing a fatted animals in the fall could make the difference between surviving a winter or not. Granted, they also spent a lot of time outdoors in the cold and exercised a lot. Still, we can assume that our bodies are hardwired and function best on a high-fat diet, if we look to evolution as a guide.

The fats and oils from animals raised in captivity on grain-based diets with little exercise are actually not as good for you as their natural counterparts. All the good fats, such as the popular Omega-3's, are found in high concentrations on free range animals who are fed a diet that is consistent with what the animals would eat naturally.

The worst are the artificially produced fats, such as trans fats, hydrogenated oils.

Health and weight loss cannot be determined solely by a linear accounting for calories. The kinds of foods you eat affect your metabolism and can change the way your body manages the calories you take in.

It is crucial to secure good fats and oils in your diet--olive oil, cod liver oil, and fats with good concentrations of omega-3's, such as any fat from grass fed beef or naturally raised animals. Avoid factory-farmed animals and the fat that comes with them.