Awareness and numbness, where have all the flowers gone?

I’ve had a few hours of alone, quite enjoyable, its novel not to be busy. A chance to just be aware. A chance to spend some time “wasting time”. Its amazing how blessed life is.

One of our chooks went missing again last night, she hides when it comes to dusk as she can no longer climb the race into the hutch. I’m told she is more than eight years old, that’s old in chook terms. Chickens are very social. They have a well established pecking order but that belies the extent to which they are a community. (ever wondered why Pastor’s refer to their flock?). When I went to lock the girls up they were cowering in the corner of the hutch. Normally “Blackie” (“Fatso”) is there with them but last night she was missing. The others let me know just by their body language. I searched but did not find. She was lucky and survived the night. I was struck when she reemerged this morning and the others immediately relaxed and became ordinary chickens again, that is they started pinching grain I had thrown to her. The parable of the prodigal son came to mind.

There is a numbness that accompanies incessant activity. A numbness to our immediate environment. A numbness to our own presence. A numbness to the consequences of our actions so often performed with haste. A numbness that pervades the business of living and it becomes a blur. To relax from this numbness requires conscious attention and awareness. Sometimes a shock is needed, “Blackie” was missing.

So sometimes awareness brings with it discomfort. It is discomforting to know that 469.9 million chickens will have been slaughtered for food in Australia this year (1). That’s close enough to 20 each per man, woman, child and refugee. That’s 20 each of these delightful, gregarious, community minded birds for each of us. There needs to be a degree of numbness to gloss over such a fact. Imagine if we said 20 Jack Russell Terriers per person per year. It's about the same amount of meat. But a lot of chickens will be consumed over the holiday season because it is easy to grab a BBQ chook and a bunch of bread rolls from the bakery in the haste of the season. Just remember that its about the same amount of meat as a Terrier if you decide to be numb.

(1) http://www.chicken.org.au/page.php?id=4