Dead Chickens and Kittens: A Love Story

When my grandfather was a boy, he was playing with a pet chick and a pet kitty. Bad combo: the kitten pounced on the chick and in his attempt to stop the attack (or in retribution, I've never been sure) Grandpa grabbed the cat by the tail and whacked it on the ground, killing it.*

Of course, the chick didn't survive the assault, either, so there sat my Grandpa, in the dust of an early-20th century Iowa farm, with two dead pets in front of him.

Somehow, this story helps me to endure the book of Leviticus. As I endure it, it becomes a living thing to me. All the repitition of clean and unclean, of skin diseases that have shiny spots or turn the hair white, of head lesions and animal sacrifice, of household mold and issues of blood, of conduct and order and isolation and detail, detail, detail - somehow this has come to life in my heart.

I think of the chick and the kitten and of keeping good things separate, of violence that blasts us far from what is good, of harmony turning to discord, of a trinity divided, of a great and fragile community under constant threat from within and without, and the steps crucial to its defense.

*My troll-roots run deep.