June 28, 2007

Dear Leslie,

DC is a faithful churchgoer, sings in the choir and sometimes delivers the children's sermon. She also has issues with God.

It's really just one issue. She doesn't like God letting bad things happen. She gets especially upset when they happen to animals.

Saying that's how nature is, warm and cuddly one moment and getting eaten the next, for some reason doesn't reassure her.

Last week DC began caring for three baby chimney swifts whose broken nest she found on a sidewalk in our neighborhood. She keeps wild bird porridge and a syringe on hand for these occasions.

Chimney swifts make a distinctive sound, like wire scraping against a tin roof in a horror movie. That sound has haunted my dreams of late.

One of the swifts died a few days ago. That sent DC to the Internet to research swifts. A site devoted to chimney swifts said they are insectivores that need lots of protein. It advised feeding them meal worms drowned in a vitamin solution and dipped in yogurt.

DC found meal worms at a hunting and fishing store. They're popular as bait. She hated drowning them but didn't think she had a choice, yet another issue she'd like to take up with God.

DC fretted that she was doing something wrong when a second swift died. She took the survivor to our veterinarian, who reassured her that she'd done everything right. The veterinarian hoped antibiotics might pull the remaining swift through.

When DC worries over the fates of animals, people sometimes attempt to reassure her that she should just let nature take its course. But that would be going against her own nature.

I reassure her that nature taking its course means doing whatever she can to help an animal survive. We are as inseparable from nature as the birds and bears. We were made for each other. We need each other.

Mother Teresa was the great teacher of the necessity of loving all of God's creation. "Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat," she said.

How we love the least among us, outcasts or foundling birds, is the measure of our love for God.

"Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them," the Blessed Mother also said.

One morning a few days ago my friend Don and I were returning from playing golf when two robins flew head-on into my windshield. The heart nosedives when things like this so suddenly happen.

I wondered if only seconds before they were mates chasing each other around the neighborhood.

One appeared to be dead. The other seemed to have a broken wing. Our other veterinarian also repairs broken birds and took it in.

I don't think God is responsible when bad things happen. Birds and everything else in the universe are Godstuff, so whatever happens to us happens to God.

The only assurance is that things will happen. Reassurance lies in how we respond.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.