Easter Chickens

"Here is the Book of the Descent,

Here begins the Book of the Holy Grail,

Here begins the terrors,

Here begin the miracles."

From The Grail Legend

You cannot live long in North Georgia without eventually crossing paths with a chicken truck. The poultry industry is an important part of the economy here. Getting chickens from the farm to the processing plant involves a journey in an open crated semi. Pulling up behind or beside one has always been difficult for me. The sight of all those helpless chickens hours away from becoming chicken tenders tugs at my heart. I don't know exactly where the plant is, but on some days when the wind shifts just right, I can smell it over on the highway. It does not smell like chicken soup. And if that wasn't enough, every once in a while, even if I haven't seen the trucks, there will inevitably be that lone hen who somehow managed to escape only to end up being squashed flat as a pancake in the road by the other traffic. You know, so you will be sure and not forget about the trucks.

As squirmy as all of this is to think about, and for heavens sake, where am I going with this?--there is woven into it a very profound lesson about life. Living does have a dark side and we need to remember that. By dark I mean not only physical suffering but also emotional and spiritual suffering too. Even things that don't necessarily kill us physically still have the power to deaden us.

Wednesday marks the beginning of the turn in the story of Holy Week. The euphoria of Palm Sunday has evaporated and it is becoming increasingly clear that the dark side of events is beginning to manifest. We have all been there at one time or another--that point where we can feel things are 'going south' and not in the mint julep sort of way. Choices we have made in our own lives or perhaps larger events beyond our control, are fast approaching that invisible point where disaster looms. It's a horrible place to be--yes, like being that chicken in the crate on the semi. You know what is coming is not, under any circumstances you can envision, going to be good. You can smell the processing plant or worse yet, see the feathers in the road. In the days leading up to Good Friday, Jesus tried to explain to his followers that something terrible was coming. They would not allow themselves to take it in. They, like us, wanted so much not to think about the chicken truck. It cannot be done.

Different versions of the events of the Easter story have existed as long as we have. The idea of a Christ figure sacrificing his old life with an encounter with the dark and in doing so achieving transformation or resurrection, is cherished in many faiths and cultures. The names and trials may be different, but the heart and soul of the tale is the same. In order to grow and evolve into our best selves, we are going to have to take on the world and ourselves as it and we are. We are going to have to go down into the dark and scary places and see things for what they are, and perhaps in the process be crated up on a chicken truck and maybe even have to leave parts of ourselves dead in the road. But as the Easter story affirms each spring, this is tremendously holy work . It is sanctified through our acceptance of our flaws and of the gifts inherent in the suffering and struggle to expose them. Elizabeth Lesser writes in her book, Broken Open, "A journey into the underworld never turns out to be what we feared, and at its core the darkness becomes the light...When I arrived at the Crossroads...I was left with nothing but my most human self. There was no pretending that I could have a perfect life. I knew now that I was a flawed human being, capable of both sin and love. From now on I could blame no one else for what happened in my life, nor could I look to anyone to save me. My life was my own. It was up to me to rechristen my evil with what was best in me." These things are part of our lives just as much as laughter and kindness and goodness and what's more, they are essential. To become truly human and also attuned with our highest self, is to accept this. If like Jesus, we do not turn away or pretend otherwise but instead, gather the courage to accept ourselves and our lives as they are, we find revealed to us the most wondrous part of the Easter story: the transformative power of love, faith, hope and forgiveness to exist here, now, in us.

"Ring the bells that can still ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Leonard Cohen