Morning Chores

Last night, I watched a “Nature” on PBS about a man who had spent a year rearing a brood of wild turkeys. During that year he never saw another human being, and he spent every waking hours with the birds. His reflections on what he learned about life and the world from his time with those wild turkeys brought me back to a space in my mind that exists on the best of mornings, but still far too infrequently.
    I love chores. I love raising chickens and turkeys. I love having the responsibility of caring for animals. There is nothing to compare to the sweet calm of an early morning, when you’re the only human about the place, and the early-morning light is slanting in, all white-gold, the wild birds are starting to chatter, and you feel as if the whole of the universe was laid out before you, awaiting. Waiting for what? That’s never known. The day to happen, I suppose. Another turn on the old wheel. But there you are, with critters to care for, and so, at the base of it, a reason for being. I like those calm, day-to-day reasons for being. I am alive because of this gentle responsibility I have toward another animal, a group of critters. There is something of the sacred in that moment of extreme day-to-day Ordinary. At that moment, I feel like I am breathing clearer, that the light illuminates me, that I am closer to what I estimate god to be. I am not caught up in future-tenses, I am not yet fully engaged with the day, and thus I am not thinking about all those other things that need doing. It is the kind of routine that does not feel wearing. And it is that moment, that one brief moment of some days that I have experienced in the past that keeps me going, always feeling the love of the sacred.