Safe Within the Wings

“It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.”
Irish Proverb

”How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings...”Luke 13:34

Since the baby chick hatched surreptitiously one month ago, it has been constantly chaperoned by older hens.  Initially barricaded by three who moved the hatchling as a unit around the chicken yard, the phalanx has eventually diminished to two — a Speckled Sussex and a Light Sussex — who guide, supervise and correct.  Those, and protect.  So far, the most visible threat they perceive seems to be me.  Each time I pass through the gate to accomplish one chore or another, the caretakers maneuver the chick into the recesses of the chicken run or the outer reaches of the chicken yard.  Remove is, so far, the preferred form of protection; failing that, subsume.  The baby chick simply disappears beneath the feathers and girth of the older hen.  Eventually, for the patient observer, a small beak emerges from behind the protective wing, assessing the prospects for resumed play.

I frequently think back to that first morning we realized that this little puffball had hatched among us.   I naively, foolishly thought I should rush right out, somehow scoop it up into my cradling embrace, and spirit it out to the barn for safe keeping.  As if the guardian hens would have allowed it!  I would probably still be smearing antibiotic cream on the puncture wounds in my face and hands from frenzied beaks mercilessly unleashed.  The chick’s well-being would have only been diminished in my “care.”  These mothering hens simply and intuitively know how it is to be done.

Saved, then, from my own well-meaning, I have instead simply observed and admired.  Somehow they have kept the chick fed and hydrated.  Somehow they see to it that the little one moves inside at night, and out again each morning to keep active.  Now four weeks into this constant supervision, they perceive the time to be right for greater independence.  The motherers don’t stray far, but the spacing in recent days has spread to feet as opposed to inches.  There are moments when the chick appears to be by itself.  This aloneness, of course, is more illusion than reality.  Should I take too much of a step in its direction, the two motherers appear almost as if by magic, seemingly out of nowhere, to surround and deter.

“It’s almost biblical,” I think to myself; my background instinctively assigning all goodness to holy script. But caretaking, I realize upon more patient reflection, is not first of all biblical; it is natural — simply the way we were created to be with each other.

In each other’s care.
In each other’s keeping.
The weaker, sheltered beneath the wings of the stronger.

I’m not sure how we have so grievously lost touch with this primal obligation and privilege.  Any more we insert an avalanche of questions and conditions in front of such caring.  We are concerned with worthiness, about the potential for dependency, about how much it will cost us in money and time and effort and distraction; about precedent.  We don’t want to be inconvenienced — or the needy too convenienced.

Maybe it’s because we spend too little time among the chickens.

To be honest, it’s not perfect out there.  There is a pecking order, sometimes ruthlessly constructed and scrupulously maintained.  There are skirmishes over food, and should one or another manage to snag a passing mouse a mighty chase ensues.  But they do know how to care for a baby chick.  They instinctively seem to understand what we are struggling to remember:  that it is in the shelter of each other that we live.  Gathered beneath the wings.