Don't Give that Monkey a Gun

That's a phrase going around our house lately and I'm not sure where it came from. My three-year old was saying it, but it seems to have been passed on by the 10-year old. I sort of think I've heard it somewhere before.

When I was little the Sea Monkey packaging fooled me, I thought that once you added water to the eggs you really would wind up with a tiny family complete with accessories like vacuum cleaners and aprons. Maybe even guns. It was disappointing to find out that they were born as naked and vulnerable as anything else. As those baby birds that have just hatched from eggs like the tiny speckled one I found in front of the house. I'm hoping for peaceful winds for the next couple of weeks because last year at this time we had a few very windy stormy days and the baby bird carnage was too much. So far this year I've only come across one tiny body, on the steps of Beth Elohim.

That was ironic because I approached those steps this week hoping for a moment of transcendence. There's a special sense of restfulness I've felt when sitting there before, the same sense I had on Yom Kippur, of abandoning worldly ambitions for a minute, to briefly forget all that I think I know (but which does me little good), and place the spirit completely in God's care. It is, in a way, like a free fall followed by a tiny death. Perhaps it's a little like those Hindu charnel ground meditations where one tries to overcome fear by hanging out in a cemetery, staring death in the face. And maybe, it's a chance to fall in love with life more intensely, for it's tenderness and delicacy and fragility, for those tiny undeveloped nubs of wings sprouting from the chests of those early May babies, for those tiny hearts beating under translucent skin.

Hang in there babies.