Caged Birds
Caging a bird may be one of the cruelest byproducts of man’s natural curiosity. It’s wings, a gift most humans have spent nightly hours fantasizing about, are clipped and put to rest. Their flightless bodies are left numbed by the closeness of captivity and dazed by unpardonable punishment. Their cries sound pretty, their movements cute.
If humans had wings would we erect nets around country borders? Would we have “no fly” zones for illegal aliens? Or would we all be able to glide freely over the globe in order to see it in all its glory?
We have no wings. Our feet tread on the soil birds look gracefully down on. This soil hides borders. These borders are the invisible, or omnipresent, truths that keep our worldly oppressors sweating every night at the drawing boards of the global map.
This photograph was taken at a section of the Wall surrounding parts of the West Bank.
The Wall has made me think a lot about the idea of borders, boundaries and who owns land. The idea of personal ownership of property seems imbedded in the “democratic” rights, which seem to define the US and the West. But who in the end has the rights to the land?
“”In Scripture, there is no purely spiritual answer to slavery; no purely spiritual answer to the pain of the poor. . . . In times of oppression, if you don’t translate choices of faith into political choices, you run the danger of washing your hands, like Pilate.” Rev. William Sloane Coffin 1924-2006
April 16th, 2006 at 4:55 pm“Pontius Pilate (Latin Pontius Pilatus) was the governor of the Roman province of Judea from AD 26 until around AD 36, who is best known in modern times for being claimed by Christians, and their literature, to have ordered the crucifixion of Jesus, instigating the Passion.” thanks Gary and Wikipedia. Well quoted.
April 19th, 2006 at 10:29 am