MAKING A KILLING...GRIEF AND GRATITUDE

The November chill has begun...though the commitment just isn't there. We're looking at 60's for Monday and Tuesday after a tiny slice of hard frosty mornings and even a frosting of snow that looks wonderful from the porch as we look up into the ridge where Mt. Washington, Madison and Adams stand white against the blue sky. Winter is coming. The harvest is in and even as I write I can feel myself backing away from where my heart wants to go with this blog. I feel the fingers of grief squeeze a little around my heart chakra as I look up towards the woods behind the house. Now that all the vegetable labor is done, I have begun preparing for the more intense labor..the harvesting of our year's meat. Stephen has gone hunting for a deer. And Monday, we will go to a farm to pick up our lamb. I feel the coming of the killing. There is a sense of dread...an empathy for one warm blooded creature for another. I imagine that one day, my life will be taken. And I hope it is taken for the enhancement of someonelse's life. But today...as I walked with Sadie in the woods behind our home, it was with a heaviness of heart. I feel intense grief and have myself a good cry among the trees. Our neighbor has been logging so she can put a new roof on her house and the removal of many trees has changed the appearance of the land. The logging combined with the the loss of leaves makes everything look strange. There are sheer clouds in the blue sky telling of upper level cold while a warm front begins to make it's way through. It is fitting that the work of death and killing be done in the dark days of November. Stephen is the one who actually does the deed. I have killed fish and chicken but have never summoned the necessary commitment to kill a 4 legged animal myself. I remember when I lived in suburbia, how horrified I was by the mere thought of Stephen hunting a deer and hanging it. 12 years have passed and my whole attitude to hunting has changed. I always believed that if I could face cleaning and dressing a fish or bird, I had a right to eat those creatures for food. I have always felt that if a person is going to take the life of a creature, it should be considered a great gift and reason for gratitude. But in the past 12 years, I have educated myself about factory farming and the irony of purchasing meat from a grocery store. Now that I know how American meat is raised, I can no longer eat it. For me...it's not about the depersonalized packages wrapped in plastic and never seeing the actual animals hanging in the butcher shop. I've heard many folks confess to preferring grocery store meat because of the anonymity between you the buyer and the meat you take home to roast. The killing of thousands of animals who have never lived to move or graze or enjoy the summer sky...that seems to be the most violent of all killing. If it was the only way to put meat on my table, I don't know if I could do it.

Take hunting. Stephen is out there waiting to meet up with his buck. He must move through an entire process of stalking, making eye contact and then prevailing over the animal with a sharp aim and quick pull of the trigger or the animal will prevail with his instincts and speed to preserve it's own life. When the moment for killing happens...a hunter can freeze or become all shaky and miss the moment. If he shoots...there is another whole process to go through. The deer can keep moving...run scared and wounded until it falls or God forbid, the shot isn't fatal...a further killing has to happen. Perhaps a hands on moment with a knife to the throat. During the process, a man and his animal are breathing together the same air...sweating together...communing together in a deeply personal way as hunter and hunted comingle in the November woods. Sometimes a hunter can get kicked. I guess the thing that makes this meat different is the soul's connection made during the hunt. It is met alive...individual to individual.

The same process will happen when we pick up our lamb. Stephen will be shooting it himself. Again...I probably won't be there for the actual moment of killing. He will share his story and I will shed my tears. I always do. Life that is taken is a moment for sadness. It is a time of deep grief. There is no getting around it. My heart aches for both the wild hunted creature and the creature who has been raised for food on a farm with others grazing under the warm summer sky. Both animals will have lived. They will have enjoyed their lives and their food foraging and their families. They will both meet Stephen's eyes before they die and they will feel my tears...and they will know our gratitude by our grief.

Growing my own vegetables has tenderized me to the subtle difference between eating store bought vs. eating my homegrown. I hugely favor my homegrown because it isn't just about eating that carrot. I made the bed for that seed...planted it and weeded it and watered and worked for it. That carrot, to you might taste the same as the one at the farm stand but to me, that carrot feeds my soul. It is the result of my labor and sometimes my tears. So to is the harvest of our 1 deer or our 1 lamb. There is a wild encounter in the plucking of the animal as there is in the picking of the vegetables. I welcome it. I welcome the grief. I welcome the gratitude. And yes, I will help cut up the meat and bag it for the freezer. But I'll cry first. And I'll give thanks with words written by an ancient friend...the poet Kahlil Gibran.

"When you kill a beast, say to him in your heart...by the same power that slays you, I too am slain and I too will be consumed. For the law that delivers you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand. Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven."

Truly. I am that deer. I am that lamb. There is a killing moment and not only will our souls merge but our bodies will too...over the course of the next year. May all who are hungry be fed and satisfied.