The Birth of a Chick

When in the midst of great change, it is helpful to remember how a chick is born. From the view of the chick, it is a terrifying struggle. Confined and curled in a dark shell, half-formed, the chick eats all its food and stretches to the contours of its shell. It begins to feel hungry and cramped. Eventually, the chick begins to starve and feels suffocated by the ever-shrinking space of its world.

Finally, its own growth begins to crack the shell, and the world as the chick knows it is coming to an end. Its sky is falling. As the chick wriggles through the cracks, it begins to eat its shell. In that moment - growing but fragile, starving and cramped, its world breaking - the chick must feel like it is dying. Yet, once everything it has relied on falls away, the chick is born. It doesn't die, but falls into the world.

The lesson is profound. Transformation always involves the falling away of things we have relied on, and we are left with a feeling that the world as we know it is coming to an end, because it is.

Yet the chick offers us the wisdom that the way to be born while still alive is to eat our own shell. When faced with great change - in self, in relationship, in our sense of calling - we somehow must take in all that has enclosed us, nurtured us, incubated us, so when the new life is upon us, the old is within us.

This picture has been helpful for me in my transition. Instead of being bitter and judgmental about my time in the institutional church I am thankful for it. It truly was a safe, nurturing place for me to develop. It is also true that it doesn't have the food to continue my growth and that it was time for me to break out of its confinement. The idea of eating the shell, of internalizing that which has brought me to today, leaves me in a place of gratitude for the nourishment.

With that same understanding, I am not anxious to break anyone out of their own shell or pull them into my new found freedom. That could be developmentally harmful for them. If they are safe within the safety of some brick and mortar walls, it may be a very good thing, for now. When it is time they will emerge, ready to see the Light in a brand new, unobstructed way. And, to build on this most-excellent metaphor, chicks are usually hatching in the midst of other already-hatched chicks. While in that shell, they can likely hear the "peeps" of other chicks, who've previously hatched. Those peeps can beckon them on, encouraging them to know that there is life beyond what we perceive. Something beyond the "matrix."

Some of us are called to peep; to "be peeps" for the ones emerging, awakening, coming to life. While we cannot break open their shell (lest we risk damaging them before their time), and we also cannot crawl back into the shell with them, we can put forth encouragement, signs of the life we're living.

And then I will dance with them, like the other Free Believer chicks have been teaching me to dance.

"peep"..."peep"