This befell us though we had not forgotten you.
Though we had not been false to your covenant,
though we had not withdrawn our hearts;
though our feet had not strayed from your path.
Yet you have crushed us in a place of sorrows
and covered us with the shadow of death.
(Psalm 43:18-20)

A good few years ago, when seeing a counsellor, I was asked to imagine what the negative voices in my head looked like. I said they were like a crow, perched on my shoulder and squawking into my ear. He said to me that the negative, self denigratory voices would most likely not disappear but that you could put some distance between them and yourself so that their impact would be lessened. How about imagining that you could put that crow on a distant tree top so that its voice would be less audible and have less impact. I did put this into practice and it did help, somewhat.

I went for a walk the other day, 24km in total over the beautiful Knockmealdown mountain range between Tipperary and Waterford. We passed a memorial to the Republican leader Liam Lynch, from the civil war period. He was a man who died for his cause. Someone who could have run away and hid or surrendered, but submitted to death so that something greater may have been reborn. The Civil War was a sad and tragic event in the history of Ireland but as with all sad and tragic events we can take from them a wisdom born of an understanding of the human condition.

Because of the walk I was extremely tired that night. As I was drifting off to sleep I was rudely awakened by the squawking and rustling of a nest of crows in the roof space. Grabbing my hiking stick in anger, I bashed the ceiling in rage at their audacity to disturb my sleep. The ceiling still bears the marks of my most violent outburst! As is most common with rage, it rarely has any positive effect. Two nights of disturbed sleep led me to seek another, temporary place to lay down my head at the end of the day. After a few days of consultations, the place of outside entry for the crows was identified and the hole blocked up. I returned to my own bed full of encouragement – until the squawking and rustling started up again!

It sounded like the frantic flailing of one single crow trapped in the confines of a blocked space. Being high up, on this building’s third floor, had made it difficult to block the hole. It was never going to be unblocked again to let free a single crow. It was to be left to die. And I was to be left to listen to it die.

Whilst somewhat disturbing, it echoed in myself a death. A death that this way of life was inviting me to take. Our journey towards God is in turn a death to self. Whilst having known this for some years (on a mostly intellectual level) it has a practical import for living this life of total dedication to God. I cannot look at another person as an object of desire, as when I am looking at a woman with lust, letting resultant fantasies lead me down the dead end road of sexual sin. I cannot salivate over delicious cakes or other foods, and work out how I can get to them before anyone else, or hide some for later. I cannot rush to judgement on my fellows for their lack of commitment to the life and dwell on their own possible sinful scenarios. I cannot think of myself as somehow superior to another because of my own personal knowledge. I cannot give way to anger when things don’t quite go my way and I reluctantly have to take instruction from someone I don’t agree with. I have to desist from my desire to gossip and to grumble at the way things are. I have to desist from self-pity. There are many, many things to die to in this spiritual walk with Jesus. The focus is always that I have to change, not the things around me. The crow has to die – the ‘I’ has to die…’For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.’ (Philippians 1:21)

So my counsellor of yesteryear implored me to keep my distance from the crow of negativity and self doubt. Take him off your shoulder and put him on yonder tree as he wont go away. But he will go away, eventually. That is our hope. He has to die that we may truly live. C.S. Lewis in his book ‘The Great Divorce’ has a ghost with a lust demon on his shoulder in the shape of a red lizard. The Angel kills the lizard and it transforms into a white stallion. So the crow must die and I quite like the idea of it being transformed into, not a stallion, but an eagle…allowing my spirit to fly and to soar up into the heavens.

My old self, ‘John’, officially died on 18^th April 1987. Benjamin was re-born. And now Alberic is bringing that re-birth to its fulness. So the poor young crow that is dying in the attic is a sign for me of my own need to die. Our environment is God’s world. It is full of signs and wonders and God’s communicating hand in speaking to our soul. May the death of this crow make me appreciate more the wonders of God, made known and made possible by the death of His Son.

Post Script – (a week later)

The Crow died a good few days ago, or at least I thought so. The squawking and the rustling had ceased. Peace now reigned in my room. ‘Plop’ – something had dropped onto my desk from the shelf above. I went to investigate and saw a small maggot making its way across to my books (a book worm maybe?). I searched frantically for the source. Finally I lifted up my gardening clothes dumped in a plastic box at the end of the desk on the floor and low and behold, 10 to 15 maggots crawling around at the bottom. I turfed them outside in a flash and promptly threw my clothes into the washing machine on a 60 wash. I must have brought them in from the garden somehow – so I thought.

‘Plop.’ That’s strange, thinks I. Maggots don’t climb up walls from the floor and get onto desks – I quizzed myself. ‘Plop,’ another one falls onto the desk. The frenetic search returned and I cleared the desk and shelf above. I waited, observing intently like a detective on a stakeout. ‘Plop.’ The maggot falls onto the ridge of the shelving unit and wiggles its way along to the end. There it takes a long dive into the clothes box on the floor to join its compatriots. The detective forensically examined the light unit above the shelf (By this time I am fancying myself as the next Cadfael). The back wires of the light protrude from a hole, a hole big enough for maggots to crawl through. The hole leads to the arch of the attic space above the room – ‘Plop’ – the crow is most definitely dead…

better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell,

where their worm does not die.

Mark 9:47-8