Shalom

I stopped teaching last week; Wednesday was my last day. Little did I know just how eventful Thursday would be.


It all started in the morning, when Mum and I were treated to a display of incessant barking. We really thought Ryan had lost it, when, lo and behold, we spotted a little bird hobbling across the garden. The dogs, locked in their cage for the previous night, were unable to get to it.

Immediately I rushed to the gate, but by then the little one had hopped out of the garden; it was clearly injured. After chasing it in circles around the bird's nest fern, and coaxing it out--with a broom--from under David's friend's Wira, I finally managed to catch it. So we took it to the backyard and dressed its wounds with Dettol and iodine. It lost nearly all of one wing, and all the feathers near its tail had dropped off, leaving bare its rear half. Must've been a cat at fault.

Sara looked after the bird while Mum and I went, first to school to get the 1119 cert certified, then to the IDP office and the Great Eastern Mall. She fed it some bread, but we doubt it ate any. At Great Eastern, I looked up some books in MPH and successfully identified the bird as Geopelia striata, commonly known as the Peaceful Dove or Zebra Dove.

A dove. On the first day after stopping work.

We decided to leave in in the backyard, but put the pail in a larger basin, which served as a moat to deter ants from getting to the bird. Since morning, we lined the pail with a piece of cloth and put some water in a little dish (the sort of container used for puddings/jelly at the pasar malam). We also gave it a small chunk off a banana, hoping that perhaps fruit might whet its appetite where bread failed to do so, though all in all, it seemed as if what the bird really needed was a good night's rest.

That night, before I went off to bed, I found the basin and pail in the bathroom downstairs; Dad moved it in, I think. Deciding to check on the bird once more, I lifted the basket that was used to cover the pail, and to my utter horror found its head submerged in the water dish.

Either it drowned while trying to drink, or it died and fell headlong into the dish.

* * * * *

I am no vet, but that night I came to terms with something I had been thinking of the whole evening: I was really worried about the bird, and wasn't at all looking forward to leaving it alone at night. So, having secured the moat and placed the basket on top of the pail, I thought it would be safe until the morning, when we could move it to a safer and more conducive environment.

It seems it wasn't sufficient. I said I came to terms; what I mean is that I realised that there are times when we need to keep watch all the time. And I recalled this Donut Man song whose chorus went;

And even though the Good Shepherd counts sheep
He never sleeps, he never sleeps...

* * * * *

The next morning, I stared at the Bible, again clueless as to which passage I should read. So I turned to the Nails and Thorns Lent Meditations list.

Romans 6:1-11.

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

--Romans 6:1-4, 10-11 (NIV)

The word 'baptism' leapt out of the page. I thought of the state in which the bird was found dead, submerged in water, and it struck me as being physically and metaphorically similar and symbolic to baptism.

Because in baptism there is water, and there is death. Death of the self to sin.

...Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner...

--T.S. Eliot, from 'Burnt Norton' Stave I

Was the bird calling to me? Calling me to follow? To turn my back on sin and live the life God wants me to live?

* * * * *

Could this also be a preview of life as a biologist?

Despite my diminished dreams of becoming a doctor, might I still be called to be a healer?

* * * * *

Rest in peace, dear Peaceful Dove. Till we meet again.