Just Another ______ - A Death Right in Front of Me

Sunday afternoon, I saw a death happen right in front of me in a place that looked a lot like this photo.  It happened in downtown Boston on the plaza between Fanueil Hall and Quincy Market.  About 30 of us watched this life suddenly fall to the ground, convulse several times, and then go still.  Everyone who saw it wasn’t quite sure what to do.  One person went over to the body and looked to see if it was still moving when her partner poked her in the side as a joke, giving her quite a surprise.  Others of us looked at one another and there were whispers of “is it dead?”  No one knew quite what to do until one young woman took her jacket, gently picked up the body, and moved it out of the plaza where we were all sitting.  Meanwhile a street performer was continuing his act - juggling knives, standing on a big balance ball, and so forth and life moved on.     

You’ve probably guessed that the living thing that died wasn’t a person.  It was not a person, but a pigeon.  A pigeon that looked like the hundreds of other pigeons flying and walking around the plaza.  This pigeon flew in, landed on the ground, and then suddenly started to struggle, collapsed on its side, jerked a few more times, and then went still.  What happened?  Did it choke on a chunk of french fry that someone had dropped on the ground?  Did it have a heart attack (do pigeons have heart attacks?), or was it simply an old pigeon and that was its “time”?   

When that young woman gently picked it up and walked by me with its limp body, I wondered whether she was just going to dump it in the trash can.  But she didn’t - she took it over to a shaded area between Fanueil Hall and some entry stairs and left it there.  I did quietly say (not sure anyone else heard me), “should someone say a few words over it?”

But something I later said and I also heard others say was, “well, there are plenty of other pigeons.”  And that is absolutely true - as we walked back to our car a bit later we saw hundreds more pigeons, each of which looked pretty much like that one that had just died.   Now, about 48 hours later, I’m still thinking about that pigeon and I’m thinking about something else I heard said that afternoon, “it was just another pigeon.”

I don’t know much about pigeon culture so I don’t know if pigeons recognize each other and see a uniqueness in each other in ways similar to how we humans do.  I don’t know the gender of this pigeon - had it been a father?  A mother?  As I was writing this, I did a search on facts about pigeons and came across this page of 21 Incredible Things You Never Knew About Pigeons.

But the phrase that I have kept going back to is, “it was just another pigeon”. And that is true.  It was just another pigeon.  One of thousands (millions?) that are seen around Boston every single day.  What’s the loss of one of them?

You can probably see where I’m going with this.

Do we do this with other lives?  Do we, either explicitly or implicitly say...

Just another Palestinian.

Just another Israeli

Just another Sudanese

Just another Ukrainian

Just another Russian

Just another unhoused person

Just another poor person

Just another black male

Just another immigrant

Just another trans person

Just another school shooting victim

Just another liberal

Just another conservative

Just another ____________________

Please don’t hear me saying that I have this all figured out and that I somehow never fall into these kinds of things.  I’m challenging myself with this as much as I am sharing it with others.  I read this morning of an Israeli attack in Beirut that killed 18 people.  If that happened in my neighborhood, it would be devastating to our little community.  But because it was thousands of miles away and to people I had never met, it is just another 18 people killed in the ongoing conflict.  Even though I do, I don’t want to become desensitized to this reality.  Even though I do it, I don’t want to say “just another ________...”

There’s a place in Jesus’ teachings that speaks to this.  In what we today call The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, there’s a place that centers on the message of “do not worry.”  Here’s what it says in Matthew 6:25-31

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’

While Jesus’ main point seems to be about not being anxious and not worrying, there’s something that stands out to me today.  “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them...Consider the lillies of the field, how they grow...but if God so clothes the grass of the field...”  Jesus is not only speaking something of our own worries and anxieties, but he is also noting that God cares for the grasses and lillies and the birds of the air...and that pigeon who died right in front of us on Sunday afternoon.  In what we read of Jesus in the Gospels, there was never “just another Samaritan woman, or tax collector, or Pharisee, or rich man, or blind person, or leper, or ________.”  Each was truly seen by Jesus.

Five years ago yesterday, I wrote in my journal about a statement that was trending on Twitter that day that connects with this.  People were posting simply, “I Am Willing to Fight for Someone I Don’t Know.”  They were trying to lift up the fact that we have to care for others beyond ourselves even if we don’t know or never will known them.  If I am willing to do that, I need to be willing to see and to notice and to live out the reality that there is no “just another__________.”   

A few months ago,

Carrie Newcomer

shared a post with her substack subscribers with a demo of a song she was working on.  I wish I could post the whole song here, but the crux of it was her noticing a small bird dying in the snow on a winter’s walk and how she picked it up and held it as it died.  Like that pigeon on Sunday, the bird in this song wasn’t going to survive, but it was noticed and seen and was held in its final moments.  The title of the song is “Small Tender Things” and what I heard in the song was all about noticing who and what might otherwise go unnoticed.  It is a song about loving far beyond ourselves. If you want to hear the song, click here for the post  (but you’ll need to become a paid subscriber).

Ultimately, it is seeing not “just another pigeon” dying but instead seeing that pigeon as a life that was passing.  It is about not being numb to what is going on around us but, as hard as it is, letting it in to the degree that we are able.  It is not just making others some nameless faceless label, but seeing them, caring for them, loving them, even if they don’t know it.  It is fighting for those we don’t know and those we may never know.

Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed

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