By: Jim Taylor

I am not a morning person. So I resent it when the rites of spring wake me up prematurely.

        Every morning, a male flicker hooks himself onto the side of my house and pounds out his mating call. He hammers his beak against my cedar siding, my eavestroughs, even my chimney top.

        The chimney top baffled us. We could hear an unfamiliar clanking. We went all around the house seeking its source. No matter where we went, it seemed to come from behind us. Eventually, we realized that the sound was being carried down the chimney and released into the living room.

        At any other time of year, that flicker would be digging out bugs from infected trees and telephone poles. But in spring, it’s just his form of advertising his prowess as a food provider. In the flicker world, I guess, the louder the noise, the more romantic the suitor.

        So now his early morning drumming reverberates through the house. I leap out of bed, fling open the door, and race outside in my pyjamas, yelling and waving my arms.

        It must be a treat for the neighbours.


Trespassing on MY house

 Don’t get me wrong – I admire flickers. They have sleek grey plumage, with rich salmon-red linings under wings and tail. I feed them in winter. I provide nesting houses in spring – admittedly, as far from my house as possible.

        But I resent it when they start pecking holes in my house.

        There’s the problem – I think of it as MY house.

        That sense of ownership, of property rights, of possession, lies at the root of many societal problems. The version of the Lord’s Prayer used in my church every Sunday uses the words, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Trespassing. As if doing wrong consists of infringing on someone’s property.

        And perhaps it used to, in the days when men owned women, children, servants, slaves…

        I still hear myself referring to “my wife,” “my daughter,” “my granddaughter…” As if I owned them.


Short-term possession

 Do we ever own anything?

        The Land Office says Joan and I legally own this lot, and this house. But the day will come when someone else owns it. Someone will remove our trees, and change our color schemes.

        Owning property encourages us to protect it. But the property will outlast our ownership. Why then do we act as if our rights took priority over the future’s?

        In the same way, we humans act as if we own the planet. As if it’s up to us to twiddle the thermostat and re-arrange the furniture.

        But we don’t really own it, either.

        We think we own our ideas, our concepts, our principles. We treat them as our private property. They have to be protected from outside attack. When they’re threatened, we react as vigorously, as emotionally – and perhaps as irrationally – as I do to that pesky flicker.

        With less sense of proprietorship, I might be less defensive.

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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