I really enjoy watching our ducks. We have two of them and I find them absolutely delightful to watch. But I also feel a twinge of sorrow for them when I see them plop themselves into a little bucket of water and splash around. They’ll take turns doing that since it’s such a small container. Then they’ll waddle off together.
When Molly holds her duck, (it is quite attached to her since we’ve had them when they were only a week old) the other one will quack with increasing urgency until they’re reunited.
Molly enjoying "Wak Wak" the duck
One thing I’m learning watching our fowl…(chickens too) but especially the ducks….they live in the moment. When we head out to feed them, they come flocking to you with expectancy but I don’t get the feeling they were hanging out there wondering if they were going to get fed.
When they’re done feeding, they wander around doing what chickens do. Sometimes staring down their fellow peeps till something breaks the spell and they go back to scratching and pecking the ground. (THAT is hilarious to watch and all too reflective of human behavior at times.) The roosters will chase the hens….the big rooster chasing off the little rooster at times. And the hens at times clearly scorning the advances of the roosters.
But back to the ducks. They just seem so doggone content all the time.
They don’t know what their missing. Their instinct….what they were born to do was to be around water and paddling on a pond is there…..but they are completely unaware of what it actually looks like. They get a little taste of it when they duck their heads in a bucket of water but I can’t help but wonder if somewhere in their little ducky brains, they know there’s something more.
It makes me think about the books of Galatians and how Paul tells us were were born into freedom….yet we remain in captivity. This analogy can be applied on so many different levels…from people working at jobs they hate to the 40-something adult wondering “Is THIS all there is?” Or our inborn desire to love and be free though we continue to be trapped in the systems and expectations games that we’re trained to accept as normal.
Can you relate?
And then of course, there’s the longing for heaven and a day when all things will be made right.
But for right now….I’ll just hang here and enjoy watching the ducks and learning from the chickens. And thank God that any cages I find myself in are simply of my own making.
Filed under: family life, Individuality, Spirituality, Stress and worry | Tagged: captivity, Chickens, destiny, ducks, freedom, Galatians | 2 Comments »
