From My Journal: The Kill Site

There’s a fresh kill site in the field behind the house, just beyond the backyard fence. I’m not yet sure what the remains are, seeing it here from the bedroom window, possibly a flicker taken by a hawk or a mourning dove by an owl. The killer might even have been a coyote, but likely not, as there are too many feathers spread about, and a coyote would have simply wolfed it all down (a curious cross-species morphism).

It’s always a bit humbling to come upon a kill site. Whether a bird near a trail or a mammal in the woods, it arrests my attention and sobers me. Almost always I pause and muse what the struggle must have been like, and in subsequent hikes I often remember the spot, a shrine, as if hallowed by virtue of what took place there.

It was something momentous, something of great drama. But a kill site only? It may seem a one-way loss looking at the carnage left behind, yet in the grand scheme of things there is something equally significant about it for the perpetuation of life. It’s as much a life site as a kill site. A sacrifice was made, one for the benefit of the other. One surrenders, the other gains. One becomes the sustenance, the other is sustained. One submits, capitulates, loses, gives up, is emptied; the other prevails, triumphs, profits, is built up, filled. One is blessed, the other becomes the blessing.

St. Benedict Center, Schuyler NE

Death begets life. Sacrifice cedes to vitality.

Oh, sweet Golgotha, the kill site…

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. (Romans 5:8-9, NLT)

~~RGM, from an earlier journal entry,
 Adapted for Blog April 1, 2013