Monthly Archives: March 2023

By Roger Barbee

Last night’s wind left dogwood blossoms covering the walkway of our back garden. When I exited the screen porch, I tread on a blanket of still-white petals from the tree next to the walkway. None of the other dogwood trees had lost their petals, and this one particular tree still had many of them left on its limbs, but for whatever reason, it had showered a spring dusting that caused me to think about death. Especially the death that Christians celebrate this time of the year.

Crucifixion most likely began with the Assyrians and Babylonians who tied their victims to a tree or post, leaving their feet to dangle. The Romans, after learning of the punishment during the Punic Wars,  began using crosses to perfect the punishment. The Roman Empire used it especially in the Holy Land, and in 4 B.C E. the Roman general Varus crucified 2,000 Jews, and the historian Josephus writes that there were mass crucifixions during the first century A.C.E.

 The victim was scourged, forced to carry the horizontal beam to the upright post, stripped, then either tied or nailed through the wrist to the cross beam before it was attached to the upright post. The victim’s name and crime was posted above his or her head. It was a slow, painful, and public death. Viewed as a shameful way of death, it was reserved for only the worst of criminals, and no Roman citizen would be executed in this manner.

Christians wear crosses, churches attach them to high steeples, and the symbol is used in a myriad of other ways that represent our belief. Yet, the crosses we use are sanitized images of what was used to kill. The Christian crosses have no representation of blood, mucus, pieces of torn flesh, urine, feces, or hair. Nothing that is evident from such a brutal death is on any part of the gold cross worn around the neck of many Christians or on the silver crosses that are present in all Christian churches. They are pristine, and I suggest that is where we delude ourselves concerning His death.

Through our art, music, architecture, jewelry, and more, we have created a false image of what His death was. While we read and say the words of it, we deny its reality by our accepted images of what His execution was. What I am suggesting is that we can be honest of its brutality by our language of His ordeal and the images we use for it. Each of us, for instance, can discard the neat, golden cross worn around our necks and wear a small, rough, and irregular wooden one that would be more representative of the cross on which our Savior tasted death for us. I appreciate that houses of worship will not and perhaps can not remove their crosses. But we individual Christians can make a small change to remind us of His death on a tree and the brutal pain He endured.

By Roger Barbee

As an amateur watcher and feeder of birds, I have had my disagreements with squirrels, the rodents that many folks, unlike me, enjoy. However, after years of battle I have reached a reluctant peace with the varmints. Our bird feeders are as much “squirrel proof” as possible, and I begrudge any squirrel the seeds on the ground under the feeders. A tree rodent, in my view, the squirrels have their place in nature. Just not in my garden hogging the bird seed.

But last evening in the back garden was special, and not just because it was one of those early spring ones when budding life emerged from every shoot, limb, and blade. The dogwoods in our back garden offered early buds that would soon be white petals, and Carolina chickadees, blue jays, nuthatches, and titmice fed at the three feeders while the rufous-sided towhee shared ground morsels with the brown thrashers and a lone, grey squirrel. The returning pair of chickadees had already established a nest in their bird box fastened to the far dogwood, and we had seen the thrashers bringing nesting material to the large azalea beside the back gate. The camellia in the berm had been taken by a pair of cardinals for season residency; and we sat on our screen porch enjoying the end of a grand spring day watching the fading sunlight rest on the far shore and the animals eating from the three feeders.

Then every bird was gone. An uncomfortable silence descended on the garden, covering it like a shroud. Every bird had flown to a safe limb or rushed into one of the two azaleas for refuge. The squirrel hopped to the dogwood truck, alert with its head erect, but near the ground and observant-poised like a statue. Following the stare of the squirrel, I saw the invader. The resident Cooper’s hawk had lit in a dogwood in the berm, about thirty feet from the back feeder, bird bath, and poised squirrel. Not even the blue jays, who will attack a snake, stayed to battle with this intruder.

We watched the hawk, one who is a frequent visitor because of the bird feeders. It was a beautiful animal to us, but the birds had fled because their view of the hawk was different from ours. They saw death while we saw primeval beauty. We watched the squirrel, almost frozen to the tree trunk with its head erect, watching the cooper’s hawk across the fence. We witnessed a scene of nature’s way as the hawk glided to the top fence rail within a few feet of the squirrel who then wisely bounded into the thick foliage of the azalea. The hawk bounded to the ground and began hopping in the bird awkward walk toward the thick bush as if to peer inside it for a meal. It was then that the squirrel came out of the azalea and took a stance next to the dogwood.

If you watch nature enough, even in a small back garden like ours, you will soon enough see death. It may come from a predator, an accidental falling from a nest, or any other result that I have come to realize is “Nature’s beautiful way.” We sat frozen in the safety of our screen porch as the squirrel faced the attacker. Then, as if scripted, the squirrel lept at the cooper’s hawk, who made one hop backward. The squirrel lunged again, and the death threat turned and flew away to other hunting grounds.

All the grey squirrels that frequent our back garden look alike, so the brave heart one will remain anonymous. However, since witnessing such an act—whether foolish or brave—I have become more tolerant of them. While I still have some issues with their antics, even I cannot deny the act of that lone, grey squirrel against the Cooper’s hawk.  

In nature, death happens so that life may continue. Even a dead limb of one of our longleaf pine trees provides food and shelter for all kinds of creatures. In nature death is part of life. But many humans seem unable to come to any type of accord with death. That, in itself, is a form of early death because a fear or denial of the way of all living things, to paraphrase King David, is death at an early age. One should always strive to see things as they are, even if it means acknowledging having underestimated the spirit of squirrels.