Episode 7 - The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly

A few years back, I was on a spiritual retreat at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia where I experienced an epiphany about my place in this world.  God, I realized, does not need me.  The sun will rise and fall without me.  The tides will ebb and flow without me.  The flowers will bloom.  The rivers will flow.  My presence in creation is not needed for creation to do its thing.  I am, however, very much wanted.  Just as everybody listening to my voice right now is wanted, so, too, am I.  And that makes all of the difference, for it is proof positive that I and you are loved.  To simply exist is to be loved, in other words.  Our presence, mine and yours, was intended by God.  We have a purpose, a job, a mission, and to discover it early is a great gift.  Hwang’s protagonist, Sprout, in The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly always yearned to be a mother, but the story begins when the farmer attempts to cull her from the flock.  Sprout is an old and under-performing hen.  The eggs she produces are weak, and the farmer wants to save money on feed, so he makes the decision to send her to the pit of death.  There, in that place of hopelessness and death, she hears for the first time a voice – Straggler the duck – calling out to her to never give up.  All is not lost.  She just needs to take one step.  And then another.  And again another.  Until she is out of the pit and ready to live again despite being hunted by the ever-hungry weasel.  What appears to be an ending is really the beginning.  She finds an egg.  There is a death and then a birth.  Sprout’s dream of motherhood is realized, and readers bear witness through Hwang’s well-crafted prose the range of feelings that only a parent can experience.  At the end of the day, Sprout mattered.  Her existence mattered.  She was loved so that she could give love in return.  And the end result was flight so far above any pit or murderous hunter.  Hwang’s story is more than a story about persistence.  It is a story about the power of parental love – how it is, ultimately, self-sacrificial.  I do not know Hwang’s religious affiliation.  It may not even matter.  Truth is truth even if is espoused by those who do not claim Christ as Lord and Savior.  The Catholic Church recognizes this to be the case.  While the Church Christ founded contains the whole truth, it does not deny that other faith traditions contain some.  All of this notwithstanding, Hwang’s message hits home in a very real way.  Sometimes, many times, when we think we are out of the game, we are not.  Our dreams, though, must be pinned to love.  The road is rarely easy.  But the gains are always good.  Sprout, a scraggly, unwanted chicken knows what it means to be a mother...to someone who was not needed but very much wanted.  All the difference, indeed.  https://www.amazon.com/Hen-Who-Dreamed-She-Could/dp/0143123203