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here is nothing like chicken soup on a winter’s day when you are under the weather.  This age-old remedy brings the hope of brighter times ahead. Consider, however, what your soup did to the chicken!

No, this is not some article that is fashioned to make you feel guilty or turn you into a person who only eats weeds and things without faces.  I heard a vegetarian say that she never ate things with faces, although she did eat fish.  She said “Fish don’t really have a face; they have more of a profile.”  Profile or whole face, I believe that it is good to think of the number of chicken souls that are sacrificed to create our soup. There is something sacred about life and that which contributes to its continuation and well-being.

Recently, I sat with my aunt as she died. It was a sad moment for me. My aunt and uncle always had the fastest, the newest, and the shiniest of all things. They were full of fun and full of life. I loved being in their home.  I saw my first complete color television show there. They would let me have two bottles of pop and didn’t seem to care if I didn’t drink the entire second one. We went out to eat, went to the drive-in-movies, and they had parties. Boy, did they have parties. Their friends would come over and have cocktails while they listened to the latest high-fi records. For those who are uninformed, high fidelity records were before stereo.  Stereo records were what we had before we had compact discs. Compact discs were what we had before MP3’s.  Anyway, Mo and Uncle Louie had it all.  They were the first to get Pong for their television. Pong was what we had before ... never mind! If you don’t know what Pong was, Google it. For you older people, Google is what we do instead of looking things up in the Encyclopedia.  (Gosh, it’s difficult writing these days!)

As I sat with my aunt, I wondered when she got so old and feeble. I thought about the past, her sacrifices and the generation before her. We are all in the same parade whether we watch, march, follow the elephants with shovels in hand, or choose to sleep as it all goes by.  

Occasionally, I glance in a mirror – a habit that I recommend you practice sparingly - and I wonder what my children will think about as they watch me die. I hope it’s more than, “I wish Dad would get on with it!” I would like to believe that they will think about some little place of vitality and nourishment they received from the soup of my life.  I hope that they are realistic about my flaws, forgiving of my mistakes, and appreciative of my contributions to their well-being.  In other words, I hope they are the kind of people who think about the chicken that makes up their soup, the parents who contributed to their lives, and the God who loves them beyond their imagination.

There are a number of lessons we can learn from the likes of the chicken and her contribution to our lives. Every time we turn on a faucet, we are receiving the benefits of plumbers, water treatment people, city councils, and the providence of weather that has contributed to water tables. When we start our automobiles, we are involved with the world designers, engineers, refineries, local merchants, and hopefully, a good mechanic.

We are connected and interconnected even when we choose to be disconnected. I have performed many funerals for people who have committed suicide. The decision that they made drew streams of mourners and others.  Some, who never thought of it, may even now be considering the same option for their life. We do nothing in a vacuum, except maybe vacuum.

I have baptized many babies who are products of kids who said, “What I do with my life is my business and nobody else’s.” I gathered with their parents, grandparents, and friends who are involved and whose business, raising a new life, it has become.  These “others” will often pay bills, offer shelter and, perhaps, end up raising the child.  It’s a great deal of work caring for someone who makes their own decisions and believes that what they do concerns no one else.

Which brings us back to the chicken. When we are under the weather, we are mostly concerned for ourselves. This is natural because we must get well. Perhaps it was our own inattention to our condition that caused us to become sick in the first place. Even so, it is good to count blessings.  It is even better to count the hundreds of people who contribute to those blessings every day. As we savor the soup, brought to us by a caring soul, we must never forget how many chicken souls contributed to our soup.