Yesterday, walking down the road, as large as life, I saw a man with a chicken on his head! I was driving past in the car through a housing estate, on my way home from a walk in the local nature area. We had been to a small café in the course of our walk and stopped to look at the small kinderboerderij, as they call them in the Netherlands – a little enclosure with a few goats, a pony and some chickens where the children go in and stroke them or feed them handfuls of grass or grain. There were some exotic-looking chickens, with half a dozen young ones, all pecking in the grass and running about in the undergrowth. They had feathers everywhere and huge ruffles of pretty feathers about their legs. However, that was a nature reserve and this was a housing estate!
I turned my head as we drove past and looked again, just to make sure. Sure enough, the man was strolling coolly along the street, together with a woman with a shopping bag. They evidently hadn’t noticed anything wrong! He was wearing a jaunty hat on top of his head and perched on top of that was a brown hen. “Did you see that?” I asked my husband. “What?” he asked, manoeuvring along the narrow street with cars parked on either side. I explained, but had to repeat it a second time before he got it. “Are you sure?” he said… “a chicken? Was it a real one?” “Yes” I assured him – it was a real one. He tried again: “Was it alive?” “Yes” I said “a real, live brown chicken – sitting on top of his head.” Unbelievable!
I’m reading a book at the moment – I’m always reading a book! My current one is called Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult. Faith turns out to be, not a religious dogma, but a little girl who, following the divorce of her parents, acquires a new friend she calls her ‘guard’. Faith develops a relationship with this ‘friend’ who seems to take have characteristics of a divine, female guardian (God – ‘oh my guard!’ – get it?) and she is the instigator of a string of miracles apparently performed by seven year old Faith. As a result, Faith and her family attract the attention of a number of psychiatrists, Catholic priests, Jewish rabbis, religious fanatics and newspaper reporters, together with a struggling author, celebrity and ‘teleatheist’, who is trying to kickstart his waning career by inventing a road show which travels around America, investigating the claims made by religious believers concerning a variety of miracles, healings and visions and attempting to ruthlessly disprove them by scientific means. Ian is the ultimate cynic, with a history which he keeps well hidden. There are reasons for his vehement denial of faith. The story hinges on the theme of belief versus cynicism and the fight, by Faith’s mother, to protect this little girl from becoming a vulnerable child celebrity on an insensitive, intrusive and cruel world stage.
The road show host challenges his audience: “Name one thing – other than the existence of God – that we take on blind faith.” But there are hundreds every day! We believe in the existence of far-off exotic places, even though we have heard of them only by hearsay, or through TV programmes with photos of a place we are only told is what it purports to be. We sit on the sofa, watching the TV, believing that this particular sofa will hold us up when we sit down, but only because other people’s sofas have done this okay so far. But will ours? Where is our proof? We still go to enormous expense and effort to marry after a brief interlude of romance, despite the statistics which tell us that this will probably end in tears. Many of us simply believe that for us it will be different. But will it? On what do we base our faith? So the list goes on. We use electrical appliances, computers, lifts, airplanes, knowing very little about the technology which goes to make them work, keeps us safe, keep us in the air, and so on. We have no real proof that we can put our trust in them. But we do. Without this basic faith our lives would fall apart.
Those who suffer from anxiety – and many do – are only exhibiting a loss of some of that very necessary faith (often unwarranted) in the reliability of things, the friendliness of dogs, the innate trustworthiness of our neighbours, our animals, our appliances… But it is not so unreasonable to believe otherwise – there is plenty of proof that when we go out thieves will break in; plenty of proof that our marriage may fail; plenty of proof that our car may break down or that next door’s dog may bite. But we choose to believe (hope?) otherwise. That is what makes the world go round.
Keeping Faith? Believing in acrobatic chickens? Trusting each other? Can we do it? It’s an interesting question. Did my husband believe me? Should we have faith? Are we being hoodwinked by politicians, salesmen, priests, partners? Should we keep faith – or is that just counting our chickens before they are hatched? Still, the chicken was real…
I turned my head as we drove past and looked again, just to make sure. Sure enough, the man was strolling coolly along the street, together with a woman with a shopping bag. They evidently hadn’t noticed anything wrong! He was wearing a jaunty hat on top of his head and perched on top of that was a brown hen. “Did you see that?” I asked my husband. “What?” he asked, manoeuvring along the narrow street with cars parked on either side. I explained, but had to repeat it a second time before he got it. “Are you sure?” he said… “a chicken? Was it a real one?” “Yes” I assured him – it was a real one. He tried again: “Was it alive?” “Yes” I said “a real, live brown chicken – sitting on top of his head.” Unbelievable!
I’m reading a book at the moment – I’m always reading a book! My current one is called Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult. Faith turns out to be, not a religious dogma, but a little girl who, following the divorce of her parents, acquires a new friend she calls her ‘guard’. Faith develops a relationship with this ‘friend’ who seems to take have characteristics of a divine, female guardian (God – ‘oh my guard!’ – get it?) and she is the instigator of a string of miracles apparently performed by seven year old Faith. As a result, Faith and her family attract the attention of a number of psychiatrists, Catholic priests, Jewish rabbis, religious fanatics and newspaper reporters, together with a struggling author, celebrity and ‘teleatheist’, who is trying to kickstart his waning career by inventing a road show which travels around America, investigating the claims made by religious believers concerning a variety of miracles, healings and visions and attempting to ruthlessly disprove them by scientific means. Ian is the ultimate cynic, with a history which he keeps well hidden. There are reasons for his vehement denial of faith. The story hinges on the theme of belief versus cynicism and the fight, by Faith’s mother, to protect this little girl from becoming a vulnerable child celebrity on an insensitive, intrusive and cruel world stage.
The road show host challenges his audience: “Name one thing – other than the existence of God – that we take on blind faith.” But there are hundreds every day! We believe in the existence of far-off exotic places, even though we have heard of them only by hearsay, or through TV programmes with photos of a place we are only told is what it purports to be. We sit on the sofa, watching the TV, believing that this particular sofa will hold us up when we sit down, but only because other people’s sofas have done this okay so far. But will ours? Where is our proof? We still go to enormous expense and effort to marry after a brief interlude of romance, despite the statistics which tell us that this will probably end in tears. Many of us simply believe that for us it will be different. But will it? On what do we base our faith? So the list goes on. We use electrical appliances, computers, lifts, airplanes, knowing very little about the technology which goes to make them work, keeps us safe, keep us in the air, and so on. We have no real proof that we can put our trust in them. But we do. Without this basic faith our lives would fall apart.
Those who suffer from anxiety – and many do – are only exhibiting a loss of some of that very necessary faith (often unwarranted) in the reliability of things, the friendliness of dogs, the innate trustworthiness of our neighbours, our animals, our appliances… But it is not so unreasonable to believe otherwise – there is plenty of proof that when we go out thieves will break in; plenty of proof that our marriage may fail; plenty of proof that our car may break down or that next door’s dog may bite. But we choose to believe (hope?) otherwise. That is what makes the world go round.
Keeping Faith? Believing in acrobatic chickens? Trusting each other? Can we do it? It’s an interesting question. Did my husband believe me? Should we have faith? Are we being hoodwinked by politicians, salesmen, priests, partners? Should we keep faith – or is that just counting our chickens before they are hatched? Still, the chicken was real…
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