Parable of the Canadian Geese
True story: there is a growing gaggle of Canadian Geese that live near my workplace. They spend most of the year by a pond to the south of our building, but in the months of April and May they build nests along the outside of our offices. If you’ve never seen a mama or daddy goose in nesting season, let me describe it for you. Both the goose and gander average approximately 3 feet tall and have around a 6 feet wingspan. Typically, they mind their own business and are docile, but when nesting season comes, they become defensive and aggressive to protect their eggs. This past spring one woman told me a story; she was trying to get into the building for work when all of the sudden a goose, flew up, landed on her shoulders, and started pecking at her head. She was fine, pretty startled, but fine. The goose had had enough of people coming so close to its nest. Here’s a video of one of my coworkers getting attacked, well maybe not attacked, more like flown toward…
Each year after the babies hatch, the parents daily walk them from their nest beside the building to the pasture on the east side of it. Their morning routine crosses the main road that leads to our offices’ parking garage, and typically occurs right at the time people are driving in for their work day. The goslings are adorable, but trying to dodge them when you’re running late is dangerous. What happened? Why are they here? They are Canadian Geese, not Oklahoma Geese! I imagine that somewhere in their ancestry, maybe several generations ago, the geese stopped off in SE Oklahoma during a migration. They found that they could live in the conditions here all year; they had no need to migrate anymore. They just stayed in Oklahoma and discovered they could thrive. And boy are they thriving! I read in this article: https://www.birdwatchingacademy.com/canadian-geese-migration/, that the elders in the gaggle are the ones who teach the migratory routes. If there’s no elders left who migrate, they don’t learn the routes and they all just stay put, settle in, get comfortable where they are. Having lost their migration history, the Canadian Geese now live in a place very far from home…
One morning as I drove into work, while dodging a little goose family who were waddling across the street, I had this thought, “These geese don’t know where they came from. They don’t know how far they are from home.” And it occurred to me that when it came to my faith tradition, I had been like the geese. Until very recently, I didn’t know the history of the tradition I have been a part of since young adulthood. I didn’t know where we had come from; not having been taught by my elders, I too had settled in a place very far from where we started. My husband and I recently left the local congregation; I talked about why in a previous post: Hope is on the Horizon. Like the geese for many years prior to leaving, I was comfortable and settled. I raised my babies in the nest of that tradition. At times when I felt my kids were threatened by opposing doctrinal thoughts or if I believed they were being influenced to do the “don’ts” from the Christian formula (mentioned in my previous post), I huddled around my babies like the mama goose, and became defensive even aggressive. I was a very protective mom; at the time I thought my kids needed my protection. I’m not saying they didn’t need protection, all children do, but now I see that the things I so fiercely protected them from perhaps weren’t as dangerous as I had once believed. Back when I joined the church in my early 20s, I was taught the formula: “what we believe, what we do, and what we don’t do.” I was also taught all the verses that support the “rightness” of the formula. However, I was not taught the history of when and where the tradition came from. I believe a history lesson would have been helpful for me. As a recovering people pleaser who is also recovering from performance-based religious tendencies, a history lesson might have kept me from becoming so entrenched and defensive of the ideology… Or not, because, I’m an imperfect person, who is a recovering people pleaser who likes to perform well.
Have you been taught the history of your church tradition? Or have you learned about church history in general? If not, are you interested in finding out more? The Bema Podcast has a whole season on church history. Link to first episode here: https://www.bemadiscipleship.com/191. I found this season super informative and fascinating! As you listen, you might hear Marty Solomon, the host of Bema, encourage listeners to go through all the seasons in order from Season 1: Episode 1, but I ignored this advice and skipped to Season 5, the church history season; I encourage you to too, especially if you’re feeling disoriented and discouraged by all the church scandals that seem to have been all over the news in the last several years, or if you have been hurt in church. For me, listening to this season gave me hope, because while hearing about all the terrible things that happened in church history, I could see the grace of God. I remembered His purposes will succeed (Proverbs 19:21), and He works through a faithful remnant, even a remnant in exile like those spoken of in Daniel and the remnant he will gather like in Micah 2:12-13. Just when it would look like the church might be snuffed out, the Holy Spirit would bring on a revival and the church continued. Even though the historical church including all its iterations and traditions have gotten lots wrong, they got some things right in each generation. God was with and within the church of the past, and even though the light of the current church (especially in America) seems dim, God is still with and within her. Right now He’s still moving and active in people’s lives, loving and healing them, shining His glorious light in the darkness. I know this is true, because He is doing all of that for me. The church history Marty gives may not be as granular as you might want. It’s more of a high level overview or starting point for further study; if you’re interested in a deeper dive, he gives resources along the way. Turns out that Marty’s church tradition is affiliated with the Restoration Movement, as is mine.
In case you have noticed and are wondering why I’m not using the word denomination, but rather tradition, it is a habit I’ve picked up from Tim Mackie from BibleProject. To me, there’s just something more unifying in using the word tradition. And unity is the metaphorical country that this goose’s (my) faith tradition came from; unity is the home I seek. The church tradition I’m part of sprang from a movement that intended to unify and put away denominational labels, but I’ll tell that story in another post. Dear one, as I continue to share my story with you, my hope and prayer is that you will know no matter what you “believe, do or don’t do,” you are loved just because you are you!