Stepping Into the Circle of Death and Life

On processing chickens and recognizing a path to capability, intention, and gratitude in raising our own food and being part of the the cycle of life.

This essay is related to processing chickens for eating - I will talk about death a fair bit, as a heads-up for anyone who might not be in the headspace for it.

Today was a very special day - after nearly 9 months of dreaming, planning, building, and tending, we processed our first chickens. Tonight, we’re going to roast our first bird and tomorrow we will make soup from the bones and left-over bits!

This past winter, we decided to go all-in on raising meat birds. We built a new chicken coop and raised 30-some-odd chicks. Chicken is a big part of our diet and so it was really important to the both of us that we raise and process our own food. For me, raising chickens was central to my ancestors way of living and doing so myself is a way to step closer to them.

Eating meat and the killing of animals is a rather socially contentious topic - many people are not simply uncomfortable with the notion, they bristle at it. You may be one of those people, how am I supposed to know? It is not my aim in this essay to convince anyone of anything - I think we should all develop our own intentional relationships with the food that we eat.

I do want to spend some time to talk about what feels like the spiritual importance of being involved in the full life cycle of the food that we eat. See, most meat production in our society is hidden from our sight - it is hidden because factory farming processes are spiritually abhorrent. I blame no one for viscerally despising the idea of eating animals when this is the primary way that meat is produced in this society.

However, raising animals for food was one of the central activities all of our ancestors. It has been central to nearly every culture and religion across the globe. The cooking and eating of meat has been present at celebrations and gatherings for millennia. The raising, slaughter, and consumption of meat is a huge part of the human story and has played an integral role in our mythologies and spiritualities.

Nowadays, even people who eat meat every meal are typically completely sheltered from the death that is inherent in eating meat. In my view, a majority of us are sheltered from one of the most important aspects of human spirituality - we are sheltered from reckoning with death and the part that death plays in fostering new life.

So, I just wanted to take a moment to share a bit about what feels so special (and intense) about raising and processing meat for ourselves. This is not the first time I’ve been a part of the process, but is the first time I have had the opportunity to see it through from start-to-finish.

Death is scary - being confronted with death can, rightfully, be terrifying. Yet, it is also death which makes life so precious. What is the value of a single second, minute, or hour when we do not “remember” that we are mortal - that, like a Sun, we are born, we burn brightly, and then we die. It is our death that makes this life so deeply sacred.

To take the life of an animal is to acknowledge our own mortality. While the idea of this can sound scary, when we are encountered with this kind of sacrifice - of an animal dying so that we can be nourished and live - we are able to intimately understand the precious nature of life and everything that it entails. I have never loved a chicken more than one I have taken the life of.

We are able to witness that death is a prerequisite for life just as life is a prerequisite for death. The living are sustained by the dead. Life emerges from death. In nature there is no “garbage” - every death is a harbinger of new life. A predator eating prey. A tree, fallen in the forest, rotting, giving rise to an ecosystem of fungi and bugs. Where there is death, there is life.

We are likely some of the first generations in human history to not intimately understand our living as being dependent on death. We are sheltered from death. We never see it even though we depend upon it. As a result, we lose access to the sacred cycle of life that defines our very existence.

This is why re-birth is a central theme of so many religions - whether it be reincarnation or resurrection. It is only from death that we are given life. Our ancestors witnessed this cycle play out constantly - even just watching the compost process, in which dead matter is converted into living soil, which in turn is able to feed and nourish plants that are growing.

This is not to say that death is not heartbreaking - when we understand that life is dependent on death, then we are able to witness that suffering is an inherent part of life. Mortality is defined by suffering. Our society tries to not only shelter us from death, but from suffering as well. As if it is possible to live a life that is free of suffering!

When we kill an animal to eat it, we take agency over suffering. We cannot eradicate suffering - that is not possible. But suffering does not necessarily need to lead to joy and to life. Suffering can beget more suffering. Suffering can be insufferable.

When we raise and kill animals with the intention to nourish ourselves and those we love, we are able to bear witness to the fact that suffering can result in life and in joy. And this extends out into the spiritual realm - we are able to bear witness to the reality that we, in our own lives, are going to suffer. We cannot hide from it, at least not forever.

And, so, we may suffer needlessly OR we can put ourselves on paths in which our suffering will lead to something more beautiful, something that makes the suffering worth it! Why choose to suffer needlessly? If we are going to suffer, we might as well put ourselves on the intentional path - where we choose something beautiful to suffer towards, instead of simply being battered and tossed about like a ship at sea in a storm.

This gets to what feels like the most beautiful part of all. If we can witness that death is necessary for new life, then we can see that our deaths can be the harbinger of more life. Think of your heroes, your grandparents, the people who have inspired you throughout your life - the spirit of the people we love is able to live on inside of us. The spirit of the people before us can give us life, can fill us with love, can give our lives meaning and purpose and beauty.

We are not simply here today, gone tomorrow. The words we use were created by people long before us. The ideas we have in our minds, the knowledge we have collected, the music that we have, the art that we have, the culinary traditions that we have - people before us suffered and, as a legacy of their suffering, they passed down these great gifts that give us life.

And so, when we intimately touch the circle of life, we are able to intimately understand that the legacy we leave behind will be in our death and it will be defined by how we chose to suffer in this life. If we suffer needlessly, we will pass along needless things. If we suffer with intention by virtue of living with intention, in our death we will pass our intentions down.

If we live a life of love, if we live a life in which we embody our very essence, then we will pass down a beautiful legacy that will nourish others long after we have gone. In accepting the nature of life and death, we are given a path to accept our death and to embrace the sacred nature of our own lives.

To live with intention, we must not only know ourselves, but we must come to know the world around us. There is a Druidic triad on the three paths to self-knowledge: mastery of the self; mastery of the world; mastery of the unknown. To live with intention, we must come to trust ourselves and become capable of navigating the world around us.

Practically, to raise and process any animals is a great practice in capability. For, to make a mistake or to fail in this task is to ask the animal to suffer needlessly. If you kill an animal but mishandle the butchering process and learn nothing in the process - you take this sacred sacrifice and you turn it into something needless. In doing so, you disrespect the sacrifice of the animal before you by not giving it the opportunity to foster new life.¹

Tending to animals and processing them takes intention, know-how, and action. To undertake this process, we must step into an active role in the world and we must be able to act effectively and decisively. We learn to live with intention by taking on tasks that require our full capability. It is through our intentions and capabilities that we are able to foster a beautiful death for ourselves, a death that will give life to future generations.

To respectfully process an animal and prep it to eat (for cooking is a-whole-nother challenge) requires the capability to do so. To do so requires a certain level of mastery of your own self and of the world around you. As the Druidic triad states, when we become capable actors, developing mastery of our own self and the world around us, we put ourselves in a position to grapple with the unknown.

We must foster our capabilities and intentions, for death lies firmly in the land of the unknown. Our spirits lie firmly in the realm of the unknown. When we express our intentions and capabilities in the physical world, we extend our intentions and capabilities into the metaphysical world as well.

Now, perhaps, this is enough for now - so, I will conclude by sharing an aspect of this process that I did not understand for much of my life. In the moment before taking a chicken’s life, I gave it my full intention and said “thank you, good buddy” with both my words and all of my energy.

For it is not just a chicken giving me calories - no, it is the great circle of life playing out, displaying in full clarity that my life is a gift offered to me by the dying and the dead. Gratitude fills us up with love and life and, when we are present for the great sacrifices required everyday to give us life, we will find our cups over-flowing with gratitude.

1. I believe that learning from a mistake is an example of death giving way to new life. If you do not learn from your mistakes, then the suffering is needless as well.