As I spent a few days in the village below the mountain, I noticed that chimney swallows were nesting in my chimney again. At first it was just the noisy squawking of chicks waiting to be fed.Then it happened. Thum—pinggggg. Something had fallen and hit the draft plate of the stove connected to the chimney. Over the next few days, I let the mother birds out of the stove periodically (a couple times a day) to fly out an open window to return to search for food as they continued to try to feed the chicks in the nest that rested inaccessibly in the stove hardware. Going that deep into the stove to feed the chicks left them unable to find their way out the open chimney.

Gradually, the chicks fluttered from the broken nest and dropped one by one into the cold open stove below. They had the beginnings of feathers, but weren’t ready to fly at all. I’ve removed 6 so far. One was almost dead; the others were alive as I placed them outside among some tree shade where they wouldn’t immediately be exposed to the sun or predators. But I knew that they would soon die or be eaten. There’s one chick still in there, but he’s ceased squawking, and the mother birds have abandoned the feeding chore.

I’m not squeamish about death. I dislike much of the suffering associated with both life and death more than death itself. Yet I could not bring myself to kill those birds even knowing they’d die hungry and scared several hours later by setting them outside. My cat found a mother rat last year. She pounced on it, broke its neck, and then lost interest in it as it staggered helplessly around the pipe where her young ratlings waited. Yet even though I’m not fond of rats, I took a shovel and carried to a back pasture fence and placed it among some bushes.

While neither of these examples invoke great moral issues by themselves, they point to a deeper dilemma that periodically confronts me. I value life, yet in general, I don’t doubt I’d kill an animal or let it be killed rather than let it suffer interminably – even though I’m quite sure I’d feel badly about it. I myself have a living will that clearly (hopefully) states that if I reach the point where I can’t live on my own, I want the plug pulled. The “will to life” that Schopenhauer so aptly describes is clearly a part of the suffering I see associated with death in both animals and people. That instinctual will to survive painfully goads one into striving at all possible costs - to live beyond any reasonable purpose in doing so. This instinctual clinging to the “desire to be” is suffering that is hard to watch when the futility is so obvious.

The outdoor cat that visits my house routinely brings me the things she’s hunted. Sometimes they are alive. If they are, even though it’s a mouse, I set them free. Most of them scamper away, though some are clearly dazed, if not hurt. Sometimes she is exhausted by carrying large prey, like a rabbit or squirrel, over a long distance. In her own animal way she’s sharing the important bounty of survival she’s instinctually wired for. I do not scold her or turn her away, though I set her offering free.

Acceptance of suffering has always been difficult for me. It’s not that I have any inclination to pretend it doesn’t exist. I see this too clearly to brush it away with simple denial. So, at least at this elementary level I accept it. And there is a complementary refusal to rationalize it away as “God’s will,” “animals don’t really suffer,” “nature’s wonderful way,” etc. I have little inclination to imbue suffering with the redemptive power that Christians often ascribe to it – even to the point of asceticism and self inflicted misery.

I have no wish to become indifferent to it, to develop callouses of the soul that insulate me from feeling it. So, I can accept that part of living fully is to reconcile myself to and even embrace the intrusion of suffering as part of the price for being aware and awake.

I have a natural inclination, though, to conclude that something is wrong here - something should be remedied - something needs fixing. And what usually follows is an implicit judgment of good and evil. The acceptance I’m trying to cultivate is to step away from my own conclusions about how “things ought to be” to allow room for things to be the way they are, while still offering help and attempting to help where I can. If the chicks die in a manner that potentially sustains the life of another, has life suffered irremediable injury? If my cat lives her life in the manner that her physiology has wired her for, should I count it a tragedy to be rectified? It seems to me that accepting life, while still caring, and while recognizing the futility (in the absolute sense) of my relief efforts, is close to the middle path I want to follow.

I don’t know whether this reflection belongs in the Snakes and Dragon Den category of “life sucks,” or the more transformational category of “The Cave.” Heads or tails. Tails? OK, the “life sucks” category it is.