God Damned Circle of Life

We really have Disneyminds. The Turtle was so… cute. It was moseying across the parking lot, obviously an orphan, and we adopted it. It turns out it was a water turtle. And we have a pond. Our pond has Disney fish in it. When I walk to the edge of the pond, 15 fish dart toward me and their mouths start kissing the surface. I throw fish food flakes into the water and they frolic, gobbling the sinking flakes, like giggling children catching huge snowflakes on their tongues. For a few minutes each morning I communed with my 15 best friends.

I should have known. The last couple mornings they didn’t come to the edge, there was no greeting, no joy. They laid still, stiff as fish sticks, at the bottom of the pond. The pet store kid said it wasn’t the pond water, they weren't sick. It was a reaction to a predator. The fear of death had paralyzed them. But the turtle was so… cute. We put "feeder fish" in the pond. The others were big fish now, too big for the turtle to eat. They'd get used to it.

This morning I go to the pond and I find 5 fish floating. Bitten in half. Disemboweled. The head of one is at the bottom of the pond. Several more are missing. My Disney Pond stewn with corpses. Disney lied. The Circle of Life isn’t The Lion King and Fantasia, the Fish and Turtle dancing like Hippopotami and Crocodiles in tutus and ballet slippers, it isn’t wildebeests and lions and snakes and elephants dancing on each other’s heads singing show tunes. The Circle of Life is death. The Circle of Life is randomly, wantonly having your life cut off. The Circle of Life is making a mangled carcass out of what was a graceful, feathery creature that only God on a good day could have imagined creating. The Turtle was just being a turtle in the fallen world. The Reptile Store Kid said, "Yeah, its a male. They are bad. They kill just to kill." The Fish were just victims of its Turtleness…and my Disneymindedness. Ever since Adam ate the fruit, nothing fasts. The lion lies down with the lamb but only after it breaks its neck and disembowels it. This is the Circle of Life: everything dies, and if our prayers are answered it might be painless. But mostly it is wracked with suffering, sometimes inflicted by someone else. Intentionally or not, our lives are often taken from us. And we live paralyzed by fear of death. We cannot move toward joy, toward the One who feeds us, toward each other, toward our Life, our Sun, our True Food. The fear of death turns us wooden, we become mere images of the reality of our true selves. We are stiff, lifeless, unconnected, motionless…dead yet living. St. Paul says the sting of death is sin, falling short of our real life, our true self, our fullness of being. The fear of death paralyzes, we live in constant dread of the Circle of Life because we know life is not a Disney cartoon, but a pond with beautiful, rotting corpses floating on its surface while certain death lies camoflaged, waiting on the bottom to ravage us as we drift by. (Hebrews 2:14-15).

And yet…Christ is risen from the dead, damning death by death and to those in the tombs bestowing life.

Yes… God damned the Circle of Life. He entered the circle and broke it. By death He rendered powerless him who had the power of death and delivered those who were held in slavery to the fear of death, St. Paul says. Satan is cast down and he and this fallen existence will gasp their last rotting breath some day when death and Satan are cast into the lake of the second death, and in the power of the Resurrection, Life will reign triumphant and eternal. (Rev. 20:14) The lion will lay with the lamb, not because the lion has become a lamb but because Life reigns.The Turtle will swim with the fish, not as a fish but in all its Turtleness because Life reigns in it. And we will live in true communion, the image of God fulfilled in us, swimming in joy because of Him who damned death by His death. God damned the Circle of Life, Mr. Disney. It is in Christ that your cartoon life is fulfilled and takes on reality. Until that day when Life embraces creation and all is transformed, I wait, like all creation waits in hope, groaning and weeping at the fallen Circle that encompasses all that is beautiful and joyful in this world. (Rom. 8:19)

By the way. We excommunicated the Turtle. Its still alive, but not in our Pond Fellowship any longer. The Reptile Store Kid took him.

Its Friday afternoon:
I took one of our remaining 5 fish to the pet store for a diagnosis this morning. Its eyes were clouded over. It was lethargic. We looked in the disease book. It said the introduction of a predatory or aggressive fish to the environment will cause fish to die. There are latent diseases that stress will cause to flare up and it will kill them. The Pet Store Kid gave me some antibiotic. 5 hours later we have one fish left. Hebrews 2 says we are held in bondage to the fear of death. So are fish. Damn it. We buried our Fish in the corner of the yard with our Dog and Hamsters and Rats.