Andy was driving to church to meet my mom and me for a Wednesday night dinner. Because he was running late, he took a shortcut hoping traffic would be better by the city park. Suddenly, a large bird came from his left and flew right into the front fender of the Jeep. After the initial loud thud, he looked in the side mirror and saw a bird tossed up into the air before it landed on the road. It looked like a pile of feathers in the median.
Was that a Canada goose? he wondered.
Either way, that bird was a goner. Andy kept driving because he was running late. He made the next turn and headed up the main road to the church, but a sense of guilt came rushing over him. Ann, who loved birds so much, would have hated that he’d left a bird in the road. Since she would have definitely insisted he turn around and help it, he did a U-turn. It was against his better judgment. What bird could have survived that collision? Well, at least he wouldn’t leave it in the middle of the street.
When he walked up to the dead bird, he noticed its brown feathers above, lighter feathers below, and its talon feet. He’d know it anywhere, since Ann could identify all the birds of prey in the Florida area. Ann loved raptors, especially hawks . . . which was exactly what he’d just killed. A beautiful red-tailed hawk.
As he was looking at the bird, its body twitched. It was alive! Alive, but injured.
Surprised, Andy nervously took off his light jacket and wrapped it around the bird. The bird didn’t move. So far so good. He picked up the bird and watched for a break in the heavy traffic.
People must think I’m crazy standing out here, he thought. He scuttled across the street and stepped up on the sidewalk. Right then, the hawk put its head out of the jacket and turned toward the car. At least the bird knew which direction they were going. Andy, looking at its sharp large beak, felt a sense of panic. When he finally made it to the Jeep, Andy had to put the bird down because the liftgate would not stay up.
Why didn’t I get this liftgate fixed? he thought. This is wrong in so many ways. What a father won’t do for his daughter. Lodging the liftgate with his shoulder, he bent down to pick up the bird and put it in the back of the Jeep.
Would it panic when put in the vehicle? Would it realize Andy was trying to help? Thankfully, St. Francis Wildlife Association had a drop-off location for injured or orphaned wildlife just a little more than a mile away.
Since he didn’t have a box in which to keep the bird contained, he said a prayer.
“Ann, please keep this bird calm as I drive it to the animal hospital.”
He pulled slowly out of the park and onto the road. As he drove, Andy was afraid to look into his rearview mirror. He imagined if he did, the hawk would be there saying, Gotcha!
At the animal hospital, Andy rushed into the emergency entrance and saw a young woman at the desk.
“I have an injured hawk in the car,” he said. “Please help me.”
The woman looked up from the desk and said, very calmly, “You’ll have to bring it in, sir.”
He thought, Seriously? I have to bring in this huge raptor. Are you not trained to handle these birds? “You know, it’s a pretty big hawk,” he said, more diplomatically than his thoughts. “I’m uncomfortable carrying the bird because it’s loose in the back of my Jeep.”
“Let me get you a box to help,” she said. Andy was relieved, thankful to have assistance. When she came back into the room, she carried a box that a few baby chicks could’ve fit in.
“Not even close,” he told her.
“Okay . . .” She looked at him skeptically. “Let’s go see this bird of yours.”
As they walked out together, Andy warned her. “It’s only wrapped up in a jacket. It’s basically loose in there.”
She was unfazed, until Andy opened the gate.
“That’s a big bird!” she gasped. “Wait here!”
She came back a few minutes later with a big box, picked up the jacket and bird in one motion, put them in the box, and closed the flaps. Inside one of the examining rooms, she was able to inspect the bird more carefully.
“We’ll keep her here until the local wildlife rehabilitator comes by tomorrow to pick her up,” she said. “Do you want your jacket back?”
He did, but he took one look at the claws entangled with the jacket, and thought better of it. However, he watch in amazement as the woman—with just a few quick movements—got the jacket and handed it back to him.
The hawk spent two weeks in rehabilitation at the wildlife center. A month later, we got a call from the rehabilitator who said the young female hawk was doing well. No bones had been broken.
“Would you like to be there when she’s released?” he asked.
We wouldn’t miss this. This young female hawk had begun to remind Andy of Ann—it was beautiful, sleek, and exhibited a spirit to live and soar again. Andy imagined Ann raising up from her hospital bed and soaring into freedom into the sky just like the hawks she loved so much.
On a sunny, cool Florida morning, we met at a popular baseball location, Winthrop Park—exactly where the hawk had flown into Andy’s Jeep. The rehabilitator asked if Andy would like to hold the bird until it flew off. He said yes, but not so confidently after seeing her sharp beak and claws again. The rehabilitator put the hawk in Andy’s gloved hands, and Andy broke into a full-blown grin. What an honor to be so close to such a magnificent bird! What an even greater honor that Andy was able to participate in saving its life. When he opened his hands, the hawk swooped almost to the ground, then flew up to the branch of a tree about fifty yards away. Andy watched the hawk for a few minutes and said silently to himself, Thank you, Ann, for being here with me. The rehabber said that she would most likely stay and make her home in the park. Spectators at the baseball field in the park have seen her flying overhead.
After Ann died, my mom (not the most outgoing person) wanted to talk to Conor’s mom. One afternoon I invited Julie over to the house. She and my mom went out on the back porch for close to three hours. They shared a terrible bond. Because my brother had accidentally shot his friend when he was a child, both she and Julie had sons who had killed someone else with a gun. I remember standing at the window, looking out into the yard, and marveling as I watched them talk.
An outside observer wouldn’t have been able to notice anything amazing about two women sitting on the porch, chatting. But what was really happening was more profound, more delicate, and more powerful than almost anything I have ever seen.
One of the basic premises of restorative justice is that all our lives are connected in more ways than we imagine. That’s why it’s a travesty that we effectively throw away so many people into the gigantic cultural trash cans of prison.
Though the United States represents less than 5 percent of the world’s population, we have more people in prison than any other nation in the world—almost 25 percent of all incarcerated people.1 Over the past four decades, our rate of incarceration has increased by 540 percent, even though crime rates have fluctuated.2 This sort of mass incarceration represents a serious crisis in the criminal justice system, especially since many inmates don’t need to be in prison to ensure public safety. While some people—including Conor—are there for good reason, others are left languishing in a system because of mandatory sentencing requirements or to make politicians look as though they’re “tough on crime.”
When we put people in jail, we’re effectively throwing people away. We’re saying, “You are too complicated for society. We no longer want to see you or deal with you.” But the truth is that these people (and let’s face it, we are mostly talking about men) have connections to the community. Many leave behind spouses and significant others. They leave behind children, who no longer have fathers to provide for them. There are more victims of crime than the ones whose wallets are stolen. It affects us all.
But followers of Christ believe all people bear the imago dei, Latin for the “image of God.” C. S. Lewis wrote, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”3 In other words, the people we encounter every day—the ones who cut us off in traffic, the ones with fifty items in the “25 items or less” lane, the ones we barely notice, and the ones we’d rather not see—have souls that will live forever. As the little children sing, “They are precious in his sight.”
When we fail to see how interdependent all members of our society are, we fail our culture. People are not disposable and they each have a role to play in the larger society.
When we fail to receive God’s forgiveness, we fail ourselves. We don’t have to be defined by the worst thing we’ve ever done in our lives.
When we fail to forgive others as God has commanded, we fail each other. We don’t have to be victims our whole lives.
When my mom was talking with Julie in the backyard, I witnessed a “God moment”—a beautiful picture of how we are all connected, how we all affect one another, in big ways and small.
As they chatted, I remembered that moment years ago in Memphis when my mom was at lunch with some women who asked her where she lived. When she’d told them the road, a woman asked, “Oh, isn’t that where the little boy was shot?” My mother, overcome with shame and guilt over the incident, had claimed she knew nothing about it.
Yet there she was, ministering openly to Conor’s mom, sharing details of the experience that I probably had never heard. I’m sure it was as helpful for my mom to talk to Julie as it was for Julie to talk to my mom. In many ways it was a miracle that they—the grandmother of a murder victim and the mother of the killer—could even be civil to each other. Yet there they were. Connecting. Laughing. Crying. Overcoming.
There’s just something about humanity. We were made to need each other.
At Ann’s visitation people from our neighborhood, church, and community were lined up out the door. I remember we stood for almost three hours. People asked, “How could you just stand there for so long?”
“You know what?” I replied. “With so much support, I felt as if I was floating in love.”