I need assistance with butchering.


Is anyone proficient at slaughtering?

Here's the issue: I need to learn how to kill the fatted calf. I am (hopefully, God willing) moving to Kenya for a while, where I will be working in a nation recently wounded by inter tribal violence. It is an area that needs the power of reconciliation. I don't understand reconciliation at the national level any more than I understand reconciliation at the personal level. I read Henri Nouwen's "Bread for the Journey" every morning. The dates of late July through early August find Good ol' Henri preoccupied with the return of the prodigal and the return of the "other" son. The "other" son is the one who did not turn away. At least not physically. His heart was hardened. I sympathize with the non-prodigal son. When I read about his plight, I feel the softest part of my heart surrounded by hardened scar tissue.

My brother came home years ago. After spending most of his adult as a drug addict, stealing from the family, and disappearing for periods of time, he came home....with lymphoma. He died five months after he returned. My mother relates this homecoming to the biblical narrative of the long lost prodigal child. I don't remember it that way. My brother never asked for forgiveness, at least not to me. Although I sat by his bed, cared for his two children, and cared for him like a nurse, I never reconciled with my brother. I dutifully cared for and silently hated him until his final inhalation of air.

Four year later I still have dreams that he is crawling out of his grave looking for me. I am annoyed at best, pissed of at worse, and I make haste to rebury him.

Maybe these nightmares will stop if I had some sort of welcoming home present to offer him, some grand tribute of forgiveness...say a chubby little calf to cook up?

I don't know what this metaphor would represent exactly (especially post-mortem) so I am left feeling like the angry brother in the story. I hope God has a special place in his heart for those who take weeks, months, or years to fully forgive.