Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like bald eagles as a species, I just don't care for their personalities. They tend to be eaglemaniacs. Let me give you a case in point.
In the spring, the road between our place and Williams Lake is the site of a tragic number of road kills, mostly mule deer. Every morning all the scavengers line up at the road kill café for their turn to lick the pot. About a year ago, one Sunday we pulled out onto the road and headed to church in Williams Lake. Down the road a few kilometres a large immature eagle was on a road-killed deer together with a bunch of ravens, crows and magpies. As we bore down upon the scene like a preacher bound for heaven, our cold roaring diesel motor frightened the birds off the kill. The prudent ravens, crows and magpies quickly scattered away from the road. The egotistical eagle confidently swooped off of the bank right down in front of us and proceeded to fly away from us using the highway as his runway to gain elevation. The only problem was he had a belly full of deer and was barely able to claw enough air to get airborne. He was doing about 10 km/h just above the pavement and we were a little late for church, which means we were doing about 120 km/h. I think you can get the picture. The young eagle certainly didn't because he was so confident in himself that he didn't even look over his shoulder. We soon had a real close up view of the nasty end of an eagle. Just before we rear-ended him he moved over just enough to allow me to take radical tire-squealing-horn-hollering evasive action. The eagle continued on down the road as though it was engineered and constructed for him alone. “Eaglemaniac!” I shouted.
As I said, it's not that I don't like bald eagles, I just don't care for their personalities. They are truly noble-looking birds, I'll give you that. And yet, the late U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, an avid naturalist among many other things, argued for the grizzly bear to be the national emblem of his country rather than the bald eagle. Roosevelt reasoned the bald eagle to be just another scavenger bird, no more magnificent in character than the likes of the turkey buzzard, the raven or even the common seagull. Though this will no doubt get both Teddy and me into a whole pail of bird doo-doo, it's true. The bald eagle is not a true bird of prey like the red-tailed hawk, osprey, sparrow hawk or for that matter, the golden eagle, all who hunt and take their own prey. And yet, the bald eagle acts like it is the lion king of the sky, like it is a bird unto itself. Unlike true birds of prey who seem to have a healthy respect for all other birds, even their prey, the bald eagle seems to respect no bird but itself. The bald eagle seems full of itself, often making its living off of birds of lesser stature by stealing their quarry. Just ask an osprey. To me, bald eagles seem egocentric, arrogant, big-headed and superior-minded; the kind of bird that thinks the sky revolves around itself. We live right next to an eagle couple. Their home is just a hundred metres from ours. Over the past 17 years we have come to know their eaglemaniac personalities very well. I don't like them much. They are too similar to some people I know — me for instance!
Eaglemaniac is a word that I have coined for the avian version of egomaniac. According to my dictionary, an egomaniac is a person whose personality has become twisted to the point where they are extremely egocentric; where they are almost exclusively concerned with themselves at the expense of other individuals and even all of society; where the ego becomes the starting point in all thinking, even philosophy and religion; and where there is a limit in outlook to their own activities or needs. Egomania leads to scavenging an existence at the expense of others. It can't help but do this when “the other” has little or no value in one's thinking or actions. Ouch, that's a little too close to home. It sounds too much like what I am becoming, too much like what my Christian faith is becoming.
North American capitalistic society is cheering me on. It is working hard at convincing me I should aspire to be a rugged individualist, that my calling is to be a healthy consumer who does all of society a service by over-consuming to satisfy my personal thirst to possess more than I need, more than my neighbour, often at my neighbour's expense. And make no mistake about it; this consumerism is promoted as a spiritual quest. Just watch the advertisements on TV. What is promised in making purchases is often the very thing that people have historically sought through their faith; spiritual stuff like peace, freedom, serenity and contentment. Buy a new Chevrolet SUV and get real freedom; buy the new cologne Serenity and you will possess it; have a Smoothie and it will make it all better.
spiritualism promoted by a consumer society calls me to seek personal spiritual gratification at all costs; personal spiritual fulfillment through purchasing for myself. It is a spirituality with me in the centre. It is a spirituality quite cut off from the morals, ethics and discipline demanded by God and required by community. I find myself moving in the direction of egomania, but not just any kind of egomania, “spiritual egomania.” And I am cheered on by the godless consumer spiritualism of my society.
then it hits me. I realize that the eaglemaniacs I live beside on Lac la Hache have done me a great service by rendering an old adage true, “We have seen the enemy, and he is us.” And in the midst of the pilgrimage towards spiritual egomania, with the eagles' help, the words of my Master Christ hunt me down. Written-off Golden Rule slays my heart. Trite old sayings pierce my soul. Do to others as you would have them do to you. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. It is more blessed to give than to receive — Mt. 7:12; 22:39; Acts 20:35, NRSV.
i>Postscript: I have come to realize more and more that I don't know much about spirituality. But the eagles have taught me this much by negative example. Any spirituality that does not honour God, the other person and the community before it honours self, cannot be a Christian spirituality at all.
