The Hawk is an Omen of War

There was a hawk perched on top of the church sign when I drove up early Sunday morning to prepare for worship. My first thought was, “oh, cool, a hawk.” And I dutifully took out my phone to take a picture. A closer inspection, however, yielded a less photogenic image than I had hoped. There was a long stringy thread of entrails—maybe a quarter meter or so?—hanging from the hawk’s talons, swinging in front of the sign, perilously close to the words “Pastor Ryan Dueck.” I pondered the potential trauma of that sight for an unsuspecting churchgoer as they rounded the corner looking for some Sunday morning inspiration.

I put the car in park, rolled down my window and stared at the hawk. It was an impressive-looking creature. I’m not sure I have ever seen one so up close and personal before. The hawk stared back, clearly not particularly impressed or intimidated by my presence. I yelled at it to get lost. Nothing. I waved my arms like a lunatic. Nothing. Just a steely gaze in my direction. I was getting annoyed. I couldn’t very well leave this grisly scene undisturbed. I didn’t want rodent guts on our church sign. And it was, well, a rather unsettling scene. I waved and yelled and clapped my hands as loud as I could. Eventually, the hawk flew away, its unfortunate prey locked in its grasp, innards swinging far below. I could almost imagine the hawk rolling its eyes at me.

In his masterful work A Secular Age, philosopher Charles Taylor talks about how among the defining features of the secular age is what he calls “the buffered self”—the self that is not vulnerable to outside mysterious forces. This has not always been so. Human beings once believed that there was this magical spiritual realm where forces could act upon “porous” human selves, for good or ill. Good and evil made their way in the world in all kinds of bizarre ways. The world was charged with the supernatural. Even animals (i.e., the serpent of Genesis 3, the donkey in Numbers 22) could be agents of spiritual significance (temptation, rebuke, etc.).

James K.A. Smith summarizes Taylor well. He talks about the “premodern imaginary,”

where all kinds of nonhuman things… are loaded with and charged with meaning—independent of human perception or attribution. In this premodern, enchanted universe, it was also assumed that power resided in things, which is precisely why things like relics or the Host could be invested with spiritual power. As a result, “in the enchanted world, the line between personal agency and impersonal forces was not at all clearly drawn.” There is a kind of blurring of boundaries so that it is not only personal agents that have causal power. Things can do stuff.

Few of us today—at least in the West—imagine that we live in a world where “things can do stuff.” I don’t, at any rate. Upon encountering the hawk on Sunday morning, my first thought was not, “Hmm, I wonder what grim tidings this creature announces?” My first thought was, “Eww, gross. Go away. And don’t get any guts on my sign, because that would be annoying to have to clean in my nice clothes.” I simply do not inhabit a world where hawks speak to human beings. In this, I am far more secular than I would prefer to admit.

As I said, my first thought was not to wonder what the hawk was telling me. But for whatever reason, on this particular Sunday, it was my second or third thought. Or, if not a full-fledged thought, at least a curiosity. The image wouldn’t leave me all morning. Was this image a death-knell of sorts? An indictment of my ministry? A statement on the state of the church in the West? I texted the picture to my brother and said something to the effect of “whaddaya think?? Omen??” He texted back: “The hawk is an omen of war.” I squirmed at the thought of the peace dove on our church sign and this hawk menacing it from above.

Well, there was nothing particularly ominous or threatening about the worship service that followed this sighting. It was a lovely service, quite moving in many ways. I put the hawk out of my mind and enjoyed the rest of a summery Sunday. I chalked it up to my tendency to overthink things and the usual reality that Sunday morning has me operating on less sleep than usual.

The next morning, I was off to the jail. I was delivering some things to the women’s unit and one of the guards asked if I had time to speak to one of the inmates. She hadn’t filled out a formal request, they said, but, well, you’re here anyway, so… Sure, of course. Her eyes were red and her gaze shifty as we sat down to chat. “Do you, like, pray and stuff?” she asked. “Of course, what can I pray for?” She shuffled her feet. “Well, I’ve been hearing voices at night… I can’t sleep. Some of the other girls hear the same. It’s a kid, crying out, asking for its mother, saying, stop, leave me alone, help me.”

There are all kinds of “disenchanted” explanations for an experience like this. Childhood trauma. The guilt of being separated from children in prison. The effects of coming off hard drugs. Watching one too many movies with these kinds of themes. Reading the news. Any or all of these could have been going on.

But I thought of that hawk glaring at me the day before, some poor creature dangling on its hooks. The hawk is an omen of war.

We prayed. We prayed that God would go to war. We prayed that the God of Heaven and Earth, the Mighty Warrior, strong to save, would defeat his enemies, that if there were any children in danger, that God would rescue, protect, defend. We prayed that malevolent voices would be silenced. And we prayed for peace.