You’re reading Tethered Letters, a monthly long-form letter on creative faith and faithful creativity. Everything I write is AI-free. Thanks for reading.
Hello loved ones,
July is barreling down upon us, and June seems like a distant memory. Phew, it was a busy one. The change of routines, the later sunlight, the vacation Bible schools and pool parties and oncoming camps — summer is a whirlwind. I hope you're finding pockets of peace in your place, whatever that means for you. What activities are helping you breathe easier this summer?
News around our place, let's see. We harvested our first-ever garlic haul, and boy are they ever satisfying to pick. After you've dug them up, you peel back a few layers of garlic paper (with all the lovely dirt on it) to reveal this beautiful, clean bulb that smells incredible. I love that as they dry, they turn this lovely purple color. And I love that the cloves I planted in autumn turned into this with so little effort on my part. That's my kind of gardening.
We've recently acquired an octet of chickens — 3 Issa Browns, 2 Americanas, and 3 Amberlinks. We all enjoy observing the adorable, ridiculous little lives of these poultry. The word "droll" must have been coined to describe young chickens. We're pretty sure at this point (from his loudness, largeness, and general attitude) that one of the Americanas is an errant rooster, but we've decided to keep him around.
It's a point of debate among chickeneers whether to keep a rooster in a flock. Roosters are loud, which makes keeping them impossible for city-dwellers due to noise ordinances. For those of us in the country, it might seem romantic to hear the cockadoodle of a rooster in the morning, but roosters can sometimes do that all day long. Also, depending on the rooster and whether you've established yourself as the tall, pink, featherless top of the pecking order, they can be pretty aggressive.
But the pros, in my mind, outweigh the cons at this moment. Roosters help stabilize a pecking order so that hens don't rip each other's feathers out so often. They also take on a protective role, crowing to alert the flock of predators, leading them to new food sources, and even fighting off threats. They look cool. And ultimately, they make it possible to get more chicks and not just eggs.
We're relatively new to this whole thing, so if you've had roosters for any length of time and would care to share your experiences, I'm all ears.
Speaking of the term "pecking order," you can thank the Norwegians for it (you're welcome). It was identified first in 1922 by a Norwegian guy with the most Scandinavian name I've ever heard (Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe) who had an obsession from a young age with chickens.
"Anyone who thinks the inhabitants of a chicken yard are thoughtless happy creatures with a daily life of undisturbed pleasure ... is thoroughly mistaken. A grave seriousness lies over the chicken yard." (Thorleif)
In other words, you'd better mind your P's and Q's (or, as Mr. Schjelderup-Ebbe might say, your puk-puks and quawks).
Good ol' Thorleif determined, by spending way too much time with his chickens, that chickens peck each other to establish dominance, and that the ensuing hierarchy could be tracked through the entire flock. Interestingly, the establishment of a pecking order was not necessarily due to strength (pecker power?) but rather a combination of variables including things like amount of pecking achieved over time, shock value of the pecking, and yes — sheer dumb luck. Basically, better peck-prowess meant that some hens pecked every other hen, while other hens got pecked by everyone. Your status in the flock is determined by how much pecking you do.
Despite putting all of his research eggs in one basket, Thorleif couldn't quite make his way up through the ranks of academia at the time, so he was less known during his time than he is now (I guess he wasn't pecking enough people?) Even so, his research has been foundational for scientists studying the idea of dominance hierarchy, despite its early dismissal.
Thorleif called the hens at the top of the order "despots," and drew much broader conclusions on the state of the world than probably were warranted given he was studying chickens. Like this one:
"Despotism is the basic idea of the world, indissolubly bound up with all life and existence."
The chicken man is not wrong, folks.
I find this pretty intriguing not only because it helps me understand the feather-brained nincompoops in my own backyard, but also because it helps me understand chickens.
It seems to me that one way of doing life in vogue today is to base your happiness on your dominance of the situation and people around you. In this mindset, you think in hierarchies and winning teams: whoever pecks the other person first is the winner, the one who gets to dive in first at the feed-trough, the one who gets the cushiest roost, etc.
In an information age, you might be the one who crows the loudest, who gets the most birdbrains to look in your direction, who flashes the most brilliant plumage. Whatever the components of your bid for control (be it luck, brilliance, strength, charisma, or mean-spirited beak battling), you are using those things to control those around you, and by extension, to control your life.
In terms of modern society, dominance hierarchies are the name of the game, and you see the effects everywhere. You do not have a conversation with your opponent to know them, you have one to own them. You do not mind your own business, you make everyone's business your own. You do not make good laws, you market and promote your brand of politics. You do not live as a Christian in your nation, you try to make it a Christian nation by any means necessary, even non-Christian ones.
This is an ineffective way to live. Why? Because despite what we like to think about our lives, controlling them is impossible. We might be able to make some small variables go the way we want them to go, but when it really comes down to it, 99% of our lives are not in our hands. And if control is truly impossible, seeking to assert it will only end in loneliness and frustration.
There are other ways of living, though.
Recently I went down a very deep rabbit hole into the world of Konnakol, the South Indian art of vocally performing rhythmic patterns as a guide to creating and collaborating. It's a little bit like oral sheet music, a language of rhythm understood by singing or speaking it rather than by seeing it.
When I play a new piece of music on the piano, I read the notes on the page. My fluency with the Western written musical language coupled with my execution on the keys will determine my ease of playing the music. Learning this language requires me to connect my eyes to my mind to my body, with my ears more or less relegated to confirmation of what I play. I'm an excellent sight-reader, but one result of honing that skill is that my ability to play things by ear is pretty dismal.
In Konnakol, the components are more embodied than our Western ways of reading music: the rhythmic pulse you set down is clapped out, the rhythm itself spoken, and the music conversational. You learn it more quickly and deeply because you're learning it orally, bodily, in community. If you want a more in-depth discussion, here's a pretty good overview.
Virtuosos of this art create incredible, mind-boggling stuff:
What I love about Konnakol is how collaborative it is. It very quickly gets musicians in the same groove, and what a groove it can be! It's not the only method of getting there, obviously, because high-caliber musicians of every locale share a universal language that can put them in complete lockstep with their fellow players. One of the best feelings in the world is when your favorite musicians are playing so deep in the pocket that you know they'll be picking lint out of their teeth afterward.
Also? It's super playful and joyous. That video above is, after all, called Konnakol Games.
When I listen to this stuff, I'm stupefied. How do they do it? How is it even possible to achieve that level of stank face? At some point I just start laughing, because not only is it exquisite, it's fun. And I think it points to the other way of living: one based on listening, play, collaboration, and ultimately, grace.
In a Konnakol mode of living, your interactions with your world and its denizens start with your ears, not your beak. You listen carefully to set, ordered rhythms passed down through generations, inherent in a heartbeat, and notably: uniquely human. Researcher Aniruddh Patel says that "There is not a single report of an animal being trained to tap, peck, or move in synchrony with an auditory beat."
Of course, this kind of collaborative, rhythmic living isn't just about getting in step with a rhythm beyond our own. It's about sharing that rhythm with others, drawing them into it, agreeing together to pursue it, bouncing ideas off one another, picking up the slack when the tempo lags — all with the goal of creating something exciting, unique, and beautiful. The people in your circle are not chickens to be pecked, but collaborators to be respected.
Not to stretch this metaphor beyond itself, but an example may help.
Some friends of mine recently encountered a challenging situation: doing a book-reading of their faith-based book, alongside an author that they strongly disagreed with on fundamental levels. My friends are also diametrically opposed to some of the key values of the bookstore that held this particular event. They didn't know any of this until they showed up for the event.
Here's what they didn't do: They didn't boycott the bookstore, campaign to have offensive material removed from it, or publish an inflammatory social media post afterward. They didn't even thanks-but-no-thanks the event and walk out quietly.
Instead, they took the opportunity to get to know the people there, including the owner of the bookstore and the other author. They shared the faith-filled content of their book sincerely, but didn't use it as a screed or battering ram. They heard the other author out. They showed love to the people they met.
They didn't try to fight their way to a measure of control. They didn't base their value on their own pecking power or their level in some holiness-hierarchy.
They listened for a different, humbler, more grace-filled rhythm — a Divine one, in my opinion — and collaborated with their given circumstances and musical performers. And what came of it, and what will continue to come of it, is some pretty darn good music.
I find this inspiring not least of all because I've been really struggling to control certain things about my life in recent months. I want things to be different then they are for good and not-so-good reasons… which is true of most of the things I want, I suppose.
Because of this pursuit of control, which thankfully has not included pecking a lot of people, I've been running circles in my head like — you guessed it — a chicken with its head cut off, tiring myself out with anxious concerns about DOING MORE. I've exhausted myself with possibilities and scenarios, and come out frustrated and irritable as a result. There are feathers everywhere.
But in recent days, triggered perhaps by the Brothers Zahl podcast on the notion of free will, I've felt lighter. Once again I'm learning to let go of controlling the things that were never in my control anyway, and I'm beginning to realize how often I might have to relearn this. I've been practicing turning my focus back to receiving God's gifts to me: the opportunities presented, the people I've been placed beside, the super-abundant grace of God. I'm aiming more plant than poultry: seeking to accept the sun, water, and soil as part of who I am in Christ. By God's grace, there may even be fruit down the line.
Most of the time when I'm in a chickenly mood, it's because I'm afraid of something, or in pain, or annoyed that I don't have the answers I want, or too proud to let something go. I want to remember this when I get pecked next: the person doing the pecking is likely in that same zone I know so well: scared, hurt, frustrated, looking for answers.
The answer isn't to peck back. It's to start squawking along to a better rhythm.
Bukgaw!
June Favorites
We recently picked up a new board game called Everdell. It's a beautifully-made, Redwall-ish worker placement game that takes place over three seasons, where you build your own woodland city with resources and attract fun forest critters to it. It's got a lot of replayability (and six expansions, yikes) and the kids are already crushing it almost every afternoon.
The entry-point to that Konnakol rabbit hole was actually Willow’s Tiny Desk Concert, which is incredible for many reasons, not least of which is the lockstep of Mohini Dey and Taylor “The Pocket Queen” Gordon on bass and drums. And if you want more like this, Willow’s latest album, empathogen, is fantastic.
Speaking of pocket-playing, look no further than Vulpeck-adjacent super-group the Fearless Flyers. Here’s “Ace of Aces.”
The Bear Season 3 is meeting, surprising, and exceeding our expectations. I love it when a show hits its stride to the point that it does whatever it wants.
This is so good. I love all the connections you've threaded together. My favorite part of tutoring groups of homeschooled teens was the rabbit trails (I wish there was a related term that used "chicken") I would let them follow in seminar—they always thought they were getting away with something, but we (almost) always made connections that were valuable.
And I love how your friends handled the bookstore debacle. We are meant to be strangers here. Things are not as they ought to be, and we are misplaced (Chesterton said this more eloquently).
This: “It seems to me that one way of doing life in vogue today is to base your happiness on your dominance of the situation and people around you. In this mindset, you think in hierarchies and winning teams…”
Chris, I’m glad I stumbled across your work. I’m still relatively new to the subculture that is Substack—and what a lovely introduction your content makes. Thank you for the themes you address today, particularly what it means to learn to “play by ear” and dissent from the pecking order. Lots to mull on here. Thank you.