Flying the Coop
Yesterday, I let the chickens out of their coop. After realizing the other day that the reason there had been no eggs was likely due to clandestine tunnels that had allowed the local squirrel family a daily breakfast buffet, everything seemed in order. No new holes, no new gaps in the chicken wire floor. Even the patch midway up the back wall was still in place: a pair of old sweatpants lodged exactly where I had left them.
But, once again, there were no eggs.
“Chickens don’t lay every day,” they say. But normally, my chickens do.
What was going on? Why no eggs? I had blocked the holes. I had even reinforced the patch with plywood and cinder blocks. The squirrel family was no longer getting in—at least for the moment. So, where were the eggs?
When I opened the door to the coop, Thelma and Louise didn’t just saunter out to forage for bugs. They flew the coop. Not arbitrarily—they sprinted with a sense of purpose.
One of them—let’s call her Louise—made a beeline for the claustrophobic corner wedged under a pile of yard tools. The spot where she had laid an egg the day before. She nestled herself into the cramped space and sat, perfectly still. Thelma tried to follow, but she couldn’t fit, so she stayed just behind, waiting and watching.
Sure enough, when Louise finally stood up, there it was. Brown, beautiful, and speckled.
I was amazed. Could it be?
It was as though the egg inside had been bursting forth—as though she was waiting to be set free so that it could finally be brought into the world.
The other day, when I encountered the tunnels under the coop, I wrote about the holes that allow our creative energy to leak out and the need to patch those holes. But I realized - there was something more going on.
Louise seemed to be suggesting that there is a deeper challenge than just the holes in the coop. What if it was the coop itself?
What if the places that once felt like our nests no longer are?
Sometimes, we spend all our time “securing the coop,” trying to make the old structures of our lives work again. We fix the holes, we patch the wire, we try to make the “safe” place productive. That is necessary work. But it is only a means to an end, not the end in and of itself. For, once the holes are patched and the coop is secured, it raises the question:
What if something in us has outgrown the coop?
I had thought that Thelma and Louise simply were not laying eggs. That something had happened—maybe they were past their prime. Maybe they had laid all the eggs they would. Maybe this was just the way things were going to be from here on out.
But actually, in reality, they were bursting with life.
Could it be that it was the coop? Could it be that they refused to bring forth their treasure in a place that no longer felt right, that no longer felt aligned?
Could it be that they were simply waiting? Waiting for the freedom to fly the coop and find a new nest—even if it was just a messy corner of the garden under some shovels?
What do you do when you realize that the “coop” of your life—your old habits, your old roles, your old way of being in the world—is actually the thing that is keeping you from “laying your eggs?”
In the world of chickens, there is something called being “egg bound”—when an egg gets stuck and is not able to be laid. It is a life-threatening condition for chickens, this stuck-ness.
I wonder, might it be the same for us?
A Note on the Stuck-ness...
If you feel “egg bound”—bursting with life but unable to find a place to nest—you might just need to open the door.
We are beginning a 5-week online, self-guided journey on May 17th called The Return.
It is a practice of leaving the “coop” of our old habits and roles so we can find the sanctuary we actually need. It’s about moving from the stuck-ness of the old structures into the freedom of the garden.
If you’re ready to fly the coop, you can join us here.
