The Pecking Order

 

I keep chickens, and the pecking order is a real thing. For me it’s hard to watch, but I’ve learned over the years to let nature be nature as much as possible, although sometimes I have to intervene. There is definitely a hierarchy in a flock of chickens, be the flock small or large. The leader is usually the biggest, the strongest, and the healthiest, and the line works down to the smallest, weakest, or the odd bird that is different in some way. Those differences could be of personality, but often it is because they look different, or are a different breed. The bottom of the pecking order gets picked on a lot, pecked by the other birds, run off from the food and water, and they have to grow rather creative to get their needs met. After all these years I can identify the bottom of the pecking order with a glance as they appear a little disheveled from their feathers being plucked out, a little smaller as they don’t get as much food as the others, and they are separated from the flock and forced to range and forage alone. 

 

When I first became aware of this fowl order I was a little dismayed. “Why can’t we all get along?” And I’m softhearted and wanted to rescue the bottom chicken, and occasionally I have to bring one in and give it special treatment to bring it back to health, but that’s a slippery slope if I plan to reintroduce it to the flock. Once the bird is brought back to health and set back into the flock the order is immediately reestablished, and the bottom has to literally fight its way into its new position. Sometimes it manages to work its way up the ranks, but usually it’s back to being ostracized after a good butt kicking by the leader and a few others.

 

People aren’t much different than chickens in this sense. Having worked in offices with a majority of women the pecking order is quite apparent, although it rarely gets physical. The hierarchy in an office is ruled much the same as a flock, the leader is usually the one with the most seniority, position, and control over the group, and the bottom is usually a newer member or someone different who doesn’t automatically fit into the group. The bottom of the human pecking order doesn’t get pecked and kept from food and water, but does get ostracized, gossiped about, and excluded. Fortunately for me most of my jobs were solo endeavors where I wasn’t with the group full time, and my jobs were outside of the office, or separate from the group, and usually something that I did alone. But the politics of the pecking order still reached out to put me into my place and clarify that I didn’t fit with the group.

 

I’ve been blessed with not caring too much if I fit in, and usually I didn’t have a lot of respect for the top of the order for various reasons. Perhaps it was early childhood training and being excluded from a young age, but frankly I’ve never really cared to fit into a group. I’ve also never been motivated by the jealousy that would require me to fight like a chicken to achieve a higher position, I simply didn’t care, and had other things on my mind. My attitude was often infuriating to the top tier because in their minds fitting into the hierarchy of office politics was important, but to me a job was just a means to survive in the world, and other than receiving a paycheck not much else about it mattered. I did my job, and did it well, and kept to myself, much like the odd bird that ranges and forages alone.

 

The hierarchy of the pecking order is also quite present in dysfunctional families where everyone bends over backwards to keep the leader, the most dysfunctional one, happy and content. And perhaps this is where my early childhood training taught me not to care too much if I fit in or not. As a child I knew what I didn’t want to be, I didn’t want to grow up and be bitter, I didn’t want to be angry all the time, and I didn’t want to hurt and put down others, so I would never be the leader. My place at the bottom of the pecking order was something I was used to by the time I entered the working world. As a child I had to figure things out for myself, no one was gently guiding me or teaching me how to do anything, from house cleaning and cooking to keeping up with school work to getting along with others all the way down to personal hygiene I had to figure everything out alone. These early skills of learning to figure things out made me a valuable employee in many of my solo jobs, but a pretty lousy member of the office pecking order.

 

In the Bible there are many comparisons to nature, from sheep and shepherds to fig trees and crops (wheat and tares) to the various birds and animals mentioned throughout the stories, and I think it’s important to understand these things to help broaden our understanding of what the Bible is teaching us. We are above the animals, meant to care for them and be good stewards to them, and to do that we must understand their natures, and see how in our own natural state we aren’t much different than them. Most people desire a leader, but seem to only look to man instead of putting their eyes on and hearts to our higher power, God. If we follow the rules that have been laid out for us there is no real need for the pecking order, if we obey and seek wisdom God will lead us away from the pack, the flock, the politics toward His truth and His peace.

 

The pecking order is brutal and cruel, but God pulls his chosen ones away from that low and uninspired thinking into the much broader view of the spiritual world. The leaders from the human pecking orders won’t have much when judgment comes, but those at the bottom, odd, strange, different and peculiar have a much greater reward as this world dissolves away and a new earth and a new heaven is born. I’m grateful for my place at the bottom of this world’s pecking order, because my leader is not from this world, and does not want His children to fit into it or conform to it. 

 

 

As always, keep seeking.