Author: swithrowking

desert islands, life rafts, and house fires

~ swithrowking ~ 2 Comments

My dad has been reading some of my evangelical animal liberation theology book chapters and giving me feedback. I really appreciate his comments and thoughts because he thinks very differently about this issue than I do, and I need someone to push back on my ideas, hard, to make me refine them, to force me to think about the foundations and implications of this theology that I want to articulate well.

A few mornings ago, he emailed me this question, that I’m sure my animal rights activist friends will recognize: “Would you kill your son to keep your dog alive if faced with a circumstance where you must chose between them? or Would you kill your dog to keep your son alive in those same circumstances?” He wanted to know “whether or not there is, in God’s creational economy, a difference between humans and other kinds of animals in terms of how they are valued by Him; and, secondarily, of how they are to be valued by humans who rightly understand that divine economy.”

My dad’s intentions are not to belittle my work, at all. In fact, he stopped eating chickens long before I did! But I had to giggle a little when I read the question, because I think most everyone who has self-identified as an “animal rights person” at some point in life has had someone ask them an iteration of this question, from “If you were trapped on a desert island and had to kill an animal to survive, would you?” to “If you were in a life raft, and you had to pick either your dog or a human to throw out, which would you choose?” to “If your house was on fire and you only had time to save your kid or your cat, which would you pick?”

It reminds me of this hysterical scene from the West Wing.

Given the visceral rage I felt at the 10-month-old girl who shoved four-month-old Isaiah over during his first week of pre-school, I think it’s safe to say that I would go to, quite literally, any length to try to protect my son from harm. I’d toss my crippled mother over the side of life-raft if it meant saving my son’s life (I think she’d be okay with this, she’s remarkably self-sacrificing).

Jesus actually asked his own versions of the desertisland-liferaft-housefire question:

  • “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Matthew 6:26
  • “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Matthew 10:29-31
  • “He said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and life it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.'” Matthew 12:11-12

Why did Jesus use these analogies? Was it to make a point about how silly it was to care about animals? Not at all. Nekeisha Alexis-Baker adeptly addresses these passages in her essay, “Doesn’t the Bible Say that Humans Are More Important than Animals?” in A Faith Embracing All Creatures: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Care for Animals. Alexis-Baker argues that, “In these instances, Jesus’s message is that the Father’s care extends even to the nonhuman creation that humans devalue…Jesus invites his followers to look to creation to better understand how God works in the world.”

What we value, what I value, probably doesn’t perfectly reflect what God values. And that’s a good thing. A really good thing. But these passages don’t tell us that God doesn’t value sparrows or sheep. And they certainly don’t tell us that it’s okay to use sparrows and sheep in whatever way happens to please us. For that matter, let’s think about how Jesus asks his followers to respond to those who are routinely undervalued and abused by their surrounding societies. Oh, yeah…we include, embrace, and protect them!

Maybe islands, rafts, and emergencies are where our ethical rubber meets the road. But maybe they’re just places where, in a fallen world, we are forced to make heart-breaking and unfair choices. Maybe God’s heart is as broken by those moments as ours would be. In the meantime, in the day-to-day economy of the created world, we are given the freedom to choose compassion, reject cruelty, and practice kindness. I think those choices we make every day at the grocery store, in our kitchen, at a restaurant, at the drug store, choosing what clothes to buy, where to shop, how to spend our money…I think those choices are far more meaningful.

resolutions

~ swithrowking ~ 2 Comments

I did some math recently and was dismayed to realize that, at thirty-five years old, I’ve spent the better part of the last quarter century battling depression and body hate. A quarter of a century.

During that twenty-five years, I’ve experienced extreme lows, recovered, and then entered the depths again. I’ve hated the way I look and scanned every room I have been in to find someone, anyone, fatter than I am at that moment. Both struggles have been such an important part of my everyday world that I frankly just didn’t realize how much of my life they had influenced…consumed, even.

The two battles have similarities and differences.

I’m predisposed to both. I come from big, depressed, and anxious stock. How I’m wired is, in some ways, out of my hands. Like Gaga says, I was “born this way.” I remember the first time I ever used food to calm my nerves. I was around four or five years old, and I poured my brother and I a glass of milk to drink while my parents were in the middle of a fight. Depression and food addiction fuel each other in my brain and body, and always have. Both are destructive, joy-killing, and lead me to feel isolated and helpless.

But while I still feel shame over the numbers on the scale and the food I put in my mouth, I wear my depression like a badge of honor. I’ve worked hard to understand my mental illness, to work with it, to make my life work with it. I’m eager to share my story of dealing with this disease, because I am confident in my ability to flourish despite its best efforts to bring me down and because working through those valleys has strengthened and humbled me in exactly the right ways. Hell yeah, I go to therapy! And sometimes I need an SSRI and a sleeping pill to function! It’s all good, it ain’t the end of the world, and this weakness really is my strength.

My depression has also forced me to reckon with God and reconcile my childhood faith with my adult reality. I have lived through the darkest days only because God’s hand protected me. God is with me when I am in a blind rage, when I can’t drag myself out of bed, when I can’t stop crying, when I want to run away, when I do run away, when I hate myself, when I hate God, when I scream at people I love, when I try to hurt myself, when I am exhausted, when I give up, when I ask for help, and when I start to heal. And God is there when the cycle starts again. Maybe it’s the Lexapro talking, but I don’t feel like I need to escape depression. I have learned so much about who I am, who I can be, and have felt so loved and held through these experiences…it sucks, but it’s also a gift.

I can’t say the same about my body or food, my enemies.

There are parts of this battle that I can own. My choices are my own. My failures are my own. I decide what goes in my mouth. I decide how much I move. I choose. I don’t want to play the victim or improperly assign blame.

But at some point, the disease of food addiction began to take over my mind. I no longer made sane choices. I told myself if I just had enough willpower, I could stop eating potato chips and lose weight…but what I didn’t realize was that I had loads of willpower. If I wanted food, come hell or high water, I was going to get it.

I was…I am powerless against this drug, food, and I am not my will. I am more than my will.

Here’s what food addiction is like for me: I obsess over food. It is always on my mind. Though I have never experienced food insecurity, I worry constantly about where my next meal is going to come from, if it will be enough, and whether I will enjoy it. The idea of food is often much more delightful than the real experience. Dissatisfied, I will continue to eat, hoping for satisfaction. When I am anxious or angry and put food in my mouth, there is nothing like the instant calm that flows through my body. My heart stops racing. I can breathe deeply. My muscles relax.

This addiction is fueled by the messages that I’ve heard for so many years and internalized on the deepest level, the subtle and overt ways that usually well-meaning friends and relatives have participated in my shame. Here are a few that I remember:

  • Being called “thunder thighs” by a peer in middle school, while waiting for the bus.
  • A middle school PE teacher standing in a crowded hallway, hands on my shoulders, telling me she was worried about my weight.
  • The picture of a JC Penney model my mom kept on the fridge as a reminder for herself that she wanted to lose weight.
  • Going to Weight Watchers before I was a teenager, and then again, and again, and again.
  • Going to my first nutritionist and keeping my first of many food journals in high school (and yeah, I wasn’t a stick, but I look back at photos now and want to weep at how deformed I thought I was as a size 12).
  • Being told that I could have a pair of designer (acid wash!) jeans if I lost a certain amount of weight.
  • Getting complimented on how I looked only in the context of weight loss.
  • An uncle who offered me the “jumbo” piece of cake and my partner the “sliver” …to correspond with our body sizes.
  • Being congratulated for not eating dessert by an employer.
  • Watching a fat girl walk down the street being followed by a group of boys and my mother wondering aloud at how sad she was for the girl.
  • A friend laughing at a fat girl riding a ten-speed bike down my street.
  • The countless times my dad told me my fingers weren’t the fingers of a fat girl; hearing him talk about how beautiful other women and girls were; sitting in a grocery store parking lot as he remarked of a patron “she has such a pretty face, she’d be beautiful if she just lost weight, it’s too bad she’s so fat.”
  • Girlfriends who I thought were half my size constantly talking about how fat they were.

Maybe there’s more. I don’t know. I do know that my parents and friends love me. I’ve no doubt of that. And I should also make it clear that if I didn’t pick up these messages from these people who loved me, I probably would have heard much more damaging ones from folks who didn’t.

No matter the source, I soaked all those messages in. They became a part of me. They began to define me. I avoid photographs now like the plague. I manage to forget that I’m fat until I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, or see a photograph. The disgust I feel is overwhelming. I don’t own a full-length mirror, I rarely go shopping, most days I try to hide my body in baggy clothes and when I wear something moderately fitted, I feel like an imposter…a toad trying to dress up like a princess. I gobble food in secret. In public, I try to eat small portions, to avoid real or imagined judgment from others.

There are a few things I haven’t resorted to in my effort to shake the fat off my body: I’ve never taken pills or had surgery, gone on a cabbage soup or grapefruit diet, or made myself throw up. I’ve never starved myself. But I have tried groups and books and plans and specialists and spanx. There have been so many gym memberships, VHS tapes, DVDs, and personal trainers. I quit them all and every time, put another point on the “Sarah’s a failure” board.

It’s a bizarre thing, this kind of failure. In other areas of life…in school and work…I excel and achieve. And while it often takes hard work, some of it comes pretty easily. I don’t quite know what to do with this trying, half-assed trying, and failing cycle I have going on here. But maybe it’s not working because I’m trying for the wrong thing.

I’m a work in progress. I feel really lucky to have met a wonderful friend this year who has helped me to connect the messages I’ve received from others to the way I think about myself. She’s helping me take the first baby steps towards believing that I really am fearfully and wonderfully made, and that my body size is not my beauty or my worth. I can do things that make me feel better, that make me hold my head higher, that remind me that I am strong. And those things aren’t directly related to my size. When I shave two or three minutes off of my mile time, when I can lift five more pounds than I could the week before, when I can sprint faster…I feel amazing. I want to capture that for its own sake, not for a result it may or may not bring.

And the OA mantra “progress, not perfection” is emerging from my brain in new ways.

When I was in middle school, at the start of every summer, I would make myself a very detailed daily schedule and resolve to follow it. The schedule included time for all the things I knew I should do: hygiene, exercise, daily bible reading and prayer, and Scarecrow and Mrs. King watching. A day or two later, the schedule was out the window and I was just reading novels all day, yet another failure.

At other points in my life, I would make these strict lists for myself: no more sugar, exercise every day for an hour, eat two pounds of raw vegetables a day, no more animal products (I took at stab at this one for years before finally going vegan, which I also assumed would be a phase – I really have very little faith in myself, I am coming to see). I have always loved me a to-do list. Little boxes to check off = worthiness to live another day!

This remarkable college kid who did weight-training with me this fall told me something that has stuck with me. He said, “I like it when you fail. It means you’re trying really hard.”

I like it when you fail. It means you’re trying.

I can’t remember the last time I wrote New Year’s resolutions. I think for years, I’ve just assumed that I would fail to keep whatever ridiculous and overreaching resolutions I made, so I never bothered. But this year, I’ve got Jordan and Nicole and Lexapro and Rachel and Beth and Paul and Grace and Giehl and Isaiah in my head, and I want to give them the microphone instead of the lame-ass crap I’ve been listening to for the last quarter century.

The first draft of my 2014 New Year’s resolutions read like the old middle school schedule. A bit strident, a bit negative, a bit too much. But I wrote until I stopped writing, and then I paused. I prayed. And Jesus sat with me and helped me write a second list, and then a third.

What I have now are two lists: one of resolutions and one of goals. The resolutions are the few things I’ve discerned are valuable to me, will feed me spiritually and physically. They are as much internal processes as they are external actions. The goals are where I hope to be by the end of 2014. In the past, I’ve wanted to do something “every day” and the first day I miss ruins everything. I hope these lists honor the reality that my growth is not predictable, that it won’t come in specific increments, and that there will be bad days and better days. I hope they give me something to reach for, not something to live up to.

Resolutions for 2014:

  • Wonder well.
  • Take risks. Fail.
  • Eat and drink mindfully.
  • Listen for God.
  • Bask in the sun.
  • Write more. Watch less.
  • Move and strengthen my body.

Goals for 2014:

  • Walk while working.
  • Run a 5K in less than 30 minutes.
  • Do 30 pushups in 1 minute.
  • Write 4 blogs per week.
  • Finish my first book on evangelical animal liberation theology.
  • Enjoy eating.

evangelical animal liberation theology

~ swithrowking ~ 3 Comments

It sounds like nonsense. If you take the Bible seriously, as evangelicals do, you can’t possibly mine from it a theology of animal liberation. Likewise, liberation theologians may find the idea of turning our liberatory efforts towards nonhuman animals a bit premature when billions of human animals live in oppression.

A lifelong Jesus follower and committed advocate for nonhuman animals, I resisted the idea myself for years. “Talking out of both sides of your mouth,” one professor says (not about this, something else, but I think it would apply). But the four words won’t separate themselves. Evangelical animal liberation theology.

Evangelical. Because it is rooted in the good news of Christ, a message for all, and particularly for those, regardless of their species, who have been marginalized and otherized to such an extent that we no longer refer to them by name, but by their parts. No longer individual created beings, named by Adam, they are known by how they serve the powerful.

Animal. Because this is a theology for all animals – human and nonhuman alike.

Liberation. Because this is a theology of freedom for all. Freedom from harm, freedom from the shackles of greed and power. It is a theology that takes seriously the visions of the prophets of a peaceful reign of God, and it is a theology that takes seriously Jesus’ prayer: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done. On earth, as it is in heaven.”

Theology. Because this is an attempt, first and foremost, to listen to God, to serve God, and to share God’s love with the whole world.

It seems risky. It seems hard. I don’t feel up to the task, and I don’t feel equipped.

And I think that’s exactly where God wants me.

earplugs

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I started sleeping with earplugs the second night after I adopted my (then-few-weeks-old-kitten) Max. Her energy did not know the limits of a 7 am to 3 pm shift at the Doubletree Hotel. So, I bought my first set of foam triangles. That was in 1998. I’ve slept without earplugs once between now and then. It was in London, unexpectedly crashing at a friend’s house after a night out on the town. A couple hours of tossing and turning later, I shoved toilet paper in my ears to try to mimic my beloved’s touch. It didn’t really work.

I’ve always been a bad sleeper. My psychiatrist gave me a word for it: fragile. I’m a fragile sleeper. A dainty princess, you might say. The following conditions must be met in order for me to fall asleep:

  • Moderate room temperature;
  • Heavy-feeling bedding that isn’t oppressively hot;
  • Personal space. I do not need anyone up in my business;
  • An intact bubble of warmth. This is that lovely cocoon one makes for oneself that captures just the right amount of body heat. Often destroyed by cover-tossing spouses, children, and cats;
  • A clean cat box (a must at all times, anyway, because we don’t like to go in dirty toilets, so why should our cats be forced to?);
  • Things put where they belong. No clothes on the floor, no closet or dresser drawers ajar;
  • Abstinence from caffeine for at least 14 hours. Sugar, too. Soda can only be consumed at breakfast (ew, kidding, soda is gross);
  • A mental list that has been completely checked off, including the making of any necessary apologies from the day’s thoughtless behaviors. Random things may come to mind, this requires a smartphone or pad of paper by my bedside so that I can email or write down things that come to me 45 minutes after I lay down to go to sleep. On particularly busy days, when I’ve not had a lot of quiet-mind-time, it will take a few hours to fully clear my cache;
  • And quiet. Utter silence. I had a roommate my sophomore year in college who went to sleep listening to the radio. The fucking RADIO, commercials and all. I moved into a freshman dorm to escape the madness. For a while in my adult life, I slept with earplugs and a white noise machine (not one of those crazy ones with jungle sounds – who the hell can sleep with birds cawing in your ear?).

Earplugs. I am writing this at a Franciscan hermitage in Southeastern Pennsylvania. I think there’s a highway in the distance, and some occasional air traffic, but it is otherwise silent. I still need my earplugs to sleep, though. I thought I’d be able to do without…no snoring, no cats scratching things, no people yelling at each other outside my window…but the occasional pop of the heater or settling sound of the house grips my anxious little heart and it’s just easier to put in the plugs and rest in peace.

I made an odd discovery when I arrived yesterday. I dug a pair of bright orange plugs out of my laptop bag (yes, a laptop at a retreat, I know, but there’s no internet, so think of it as a pen and paper, only nicer to trees). Anyway, I dug out the pair that I knew I had in my bag, and noticed another pair in the same pouch. I dug around, curious. In total, there were four pair in various pockets, and another pair in my bathroom bag. Five pairs of earplugs at a hermitage in the woods. Ha. But also…I have been carrying four of these pairs with me to and fro almost everywhere I go for…I don’t know how long.

Hello silence, my old friend?

I don’t think I can ignore this. It feels significant to me.

Maybe I have a strong need (for quiet, I presume?) and I walk around prepared to take advantage of every opportunity I can get.

Maybe my need for quiet is so wildly under-met that I am hoarding its little symbols.

Maybe it’s not a need, but a fear, that drives this compulsion. Perhaps I’m afraid of becoming overwhelmed. Earplugs are, after all, an escape. I can wear them and read while my kid plays a video game and I don’t have to think about and then overanalyze and then try to talk to him about its subtle messaging about redemptive violence or the role of women…it’s a Lego game, after all. I can wear them on a plane to avoid conversations and scary engine sounds. I can wear them in my office when I don’t want distraction and wouldn’t mind falling asleep for a few minutes in my cozy corner chair.

Maybe earplugs are my meditation. I roll them between my fingers and slide them into my ears just so. As they start to expand in my ear canal, the shape of the world around me changes, narrows. I hear the crackling foam. I become more conscious of my breathing. I hear the blood flow through my brain. The world seems to slow a little. My body relaxes. My mind stops racing. Denying this one sense seems to force a certain deliberation and focus.

Maybe these five pairs of earplugs that I’m carrying around are just one desperate cry my overworked mind is making to try to get my attention. “See us! We’re peace! We’re rest! You need us! You love us!”

I am a seminary student, work for an evangelical nonprofit, and am part of an awesome community of believers, but it’s hard for me to find Jesus in my to-do list. I’m still battling my twenty-year-old self wondering if I’m doing “the right thing” with my life; wondering what I should do next and whether or not the choices I made up to this point were mistakes; wondering if I can really change this time, or if I’m doomed to fail again; wondering…wondering…wondering…

Earlier today, I was sitting next to a window in this little cabin and noticed a bright blue flash in the trees. I put down my book, put on my glasses, and spent the next ten minutes or so watching birds forage for lunch in the brush and branches. Dozens of birds, some tiny and brown others huge and blue, doing what birds do. God made all of those species of birds, with their intricacies and quirks. And God made the trees that shelter them, and the insects which feed them. And this tiny microcosm of the whole created universe was happening right in front of me, in the frame of one small window, of one small house, in one small town, in one small country…That’s the kind of healthy wondering that mental quiet fosters.

I’ve never quite believed that I was enough. And part of the way I express that in life is by doing. Sure, I “do” a lot of TV watching – I’m not claiming this is a perfect science – but I also “do” a lot of actual productive stuff. And I feel driven. I am particularly driven to help Christians do a better job of talking about and relating to nonhuman animals. God gave me a heart for the work…it’s my passion and my vocation, and that’s okay. But I’m finding it difficult to balance that God-given passion with my other God-given need for quiet, respite, rest, and room to just think and write…and not necessarily about anything earth-changing. “If I’m not working to change the world, am I still working?” becomes “If I’m not working to change the world at this very second, am I still worthy?” So, there’s a daily vacillation between self-righteousness (I’m working) and self-loathing (I’ve been watching Netflix for three hours and I’m fat and therefore a terrible person who will never accomplish anything and whose son will grow up to hate her and eat meat and kill people for a living).

When I’m wearing earplugs, I can see the absurdity of all that grey-matter chatter. It’s just the steady drone of air in and out of my lungs and the space to hear God’s voice say: Rest. I am here. You are loved. I am here.

I can hear the best messages when I’m not listening to my own.

So, I’m going to keep a hold of these five pairs of earplugs. I’m going to use them. And maybe, eventually, I’ll learn to listen without them.

Desmond Tutu FTW

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Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Photo credit: Wa-J)

“It is a kind of theological folly to suppose that God has made the entire world just for human beings, or to suppose that God is interested in only one of the millions of species that inhabit God’s good earth.”

Demond Tutu has written the foreword for a new book by Oxford theologian Andrew Linzey, who has spent decades developing theologies that honor all of God’s creations.

Here’s the whole HuffPo article, which also includes:

“I have seen firsthand how injustice gets overlooked when the victims are powerless or vulnerable, when they have no one to speak up for them and no means of representing themselves to a higher authority. Animals are in precisely that position. Unless we are mindful of their interests and speak out loudly on their behalf, abuse and cruelty go unchallenged.”

I’m so excited.

mama bear

~ swithrowking ~ 3 Comments

I was all zen leaving church tonight, until this a-hole making a left turn cut us off while we were walking across the street. My surprise turned into a “Yo! Watch it!” and then a “Jackass!” when I realized the offending driver was behind the wheel of a hummer. I screamed at the dude because for a second, I felt totally vulnerable to the hurrywarts in the world. I felt every fear that my kid is going to be snatched from me by a reckless driver or a kidnapper or cancer…and then the fear that by fearing all those things, they’ll come to pass. All the trust I claim and try to put in Jesus flies out the window when mama bear rears her head and I become a foul-mouthed hypocrite.

 

While my indignation still hung in the air on Broad Street, the gas-guzzler rolled by and I saw a kid’s face pressed up against the half-open back window.

 

Fuck.

Lord, have mercy.

 

Two Things

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1) Today, I pulled a long white hair out of a zit on my chin.
2) Bradley is a mini-Clyde. They are food obsessed, chew on sticks, bark at the tiniest thing, etc. When we toss a tasty morsel of food at Clyde, he snaps it out of the air with precision and speed. When I tossed a sliver of orange at Bradley, it hit her between the eyes, stayed there on the bridge of her snout for a couple of seconds, and then fell to the floor.

shatter

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Who is in my community? Who is in my tribe? Is this defined by gender, political allegiance, color, birth-state, how-I-take-my-coffee, twizzlers-or-red-vines? No. When we allow God to give us our community, instead of self-selecting a safe space, we shatter and the glittery, sharp pieces of who we are in the world scatter across nations, time, species, and socio-economic contexts, connecting us with Jesus-in-the-whole-world.

dark

~ swithrowking ~ 2 Comments

It hit me yesterday, around 10 o’clock in the morning, when I was still struggling to drag myself out of bed. The reason I’ve been perpetually late, achingly tired, and totally unenthusiastic about basically everything for the last few weeks isn’t because my life sucks. I have a great life. My old companion depression has melted slowly into my brain again. 

She showed up at this same time last year, too. Maybe it’s the short day. Maybe this happens more than I realize.

Well, regardless of the possible seasonal cycle, depressed Sarah is ruling the roost up in my grey matter. I’ve been eating a lot of feelings. My fuse is short. My tolerance for bullshit is nonexistent. The grass looks way greener somewhere else. My need for order and calm and efficiency is very high. I have bursts of pleasantness and joy, but mostly I want to sleep, or cry, or scream. I probably shouldn’t drive very much (particularly in Philadelphia, where the jackassholery behind the wheel seems to be at constant epidemic levels). I probably should cut back on the coffee. 

I have a therapist. I have a psychiatrist. I have drugs. I have a great community. I have a husband and son who understand me and love me. I have a faith that helps me remember it’s not all about me. So, no intervention needed. But you may not want to cut me off in traffic. 

War Zone

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I was sitting in a small hermitage in the middle of the woods outside of Philadelphia this weekend, on one of the short writing retreats that I am taking to help find time to write this book. Sipping a glass of wine and reading a book, I was enjoying the sound of crickets and the leaves rustle when the still night air was punctured with an explosion. That was followed by three more quick pops in a row, and thunderous booms.

Fireworks.

It took me a few minutes to see them through the trees, but there they were, interrupting my Zen-Lord-help-me-be-in-this-moment reverie. The windows of my cabin shook, my heart started to race. I could feel the explosions in the floor and walls. Then, just as suddenly as they had begun, stillness.

I fucking hate fireworks.

After a few seconds of confusion, I knew what was happening in the still woods around me. I had a word for it and knew that it would eventually come to an end.

You know who doesn’t have a word for the chaos? Wildlife. Terrified birds who literally drop dead out of the sky every year due to fucking fireworks. Deer trying to protect their babies from this unseen, booming assailant. The dogs and cats in houses who cower in closets, shaking, long after the onslaught stops.

If you like explosions, move to a warzone and take your damn fireworks with you.