The war in Iran has invaded even my dreams. Already deeply distressed by a war I find unnecessary, immoral, and unjust, last night my dream filled with drones.
On March 9, “Barksdale Air Force Base, Bossier City, Louisiana, detected multiple unauthorized drones operating in our airspace during the week of March 9th,” Capt. Hunter Rininger of the 2nd Bomb Wing said.
Drones – the word unsettles my imagination. Preachers have been known to “drone on and on till doomsday.” And now drones are loose in Louisiana and my dream.
I haven’t dreamed like this since a childhood filled by the sermons of dispensationalist preachers conjuring tanks and jets out of Ezekiel for the Battle of Armageddon. Talk about going apocalyptic.
Sitting at the breakfast table this morning, my night of drone attacks caught a break when my eyes caught doves flying back and forth outside the paned door on the small patio. Ah, doves instead of drones make for a better morning.
The fluttering, cooing doves evoked childhood memories.
Doves, for me, are sacred memory bearers, images of a safer more secure time. Doves bear memories of my dad on their wings.
My Bible-soaked Baptist deacon Dad called doves “Bible birds.” My dad spent many days in the fields and pine woods hunting quails but never doves. I asked him why he didn’t shoot doves.
He answered my question in his usual way. He reached for his worn, frayed paged King James, and like a preacher poring over texts, he said, “Son, let me tell you about the Bible birds.” When Dad grabbed his Bible, you needed to reach for a honey bun and a R. C. Cola because the lesson would not be short. Then he regaled me with the story of Noah, the use of doves as acceptable sacrifice by the poor, the poetic images of the dove in Psalms, Song of Solomon, and the prophets.
Noah sent a dove from the ark to scout for dry ground, “but the dove found no place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him” (Genesis 8:9). Seven days later, Noah sent out the dove again. The dove
He waited another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark, and the dove “came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth” (Genesis 8:11). After seven more days, Noah sent out the dove, “and it did not return to him” (Genesis 8:12).
A dove with an olive leaf in its beak became sacred imagery for Dad. There would be no killing of doves in our family.
Later Israel, after the institution of sacrifices, legislated the use of doves as permissible sacrificial offerings. Dad pointed out poor people could not afford to bring a lamb, so God made provision for the dove as a sacrifice acceptable to the Lord. Leviticus 5:7 – “And if he be not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring . . . . two turtledoves unto the Lord; one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering.” Since we were poor, Dad thought the dove was God’s way of honoring our presence in the house of God with a pair of doves.
Turning next to the psalter, Dad read poetic, metaphoric interpretations of the dove. “O that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest” (Psalm 55:6). He loved the vivid expression in Psalm 68:13 – “the wings of a dove covered with silver, its pinions with green gold.”
In his biblical imagination, Dad combined not shooting doves with being poor in is reading of Psalm 74:19 – “Do not deliver the soul of your dove to the wild animals; do not forget the life of your poor forever.”
As he warmed to his “sermon,” he waxed eloquently about the dove in the love poems of the Song of Solomon. “Ah, you are beautiful, my love; ah, you are beautiful; your eyes are doves” (1:15).
Shifting to prophetic mode, Dad reminded me God used the dove as a symbol in the promises to bring Israel up out of the bondage of Egypt. “They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt and like doves from the land of Assyria, and I will return them to their homes, says the Lord” Hosea 11:11).
His face radiated as he turned to an underline passage: “And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him” (Matthew 3:16). The dove has been lifted up to the throne of heaven, in the company of the Holy Trinity – the dove as Holy Spirit.
By the time of this lesson from Dad, I was already a licensed preacher, so Dad added Matthew 10:16 – “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” He put his big hand on my head, kissed my forehead and said, “You are one of God’s doves.”
Now, you know why I placed a clay pot on the top of my baker’s rack for the doves to build a nest. This will be the fourth nest beneath the patio. I have watched the hatchlings fly never to return. But each time, I see Dad standing next to me smiling.
Here ends the lesson. May the peace of Christ be with all y’all.
