Love your condor-I mean, your neighbor

                When I first came to Cincinnati, I was astonished at the number of birds, and especially songbirds, that grace this region. There are bluebirds, hummingbirds, mourning birds, mockingbirds, cardinals, owls, woodpeckers, martins, and a slew of little grey and brown birds. This may be unfair to my old homeland in the West Coast, but there I saw seagulls, crows, and robins. And little brown birds. Boring.

                So when I arrived here, I developed an interest in birds and their lifestyle, having spent most of my life just thinking of them as little flying things the poop on you if you're not careful.

                Someone introduced me to the Cornell Lab birdcam, where I watched the nests of great horned owls, barn owls, and most recently, California condors. The condors were on the brink of extinction at the end of the 20th century, when the last were taken into captivity to save the species. Now there are more than 400, mostly in Southern California, and one pair decided to set up a nest in a little cave high in a cliff in the mountains. The U.S Fish and Wildlife Service set up a webcam so that condor lovers could watch a condor chick grow hatch and grow up, until he or she was ready to fly.

                Last spring, I watched a chick hatch, and logged in every day to see the mother and father fly in to feed the little bird. The giant adults, with a wing span of 9 feet, towered over the little chick. As he grew, he would flap his wings excitedly when his parents came to feed him. At three months old, he looked like a gangly toddler wearing his mother's fur coat and his father's clown shoes, practicing jumping in his cave nest. He grew bigger over the next several months, until he began leaving the cave to check out his surroundings, not yet ready to fly.

                I grew to love the chick, his silly looks, his awkward way of walking, the way he played with sticks, and the honking noise he made while flapping his wings to get his parent to feed him. Then in August, he was ready to practice flying, and he plopped in and out of the cave.

                Then one too-soon day, his dead body was discovered high on the cliff above his nest. I was devastated. He had not even learned to fly, to find food for himself, to have a mate, to explore the world. I cried and sobbed for this 8-month-old condor chick that I had never met but whom I felt I had gotten to know intimately. I loved him, as if he was my buddy, or my neighbor. I even loved him more than my real neighbor.

                Sometimes I think that it's harder for us to "love our neighbors" is harder than it is for us to "love God." God doesn't block my driveway with his garbage cans on Mondays. God doesn't have loud parties on Saturday night. God doesn't curse at me when I accidentally cut God off in traffic. God doesn't glare at me because I look Asian and wear a clerical collar. Sometimes neighbors can be hard to love.

                So what possible excuse do I have for loving a baby condor more than my "neighbors?" I think the answer is that I got to "know" the condor chick, watching him every day and following his growing up. I felt like I knew him. It is easier to love somebody when you get to know him.

                Usually, we don't know people with whom we come in casual contact. Too often, when we meet people, we don't take time to learn much about them. But as I learned with Condor #815, it is much easier to love people when you get to know and understand them. That's not always possible with the random person we bump into on the street. But what is possible is that we promise intentionally to look at that person through God's eyes, "seeing Christ in all persons." When we can see Christ in all persons, we do know them. We know that they are human, with a divine spark, worthy of respect and dignity, and dearly loved by God. And then, how can we not love? At least as much as, or more than, a baby condor in a webcam. May we always practice that love; it is sorely needed these days.