Doves and Pigeons

Doves are often symbols of peace, love, hope or the Holy Spirit. We imagine doves as pure white birds, beautiful and lovely. Pigeons, on the other hand, are often viewed as vermin or rats with wings - at best annoying and at worst despicable. The funny thing is that, biologically, doves and pigeons are the same. They all belong to the same taxonomic family and whether one particular subspecies gets called a dove or a pigeon is a matter of regional or dialectic preference. Dove is a word that came into English from the Germanic languages, and pigeon is a word that came from French, but they both refer to the same bird. When we imagine the form that our peace, our love, our hope, our relationship with the Holy Ghost should take, we usually imagine that beautiful, lovely, pure white dove, and not the dirty, bedraggled, living off of garbage in the streets pigeon. But it's the same bird. Sometimes peace is this beautiful, harmonious melding of mind and will. Sometimes it's an ugly, knockdown dragout fight where both parties are physically and emotionally exhausted but are relieved that the fighting is finally over. Sometimes love is effortless and wonderful and ecstatic, and sometimes it's exhausting and heartbreaking and bewildering. Sometimes hope refreshes and renews and elevates and inspires us, and sometimes it's a heavy weight we drag with us through the mud and the thorns, refusing to let go out of sheer, stupid stubbornness. Sometimes our peace and our love and our hope are ugly pigeons and sometimes they are beautiful doves, but it's all the same. Maybe it was a lovely, pure white dove that appeared when Jesus was baptized, and maybe it was a grey and purple pigeon, but the Creator of Heaven and Earth, whose brightness and glory defy all description, is also the Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, Who trod the winepress with His garments stained red with the blood He bled from every pore. God loves us when we're a beautiful dove and when we're a dirty and bedraggled pigeon.