The chickens hop the fence, not all the chickens but a few and they do it every day. The smarter ones also hop back in but the young ones who are just learning about the world get panicked and need to be ushered back to safety. They know where they are and are not supposed to be, and when I come to the coop they come right to me to be led back in through the gate. The older ones who know better will often wait for me to pick them up, or will trot ahead and stand by the gate, the young ones are still anxious so there is a lot of fluttering and squawking but it is all just noise, they do what they are supposed to even if I have to coax them a little.

Last summer when the coyote came into the yard and we lost half the flock we went to lock down. It’s a big coop and so everyone just lived in there, but for the chickens who remembered, the big yard was a place they wanted to be. Then this spring the coyotes moved; I know they are still generally around but then den moved and so I started to let the chickens out into their yard when I was in the vicinity and could supervise. And for the last month of so I have let the chickens into their yard mid-day when I expect any coyote to be napping, even if I’m in the house.

When yard time was the norm we had erected a lot of netting to keep the girls from hopping the fence, and occasionally wings would be clipped, but after the coyote incident and I thought coop life was the new normal the netting came down because it was ugly, and theoretically unneeded. So now there is no netting and a few hours a day in the yard and here we come to the problem, because despite an objectively very large space of dirt and shrubs and things to keep a chicken entertained the world outside the fence is a siren song.

A few years ago there was a book that tried to prove that our lives were pre-determined, not from a theological perspective but from a neuro-scientific view. The argument was basically from the first moment of conception, based on who your parents are every “decision” you make will be determined by the previous actions and therefore you aren’t actually choosing anything, all of your behavior is logically inevitable. It’s not a dissimilar argument to the idea of divine predestination, just a different angel on the concept. While I believe that God wants something from all of us, and that we all have a unique gift to the offer to the world, I do not believe that our lives are pre-determined, either by nature, nurture, or divine rule.

We were built with the capacity to make decisions as we were formed from the dust. And we did make a choice in those first moments of existence. What a cruel God if we were designed to suffer and have no agency in our actions. I know some believe this and for this reason reject God. Why did God, who made everything good, also make something that could be the source of pain? To me that answer is the proof of free will. You can’t have the freedom to choose without the possibility of choosing something that you will later regret. If every choice is a safe choice, if every action is just an illusory act of freedom but is contained and protected then there is no freedom at all.

Not all the chickens hop the fence. The repeat offenders are Mrs. Sharon, Seven, and now Red and Vette. I could stop it by putting up more netting or by clipping their wings again; I too am making a choice in this situation. I don’t expect the chickens to carefully reason through the potential dangers on the inside or the outside of the fence, some of them seem content to stay with what they know, these others yearn to scratch in unfamiliar places.

I’m not suggesting that we are chickens in a divine cosmology, they are just a metaphor here. But I thinks it is a good metaphor: if life were predetermined there would be fences and nets and far, far less ability to create than what we have. God wants us to reason, to consider, to weigh our choices, and what a miracle that we have that ability. This is my argument for prayer and contemplation, taking the time each day to ask ‘what would you have me do?’ And to use the reason and the ability I have been given to sometimes say yes to whatever is over than fence, and to sometimes say no, even if it looks really good.