Friday, Lafayette, Indiana

A CNN story about the deteriorating situation in Iraq featured footage of an early morning survey of the quiet streets in a war ravaged neighborhood. As the camera panned across bomb craters in busy streets, burned remains of car bombs and demolished buildings, the eerie silence was punctuated by the sweet sounds of dozens of birds chirping.

Going about their business of finding mates, buildings nests and preparing for births, the birds do what they do right here in my neighborhood. They live in a parallel universe whose only distinctions are the noises of the human world around them. Whether Bagdad, Lafayette, Indiana, Birmingham, Alabama or Moscow, Russia, mating birds call out their melodic sounds and live their busy lives without regard to the goings on in the human world.

How many of us cope with the noise of the world by living parallel lives, ignoring what is happening in the world around us? Like the birds in Bagdad, we in America have been given the luxury of flying around, busy with our business, choosing to remain oblivious to the ugly, violent world that goes on near and around us.